As a small business owner, you probably wish you could find that magic formula that allows you to pack more than 24 hours into a day. The never-ending list of things that need your attention often means your work–life balance suffers, or you feel that you never get on top of things. Applying these effective time management tips and tools will help you to use your work time more effectively and get more of the important stuff done.
Track your time
Remember that tried and tested business adage, “You can’t manage what you don’t measure”? Well, it applies to time management too. Without tracking your time, any attempt at improving time management will be a hit and miss affair. If you don’t track where and how you spend your time, you’ve got no way to measure your current time management, or means to identify time wasters or tasks you could delegate.
Start by recording what you do each day and how long it takes you. This can be as simple or tech-heavy as you like, ranging from rough notes scribbled on a weekly timesheet, to an excel spreadsheet that will add up the minutes and hours for you. Alternatively, you can harness technology to do this for you.
Before you write off this idea, deciding that the amount of additional time you’ll waste tracking your time is not worth the effort, at least try out one of a range of paid-for and free time management tools that can help to make this task simpler.
If this sounds too fancy, there are also a number of simple time tracking applications for desktop computers, mobile phones or tablet computers that you can consider, such as Desktop Timer and Smart Timer.
Although there are benefits to continuing to track and monitor how you use your time, you don’t have to. After a few weeks, you’ll have a good indication of what you spend most of your days, weeks and months doing. You might be surprised at the amount of time that is lost in meetings, doing things you could delegate, or on things you do out of habit rather than need.