If you’re a budding entrepreneur, you should be aware of the value of time. As most leaders and business owners set examples for their subordinates, you should do the same regarding effective time management.
Be it accounting, taxing, creating monthly reports or interacting with clients, it’s better if you can hire people or outsource some work to manage the different areas of business. Finding someone specialized in your line of business will make outsourcing even more effective. For instance, if you work in healthcare it would be wise to hire a virtual healthcare assistant, this will allow you to focus on tasks that require your expertise in order to be completed, whilst other tasks and the admin side can be handled by a VA that understands the business operations and is contacted easily. This will help you focus on your immediate objectives and handle bulk work within a fixed time frame.
When a business is new, it can be a tad difficult to curb the urge to overwork and exceed the fixed business hours. It’s natural for you to be passionate about your new business, but you should refrain from working overtime every day, as it can affect your health adversely. If you fall sick or start suffering from stress and anxiety, it will render you incapable of completing even the simplest of tasks after a while.
What is time management?
Time management is a skill that every business owner should adopt to prevent overworking and ensure maximum productivity. It involves proper planning and scheduling of responsibilities while keeping to a definite time frame.
While some leaders are pro in it, some others need to understand its importance, as well as learn the tricks to manage their time efficiently.
If you constantly face difficulties in achieving your day-to-day business goals, despite overworking and hiring people to delegate responsibilities or outsource specific tasks, you’ve come to the right place. Read on to know some of the unconventional ways you can manage time properly and increase your company’s productivity to a great extent.
How to effectively manage time in business
When it comes to your entrepreneurial venture, time is the most reliable and precious resource you can have. Learning to manage it properly will not only keep your motivation intact but also help you accomplish your tasks without grudging the long hours at work. Here’s how you can do it:
Maintain a proper work-life balance
It’s important to draw a line between your personal and professional life, especially if you’re a passionate entrepreneur, whose key aim is to take the company to the next level soon. You’ve to fix your operating hours and refrain from indulging in business tasks beyond that.
This can be difficult at first when you’re bubbling with energy to create a stronghold for your new business, but it’s not impossible. Try getting a virtual phone number, which is operable only during the business hours. If anyone, a client or a stakeholder, calls you before/after the fixed time, their call will automatically be sent to your business voicemail.
That’s not the only benefit of getting a virtual phone number, of course. Joe Murphy from GBPN (https://gbpn.com) explains that a business phone number can be set up to go to several different phones, eliminating the need for multiple numbers. With its advanced voicemail, call routing and forwarding options, this number will also help your business stay active 24/7, even in your absence.
It’s unwise to disrupt the balance between your work and personal life, as it’s going to reduce your productivity in the long run. Try planning your tasks a week in advance and don’t forget to keep some time aside to meet urgent requests, if any.
Set goals and prioritize your immediate needs
No effective time management strategy is complete without goal setting. You should have a clear idea about your short and long-term goals to utilize your available time in achieving them. While your long-term goals are mostly related to business growth, the short-term ones will decide how you’re going to attain that growth.
It’s important to develop a SMART (Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant and Time-bound) goals strategy to meet your objectives in time and take your company to the next level. If you follow the SMART goals strategy, you’ll be able to recognize areas that require your immediate attention. This, in turn, will help you prioritize your tasks and use your time effectively.
In the uncertain entrepreneurial world, it won’t always be easy to concentrate only on your immediate goals. However, maintaining a proper schedule for every task will also leave room to meet such emergencies, as and when they occur. All you need to understand is what your priorities are at any given moment and make changes in the schedule accordingly.
Learn to say NO to distractions
Like you shouldn’t let your work meander its way into your personal space, you shouldn’t let your personal engagements ruin your work as well. Learning to keep the two spaces separate is crucial to achieving the success you dream of. And how you’re going to do that?
First things first! Learn to say NO to yourself, especially when your mind pokes you constantly to leave the work at hand and peep into your social media news feeds for once. Social media is one of the biggest distractions you can carefully avoid during business hours. Once you log into your profile, it’s impossible to get out, and when you realize it, you’ve already wasted a lot of your precious time.
Hence, it’s best if you can keep your mobile away from your desk while working and attend only the calls that come through your business number. If you don’t wish to take any call at the moment, you can configure the settings accordingly, so that the calls go directly to your business voicemail.
It will help you stay focused and complete your tasks without any distractions. However, this doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t take breaks, but make them as short as possible to prevent hampering your work schedule for the day.
Wrapping it up
Starting a company from scratch and taking it gradually up the rungs of the success ladder requires extreme dedication, proper motivation, focus, and of course, effective time management. It’s difficult to understand the value of time if you haven’t suffered any losses because of it, but why wait for something like that to happen?
If you can manage your time efficiently from the beginning, you will not only reduce the chances of losses but also be able to maintain a healthy state of mind. And when you’re in the right headspace, even overcoming obstacles won’t seem much of a hassle, but a part of the process.
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