How is it that with all of the advancements in technology and all the resources that we have at our fingertips to make life easier, that doesn’t seem to have an effect on how much free time we have? Managing your time effectively is probably one of the hardest things to do as a business owner, it’s hard for anyone! Here are my top 3 tips for staying on top of your work and still having time to live life a little.
Use a calendar! If you want to truly “manage” your time, a calendar is the best way of doing that. I suggest using Google Calendar or any calendar that can sync with your phone. Block off chunks of time for everything that you do in a day. If you have recurring tasks that happen every day, week, or month, schedule them into your calendar so that you know you have time set aside to take care of that task whenever it comes up. This really helps me to focus on one thing after another and I am able to give my clients a clear sense of when I can get something done so I am not overbooking my time. It also helps when I need to bill out my time to clients because my time is all already logged in my calendar.
Extra tip: Book off chunks of time for lunch or free time. It’s also a good idea to give yourself a little bit of a buffer between each task or at the end of the day in case some extra things come up that you need to take care of or one task ends up taking longer than you expected.
Don’t check your email! This one is a little bit of an over exaggeration. I find it hard to not respond to an email as soon as it comes into my inbox but if I am in the middle of working on something else, it’s not always the most efficient use of my time to respond to emails right away. Stopping what I am doing to check my email and then going back to my task can be distracting if done just once, as a business owner, the hundreds and thousands of email you get has got to be distracting. My suggestion is to set your mail to only send/receive every 30 mins (or longer). This way, your emails will come in groups and you can take a few minutes every time to respond and go back to completely focusing on your task. This way, you can still respond to emails quite timely but they are not distracting you every time someone sends you a spam email as well.
Do what you love! We all know it can be extra hard to drag yourself out of bed when you hate your job. We can be a little sluggish when we are forced to do the things we don’t want to do so the best way to make the most of your time is to do the things that you enjoy the most. This way you will be more eager to press onto the next task and you’ll find yourself getting a lot more work done (or the same amount of work done in less time.) You are the business owner, you can control what directions your business goes in. Go out and get the business that you enjoy. When it comes to the parts of your business that you don’t like, hire or subcontract it to someone who does, it’s better for you and better for your business.
So go on and make the most of your time at work. Then go home and spend that time with your kids, significant other, or catching up with old friends. You’ve worked hard enough to deserve it!