Theophrastus has said that “time is the most valuable thing a man can spend” and this cannot be overemphasized for an entrepreneur. The statement agrees perfectly with Benjamin Franklin’s “Time is money” famous quote. When you run out of money, you can look elsewhere for some, however, when you run out of time, your business can never regain it. Poor time management can cost a business a tremendous amount of money. The key, therefore, is not spending time but, in, investing it as posited by Stephen R. Covey.
Time management is best defined as a systematic prioritization of tasks and competing demands to complete the most important tasks within a target timeframe. The goal of time management is to reduce the distractions that lower the number of tasks a business owner completes.
The benefits of time management to business include:
The major benefit of time management is more business. If you want more business, then manage your time. Time management allows one to be more focused on key tasks, be more organized, have less stress, and have more business.
Here are some questions to help determine if there is any benefit from better time management:
For effective time management, create a Time Management Plan. Key elements to the plan include:
To manage your time effectively set SMART goals. This implies your goal should be:
Prioritizing tasks is an effective time management activity. The key element to making your time management plan work most efficiently is to prioritize your tasks. Your tasks will range in importance from being extremely critical to success to something that would be nice to have done, to an action that would not matter much even if the action never got done. Prioritize by organizing, streamlining, economizing, and contributing.
Once tasks are prioritized, create a daily/weekly schedule in priority order. You can select a tool for scheduling your tasks:
In running your business, allocate the right time to the right activity by estimating the amount of time needed to complete each task on each day.
Goals do not get achieved by wishful thinking nor does your business succeed with just hopes and dreams. Action is what moves items from being thoughts, ideas, and goals into reality. To help make your plan work, use a timer or cell phone alarm to track your time when performing a task. Remember to complete deadline and highest priority tasks first to get the most impactful, and sometimes most stressful, items off your plate early. Do not work on any other tasks until your greatest priorities for the day are finished.
In doing the work, find your productivity zone – i.e. the period you are most productive when your mind is fresh and fully awake and you work best.
Learn to delegate responsibilities responsibly. Most business is based on the principle of getting others to work on your behalf. Organize your business tasks in the following way:
Apply the 80/20 rule where you delegate the task if someone can do it at least 80 percent as well as you can do it.
Distractions cannot be avoided in running a business, however, do everything in your power to minimize distractions as much as possible. Minimize distractions by doing the following:
Be wary of trying to do too much at once. Multitasking might seem like a smart way to save time by cramming as much work as possible into a short amount of time, but it’s likely doing more harm than good. Focusing on one task at a time increases productivity and performance.
Make time to recharge by resting intermittently during the working day.
Again, organizing your working space saves a lot of time in undertaking a task. A cluttered office or desk makes it more difficult to work effectively,
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