With only 24 hours in a day, using time productively and efficiently has to be at the forefront of all our minds. Especially when running a small business time is particularly precious.
Time Management techniques and time management methodologies can simplify how you work, increase productivity, and reduce stress.
Effectively Time Management Tips
- Goals – Know where you are going and what you want to achieve. Your daily plan should revolve around tasks that help grow your business.
- Prioritise – Create a checklist prioritising tasks that must be addressed in order of urgency. Enjoy completing each item and take great pleasure in ticking it off your list.
- Delegate – Think about tasks ahead, and look for opportunities to pass specific tasks on to other members of your team.
- Planning – Checklists to give you a clear idea about what you want to get done so not wasting your day jumping from one thing to the next.
- Prevention – Reduce Errors and Mistakes which take time to resolve and give a bad impression of your business to customers.
Time Management Techniques
Time is limited so time management techniques can be so helpful
Time Blocking
Time Blocking: Allowing time throughout day for certain tasks. Blocking each hour of the day set aside for one specific type of work or set tasks stops you dreading the harder tasks and procrastinating.
The Glass Jar
The Glass Jar: If you need to put water, rocks, and sand into one jar and try to add the water first, the rocks won’t fit in. This productivity method means you need need to focus on your largest tasks first (rocks), then your middle tasks (pebbles), and anything extra you get done is adding water to the jar.
Eat The Frog
Eat The Frog: Attack the hardest task first thing in the morning rather than dreading it all day.
Mark Twain once said that if the first thing you do each morning is to eat a live frog, you can go through the day with the satisfaction of knowing that that is probably the worst thing that is going to happen to you all day long.
You’ve already done the worst part of your day so that accomplishment motivates you for the rest.
Parkinson’s Law
“work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion”
Imagine giving yourself a week to complete a basic two hour task, that task will become more daunting so as to fill that week.
