5 Small Business Time Management Tips

Good time management is essential to business growth, but it’s especially important for small business owners. The typical small business owner manages so many aspects of their company, and there are only so many hours in the day for them to accomplish everything on their to-do list.

This guide walks through 5 time management tips for small business owners that can help anyone make the most of their business and achieve their goals. These tips can help owners get more done without getting too stressed or resigning themselves to 80-hour work weeks.

1. Plan out the day’s work

Planning out the workday is arguably the most important strategy for effective time management. While planning and scheduling are ongoing activities, the best time to plan a day’s activities is at the end of the preceding day. That way, a business owner can get a running start on essential tasks each morning before they encounter interruptions or lose focus.

If a business owner doesn’t start each day with a plan, odds are they’ll find that their time gets taken up putting out fires and doing things that employees, freelancers, family, or friends could handle instead of them.

Here are just a few ideas of things business owners can do to plan out their day’s work efficiently:

Prioritize tasks in order of importance and urgency.
Put a checkmark beside tasks that must be handled personally.
Carry a schedule, and refer to it often.
Keep a phone, tablet, diary or daily planner handy to record appointments, deadlines, and ideas.
Set designated times to handle interruptions, employee conferences, and other matters, and insist that people wait until that time except in urgent cases.
Ignore phone calls and emails until the time that’s been set aside to deal with them.
Plan to spend the more time on activities that produce the greatest business benefits

2. Prioritize tasks according to urgency or importance

Today, business owners find that they’re facing more demands than ever. Thanks to social media and the internet, customers tend to feel that business owners should always be available to interact at all times. But rarely does that work well for a business owner’s work-life balance.

Thankfully, there are plenty of proven methods that business owners can use to prioritize tasks throughout the day. Here are just a few of them.

Eisenhower Method

President Eisenhower said, “What is important is seldom urgent, and what is urgent is seldom important.” The Eisenhower method categorizes tasks as important, not important, urgent, and non-urgent. A business owner can plan to do urgent and important tasks immediately, and then they can tackle important but not urgent tasks. These are followed by urgent but not important tasks and, finally, not urgent and not important tasks.

ABC Method

This method involves ranking all work and chores with the letters A, B, and C in order of importance. A business owner can also prioritize tasks within each category by listing them as a number 1, 2, or 3 in priority. Prioritizing begins by completing A-1 tasks first, A-2 second, and down the line to C-3.

Pareto Analysis

The Pareto principle is often called the 80/20 rule, and it can be important in business. One common tenet of this way of thinking is that, often, 20 percent of a business’s customers generate 80 percent of its revenue. Another interpretation is that 20 percent of a business owner’s work will produce 80 percent of their business. Pareto analyses favor prioritizing the most critical 20 percent of work that generates the biggest returns, and addressing other tasks as time allows. In short, this method advocates that workers should be spending time on those tasks with the biggest payoff.

POSEC Methodology

The POSEC acronym stands for “Prioritizing by Organizing, Streamlining, Economizing and Contributing.” A business owner can organize their daily goals according to their urgency and the time they have available. Streamline or simplify nuisance tasks or matters that others can handle.

Next, the “economizing” part of the acronym refers to personal wish lists that the business owner enjoys doing or things that they need to do. If there’s not enough time, they can eliminate both. But if there’s some time available, a business owner can concentrate on what should be done instead of what they love to do.

Next, “contributing” covers social obligations, such as giving back to the community, paying attention to customers, addressing worker complaints, and so on. These are all essential tasks.

3. Avoid multitasking by clustering similar tasks

Organizing similar tasks can save a lot of time throughout the day. A business owner can group similar tasks and set aside dedicated time for them. For example, they might set aside a specific window of time to address employee problems, complete and file paperwork, listen to messages, and read and reply to emails. Later, they could dedicate time to tasks like inspecting the warehouse, testing products, meeting with vendors, or touring the building.

This approach, sometimes called time blocking, can be a great way for a business owner to avoid bouncing from one unrelated task to another. It helps boost efficiency.

4. Delegate tasks responsibly

Delegating responsibilities is often one of the hardest things a business owner must do to save time. That said, delegating is essential if a business owner wants to reduce stress, get more accomplished, and boost the success of their own business. Most of modern business is based on the principle of getting others to work on the owner’s behalf.

Many small business owners find it helpful to organize their tasks like this:

Tasks that they need to do personally
Work that they can do with others’ help
Jobs that others can do but the owner can help finish
Work that others can complete without help

The 80/20 rule can also apply in this scenario. If a business owner recognizes that another person can do a task at least as 80% as well as they could, it’s usually acceptable for them to delegate the task to employees. Even if a business owner enjoys that particular activity, it still might be best for them to learn to hand that task off to someone else.

5. Minimize distractions

Distractions at work can easily cause any business owner to give up on their plan for the day. In business, every vendor, customer, and worker usually wants to talk to the boss. Even in a small business, those distractions can pile up. That’s why it’s important for a business owner to control their work environment.

If possible, a business owner can try to restrict access to their office to specific times. Avoiding personal distractions like reading emails and answering the phone is a good rule of thumb, too. Regaining concentration after these interruptions wastes a significant amount of time. The more someone can focus on their work tasks, the faster they can finish that to-do list.

Honorable Mention: Don’t overlook regular breaks

Many small business owners fall into the trap of thinking that the best way to be productive is to abandon a healthy work-life balance and go all in every day. Certainly, every business owner will face a time when they have dig in and work long hours to keep their business operations running smoothly.

But overworking and never taking breaks is a recipe for burnout. Taking breaks is good for a person’s mental health, and productivity levels actually increase with responsible breaks. But, as with so many things in life, balancing healthy breaks takes some strategic planning; too long of a break (or too frequent of breaks) hinders productivity just as much as not taking breaks to begin with.

The Pomodoro Technique

Many business professionals swear that the Pomodoro technique is one of the most practical time management strategies in their arsenal. It’s a simple premise, really: a person breaks their work up into 25-minute work segments divided by 5-minute breaks. During the 25-minute block, a worker can stay focused on one specific task, such as an administrative task that requires undivided attention, brainstorming a new product, or something else. Then, when the 25 minutes are up, they can take a short break before resuming the task or starting a new one.

As simple as it sounds, many entrepreneurs find this method a helpful time-management skill that breaks the day into manageable segments.

Conclusion

Following the five suggestions above can help any small business owner and employer save time throughout the day. It really is possible to do better work, avoid stress, and generate more income when an entrepreneur approaches time management proactively.

By implementing these five time management strategies, a business owner can help position their business for greater efficiency in day-to-day operations and long-term, sustainable growth. As operations become more streamlined and profitable, many businesses consider starting an LLC to gain liability protection, tax advantages, and enhanced credibility – allowing the owner to protect their personal assets while focusing on what truly matters: running the business effectively.