Time management tips for business owners.
As a small business owner, the way you manage your time affects your earning potential, your income, your productivity, and new product development. It can also dictate your client acquisition, retention, and how quickly and aggressively you can grow your small business.
It's been said that time is the world's most valuable commodity. How you spend your time impacts your career, health, relationships, and overall life.
It’s a common mistake to confuse activity with accomplishment. If time is a commodity, you need to approach it with care and consideration. Time really is money and you should give each hour of your day a high dollar value.
Efficiency vs. effectiveness.
If you’re doing the job “right,” odds are that you're doing it efficiently. When you're efficient, you do the task at hand in the best way possible. But effectiveness is doing the right job at the right time. When you're effective, you do what most needs to be done at a particular point in time.
As you grow your small business, you'll certainly need a blend of the two approaches. Learn to group all your most important tasks and do them the best way you can.
Setting boundaries.
Learn to create boundaries around your time and the tasks that you work on. If you work from home, turn your computer off at 6PM to signal the end of the workday. Set your alarm to remind yourself to break for lunch. Make dinner appointments with friends. Use a separate business number for clients, so you're not answering late night inquiries.
Practicing discipline.
If time is the most valuable commodity, then discipline is a close second. Online calendar apps, printable templates, and creative desk planners can give you tools for managing your to-do list, but they can’t give you the self-discipline to manage your time. Self-discipline takes work, but with a little practice (or a lot), it can become second nature.
The 80/20 rule.
The “80/20 Rule” is the belief that 20 percent of your activities are responsible for 80 percent of your outcomes. Also referred to as Pareto's Principle, this approach can help you prioritize and manage your time. You might even find that only 20 percent of the items on your daily calendar are actually important.
For example, you could spend an hour responding to emails from ten different people and accomplish very little. Or you could spend that same hour putting the finishing touches on a client proposal that would result in a big paycheck. It's ten emails vs. one proposal, meaning that your task list is not that much shorter, but you've used your time more effectively.
Focusing on your priorities.
As a small business owner, you dictate your time. This makes it easy to slip into a routine of working around the clock. After all, your business is important to you and you want to see it grow. Instead, try to limit your daily or even weekly priorities. Creating a to-do list that's ten pages long might keep you busy, but being busy doesn't necessarily mean you're being productive.
Stick with three or four very important, must-do items that need to be completed that week. It may not be as impressive as a ten-page to-do list, but the result will be probably be bigger and better than an endless list of less crucial to-dos.
The bottom line.
It may be hard, but take baby steps. After all, Rome wasn't built in a day. Even the best-known “overnight” success stories probably took years to manifest. Focus on big list items and accomplishing tasks that will have the largest impact, rather than fussing over small, "time-suck" projects. This might mean outsourcing or hiring someone to help get the little things done.
Your time is valuable - whatever you're spending your time on, you're essentially spending money on. As you grow your small business, it will become more and more critical to learn how to spend and invest your time wisely.
About PayPal for small businesses.
For nearly 20 years, PayPal has been a proud partner and platform for over 19 million merchants as they launch, scale, and grow. From access to fast funding to getting paid online, learn how our payment solutions can also help your business.
It’s a common mistake to confuse activity with accomplishment. If time is a commodity, you need to approach it with care and consideration. Time really is money and you should give each hour of your day a high dollar value.
Efficiency vs. effectiveness.
If you’re doing the job “right,” odds are that you're doing it efficiently. When you're efficient, you do the task at hand in the best way possible. But effectiveness is doing the right job at the right time. When you're effective, you do what most needs to be done at a particular point in time.
As you grow your small business, you'll certainly need a blend of the two approaches. Learn to group all your most important tasks and do them the best way you can.
Setting boundaries.
Learn to create boundaries around your time and the tasks that you work on. If you work from home, turn your computer off at 6PM to signal the end of the workday. Set your alarm to remind yourself to break for lunch. Make dinner appointments with friends. Use a separate business number for clients, so you're not answering late night inquiries.
Practicing discipline.
If time is the most valuable commodity, then discipline is a close second. Online calendar apps, printable templates, and creative desk planners can give you tools for managing your to-do list, but they can’t give you the self-discipline to manage your time. Self-discipline takes work, but with a little practice (or a lot), it can become second nature.
The 80/20 rule.
The “80/20 Rule” is the belief that 20 percent of your activities are responsible for 80 percent of your outcomes. Also referred to as Pareto's Principle, this approach can help you prioritize and manage your time. You might even find that only 20 percent of the items on your daily calendar are actually important.
For example, you could spend an hour responding to emails from ten different people and accomplish very little. Or you could spend that same hour putting the finishing touches on a client proposal that would result in a big paycheck. It's ten emails vs. one proposal, meaning that your task list is not that much shorter, but you've used your time more effectively.
Focusing on your priorities.
As a small business owner, you dictate your time. This makes it easy to slip into a routine of working around the clock. After all, your business is important to you and you want to see it grow. Instead, try to limit your daily or even weekly priorities. Creating a to-do list that's ten pages long might keep you busy, but being busy doesn't necessarily mean you're being productive.
Stick with three or four very important, must-do items that need to be completed that week. It may not be as impressive as a ten-page to-do list, but the result will be probably be bigger and better than an endless list of less crucial to-dos.
The bottom line.
It may be hard, but take baby steps. After all, Rome wasn't built in a day. Even the best-known “overnight” success stories probably took years to manifest. Focus on big list items and accomplishing tasks that will have the largest impact, rather than fussing over small, "time-suck" projects. This might mean outsourcing or hiring someone to help get the little things done.
Your time is valuable - whatever you're spending your time on, you're essentially spending money on. As you grow your small business, it will become more and more critical to learn how to spend and invest your time wisely.
About PayPal for small businesses.
For nearly 20 years, PayPal has been a proud partner and platform for over 19 million merchants as they launch, scale, and grow. From access to fast funding to getting paid online, learn how our payment solutions can also help your business.
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