Introduction
Running a business can be incredibly overwhelming for entrepreneurs. Their workdays are packed with meetings, phone calls, responding to emails, creating and maintaining marketing plans, and solving technical issues that arise. Mastering time management skills is essential for their business to succeed. Being productive and effective at time management isn't about working harder but finding a way to work smarter. When you manage your time better, your business runs smoother, and you'll notice a dramatic uptick in your daily productivity.
Time is a perishable commodity for everyone, not just entrepreneurs, and once it's been lost, you can't get it back. Whether you are meeting with a client to close a business deal or preparing to launch a new product, time is the critical factor in determining whether or not your business succeeds or fails. Unfortunately, the reality is that you can’t add more hours to your day. Instead, you have to master the art of effective time management to ensure you get as much done during the time you’re allotted.
As the owner of a small business, you have to master time management and increase your productivity if you want to achieve your business goals and be successful. With a better system for managing your time, you can handle everything you need to accomplish in a day without stress, leaving you more time to spend on tasks that will help you grow your business and increase your profits.
We all have the same 24 hours in the day. However, it isn't uncommon for some people to accomplish more during their days than others. This is because productive people are better at managing their time. Even with looming deadlines and client pressures, high achievers rarely fall short of their schedules. With sufficient time management, you can get more work done in less time. Here are five productivity secrets that you can use to get more done during the day, take control of your time, and achieve greater success.
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1. Outsource Non-Core Work
As a business owner, it is crucial to understand which of your tasks you can outsource to someone else. These are the tasks in your daily schedule that are urgent but not important. Outsourcing non-core work tasks to other professionals is an extremely effective way for entrepreneurs to master time management in their day-to-day operations.
For example, administrative duties can be incredibly time-consuming. While necessary for business efficiency, they don't lead to more profits or growth for your company. Your time is better spent on tasks and activities that will increase profits. Outsourcing these kinds of menial but necessary tasks can help you focus on high-impact activities.
Thanks to the Internet, it is much easier and more affordable for companies to delegate tasks to skilled professionals. With just a click, you can assign these tasks to experienced freelancers worldwide. Several platforms connect you with freelancers to help you tackle business tasks. Once you've outsourced routine tasks, you will have more time to focus on managing your time and being more productive.
2. Employ the 80/20 Rule for Time Management
If you've ever taken a business class, you know about the 80/20 rule or the Pareto Principle. If you don't, the Pareto Principle is a theory developed in 1906 by Italian economist Vilfredo Pareto that states 80% of the output from a given situation or system is delivered by 20% of the input. So, how can this rule help you better manage your time and increase productivity? When it comes to time management, it involves completing 80% of your tasks using just 20% of your time.
The principle advocates delegating time-consuming tasks that create less revenue than other jobs. This allows you to focus your time and energy on tasks that will bring in more money. When prioritizing your to-do list, remember that energy levels and productivity fluctuate throughout the day. To master the 80/20 rule, focus on completing essential business tasks during your most productive times.
You can use the 80/20 rule in several ways to increase productivity. If you look closely at your to-do list, chances are only a few tasks are tied to important issues. While it may be satisfying to cross off many smaller issues, the 80/20 rule suggests focusing on the few items that are more important and will generate the most significant results for your business. Your to-do list might not be much shorter at the end of the day, but you will be practicing effective prioritization.
3. Manage Your Energy, Not Your Time
One way to manage your time and increase productivity is by managing your energy rather than your time. If you know you are more productive in the mornings, plan to accomplish the work on your to-do list that requires the full extent of your competencies in the morning, rather than trying to achieve them in the afternoon when your energy might be lagging. This frees up your afternoons to schedule work that doesn’t need as much brainpower when your energy levels are lower.
If you typically manage your time by creating and prioritizing to-do lists and scheduling dedicated time for each task, you know how easy it is to get derailed during the day. A single conversation or email can quickly break your focus or completely rearrange your day. By managing your energy, you can bring your best performance to any activity that comes up. You can achieve far superior results over the incremental gains from other time management techniques.
Using this method of time management relies on understanding what points in the day you are optimally ready to work. According to Alex Pang, author of "Rest," people are most productive when they work in four-hour intervals. This means you need to schedule your essential work within the four hours you are at peak performance.
4. Find Ways to Automate
A recent survey showed that entrepreneurs and business managers spend 68% of their days working on administrative tasks. That’s a lot of time spent on something that doesn’t directly contribute to company growth. The best way to reduce that time is with artificial intelligence. AI can now automate many processes necessary to run a business, including administrative tasks. For instance, chatbots can handle thousands of queries daily without involving humans. Then there’s Bookmark's Artificial Intelligence Design Assistant, AiDA, which can help you design a website within minutes, eliminating the most painful process of creating a company website.
When you remove these menial but necessary tasks from your daily schedule, you can focus on more critical tasks that will help you grow your business and increase profits. AI is expected to find solutions to more complex business processes you may face. This will significantly reduce the time spent making important business decisions, improving business efficiency.
According to a recent survey, 78% of entrepreneurs said that in the future, they would trust the advice received from artificial intelligence systems in making decisions. Additionally, many time-tracking applications powered by AI can help you complete essential tasks on your daily and weekly to-do lists. These time-tracking tools are highly useful in helping you increase productivity and achieve your goals.
5. Stop Multitasking
Many people believe multitasking is an essential skill to master for success. While it might seem like a great way to get a ton of things done at once, research shows that our brains aren't nearly as good at multitasking as we think. Some researchers suggest our productivity is reduced by 40% when we try to multitask. Unfortunately, when we try to multitask, we quickly shift our attention and focus from one task to the next, making it harder to tune out distractions and creating mental blocks that slow us down.
When you try to work on several tasks at once, you can lose the focus required to complete them adequately. Switching between tasks breaks your concentration, requiring more time to return to where you left off. Bouncing from one task to the next wastes time as your brain refocuses on the essential activity. Multitasking can also overstimulate brain function, leading to memory impairment. When inundated with too much information, your mind can't differentiate between essential and non-essential information, negatively affecting your memory.
Multitasking significantly affects your executive control process, which has two distinct phases: 'goal shifting,' which allows you to drop one activity for another, and 'rule activation,' which turns off the rules of the previous task and activates a new set. Both processes take time to deploy. While the cost of switching between a single task is small, switching between multiple tasks adds up. Frequent multitasking can make it take much longer to complete tasks on your to-do list. Studies show engaging in multitasking throughout the day can cost you 40% of your productive time. To increase productivity, stop multitasking.
Conclusion
Whether you are at the start of your journey as an entrepreneur or a seasoned professional, you can always work on your time management skills and increase your productivity. There are plenty of ways to master time management. These productivity secrets are just a few that can help you manage your daily time and increase your productivity.
No matter your passion, revisiting time management principles is crucial, as effective time management skills are often the best competitive edge you have over your competition. You will never have more than 24 hours in a day, so you need to learn how to work smarter, not harder, to improve productivity and achieve more while working less.
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