Time management Tips for Small Business Owners

July 30, 2015

If you’re a small business owner I need not tell you how important your time is. In fact there is no resource more precious than your own time.
You might be of the view that money deserves that particular accolade but you can always make more money. On the other hand, there will only be 24 hours in a day and that won't change for the foreseeable future unless you have invented a time machine. If that’s the case I doubt that money will be much of a concern either.

1. E-mails

You may spend a surprisingly sizeable chunk of your time everyday checking and replying to your emails. The best thing to do is set a specified time where you will take care of your emails and any responses that you need to formulate. If you send and receive a massive amount of emails each day, maybe first thing in the morning, at lunch time and before you leave in the evening.

Checking your emails throughout the day really just takes you away from doing other tasks. You need to get into the mindset that just because an email pops up in your inbox doesn’t mean that you have to reply to it immediately, forsaking whatever other work you were doing. Rather, you shouldn’t allow anything to take your attention away from your work unless it is absolutely critical that you respond at that time.

2. Plan your day

The most productive time you will ever spend is the time you schedule, a simple Excel sheet on the face of your computer is a start. Whether you do this in the evening for the next day or first thing in the morning, having an idea of how your day will go is a powerful tool.
After some practice you’ll be able to tell within reason what you can expect to get done each day. The next step is to put the most important tasks that you need to get done at the top of your to do list.
As the days pass, you’ll find that you are consistently getting critically important work done on time and your business should be in good shape as a result.

3. Out-source and Delegate

Delegating tasks to trusted staff frees up your time to do the more important and critical work. When running a small business it can feel like you need to do everything yourself - don't! Generally that's not be the best approach, especially if you can improve staff morale and give yourself extra time through delegating.
Think about it this way, would you rather do reports which a staff member would be capable of doing and put back an important meeting with a client or delegate the reports and go ahead with the meeting which could generate new leads.
If certain expertise does not exist within your company, perhaps consider outsourcing if your budget allows. If you spend 4 hours resolving a problem which takes an expert  say 30 minutes to do for a relatively small fee, then you need to think long and hard about exactly how valuable that time is to you

4. Interruption

One thing not to do when planning your day is to allocate all of your time from 9 to 5 to carry out certain tasks and then put pressure on yourself to complete them. That’s not feasible.
You are going to be interrupted at least once during the day, whether you need to deal with a customer issue, help a member of staff, it’s going to happen. If you expect to be interrupted then you’ll have to learn to prioritise the most important of your tasks and you won’t be giving unrealistic promises about when you will have your tasks completed.

5. Saying NO!

Are you a ‘yes person’? If someone asks you to do something do you do it out of politeness even if you don’t want to? Learn to say NO, because the time you need to run your business properly is more important, if its not something in your field, it will take a lot longer and may never pay you - upshot -you are not happy your customer is not happy; if you cannot do and are happy to say NO refer where possible.
Unless it’s something you absolutely have to do, you shouldn’t be doing anything that you don’t think will be productive for your business.

6. Idle time

Whether it’s waiting for meetings, appointments, the train or having a sandwich, we all spend idle time throughout the day. Use this time efficiently if you can.

It could be a great time to catch up and reply to those e-mails you haven’t read yet. If you can get small tasks out of the way while you wait, they won’t eat into time you have set aside for other tasks later in the day. Use your Tablet or phone Apps to speed up applications.

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