A small business owner is rarely just a small business owner – they’re also often accountants, PR heads, hiring managers, customer service workers, and more all rolled into one. As an entrepreneur, you’re effectively a one-man-band, so it’s natural that all successful business owners have mastered the art of effective time management.
After all, switching between roles every few minutes, spinning five different plates in the air, and trying to keep a healthy sleep schedule is a lot to chew on. Having your work regimented, simplified, and even automated is exactly what you want, and there are endless systems to do it. Payroll solutions can do your invoices for you, while outsourced customer service handles the call line. And as you start to adopt these systems and technologies, your business will grow and take shape while your peace of mind follows.
Here are some of the most potent benefits that accompany bolstering your time management skills as a small business owner today.
Streamlined Workflows
Having strong operational processes can naturally help simplify your professional responsibilities and daily workload as a small business owner. However, before you can start enjoying this foremost benefit of time management, you naturally need to hone your delegation skills.
Thankfully, small business owners today can also rely on business automation tools like project management software and payroll solutions to streamline their workflows alongside delegating tasks to their employees. Using business automation tools to handle administrative tasks like salary processing or invoicing is one of the best time-saving hacks for small business owners today, namely because so much business management software is easily accessible and affordable today.
Stress Reduction & an Increase in Confidence
Deadlines creep up on you, it’s a fact of life. There’s always something else to do, so knowing you have work due on a certain date pushes it closer and closer to that date. The alternative is to simply book in the work. Set your workflow in stone and follow it. 8am is for reading emails, 8:30 is for making calls, 9 is for getting that tender written and 10 is for brunch.
If you’re not used to working like this, you may think it’s constricting your time – isn’t multitasking more efficient? – but you’ll be impressed by how much work you can get done by following a schedule, and how confident that organisation makes you feel. You might even find that you have more time in the day to take on extra work or just relax, and your peace of mind will grow.
Improved Work-Life Balance
It’s true, having your work regimented is easier than the chaos of a go-with-the-flow workstyle. It might mean making fewer calls or having less chats with coworkers, but it’ll increase the value of when you do communicate. And when you have your work organised and completed to schedule, you’ll have more time to spend chatting with others without the stress of deadlines, unfinished work, or forgotten tasks over your head.
Reduced Procrastination
Procrastination is often a symptom of not knowing the best way to tackle a task. Small business owners face this more than most as you’ll be doing many things for the first time. Naturally, you want some direction, and a schedule provides that. “Work on this now”, it tells you and now you know what you’ll be doing for the next hour. You might not know the finer details, but you start searching google, sending emails, or taking calls and the ball starts rolling.
It’s like that old adage: “the hardest part of the journey is the first step”. Once you know your direction, you can start working towards it and that’s exactly what your time management skills and technology provide.
Greater Flexibility and Freedom
How can the box of a strict routine give you more freedom? Efficiency. When you know how much time each job will take, and you plan accordingly, there’s far less umming and ahhing. You get in the zone and knuckle down. After that your work is done for the day – definitely, your schedule says so – then you have space and time to use on other ventures, whether they’re personal or professional.
Minimise Distractions
When you know what you need to do, you also know what you shouldn’t be doing. If you’re booked in to be discussing a new project with a client, you’re not there to gab about the football, so save it for after work– or put it in the schedule. Your schedule provides laser focus to what is needed to operate and grow your business, and if it doesn’t then you should reevaluate it and update it until it does. Learning to minimise distractions and to stick to your schedule is of course a skill in its own right, and one that will take time to develop, so be patient as you work on it. Slowly you’ll realise what distracts you while you’re on task, and you can find ways to remove or minimise those influences. After all, your time management skills will only grow as you use them.
Strategic Thinking & Planning
Planning and strategising your day and week is a skill that can be applied across your business. You’re learning how to organise, utilise, and even invest in business assets and make them work for you, and that’s a valuable skill of its own. This kind of strategic thinking can ensure small business owners are equipped with the right mindset for business growth and development planning.
Similarly, utilising business assets like technological tools also gives you the chance to realistically understand how much time your work needs to be completed, so when you have employees doing these tasks you can give them deadlines that fit these time requirements – plus or minus an allowance for skill levels and the like.
Conclusion
There is one thing that every task requires, and that’s not technology nor money nor skills. It’s time. Everything takes time, so it stands to reason that time is your most valuable asset. So why shouldn’t you be planning and preparing around it? You have people accounting for your money, for your assets and your employees, why not your time too? Have it optimised and organised and see all the benefits big and small. It’s the secret ingredient in all small businesses that have successfully been able to scale up and meet their growth and development goals over the long term. And small business owners – it all starts with you stepping up as leaders and big picture thinkers. Taking all the minutiae of business management off your plate can help free up your time and mental space to start thinking like a leader and less like a middle manager. So start thinking about what you need to optimise your own time as a business owner.
