Andrew Brown and Small Business Guru provide Coaching, Inspiration and Practical Advice for Small Business Owners and Entrepreneurs. Subscribe to the free, weekly newsletter at www.small-business-guru.com
In today’s world, we all move at nearly supersonic speed. Between meetings, proposals, sales, budgets, and an ever growing list of tasks and responsibilities, business owners must also plan for the future, devise growth strategies, and create forecasts. The effects of present and future stresses can engender strong overwhelm.
Thinking about the future and creating objectives is important, no question. But it can be easy to get too future-oriented and neglect the here and now. By learning how to get the today’s tasks under better control, you can define the risks and achievements of tomorrow more effectively.
There are only so many hours in the day, and you need to make best use of those hours. Improving your time management skills will improve efficiencies for today’s issues as well as create time for organizing and planning for the future.
What activities currently consume most of your time? If you don’t know the answer, keep a real-time task journal. Write down each activity in your day, what time you do them, and how much time each took. After doing this for a few days or a week, analyze how you used your hours. What took most of your time? What had you intended to do but didn’t get around to?
When you know where the majority your time is spent and what’s not getting done, you can analyze your effectiveness and refocus as needed to realign your workflow and habits. Identify time-wasting tasks and work on eliminating them. Note other tasks that can be leveraged by delegating or hiring help. Strive to make your days full of tasks that you yourself must do and that directly impact productivity and business growth.
Part of every day should include tasks that impact the future. Do you have items on your daily to-do list that are part of future plans? If not, fix this by:
• Making an inventory of all your commitments, to yourself and to others, near term and long term.
• Determining what the best outcome looks like for each commitment.
• Working backwards, figuring out the steps from each outcome to where you are today.
• Making a list of actions that need to be taken now to move things forward.
• Putting that list in time by assigning each action and its associated tasks deadlines and “to do” days.
• Putting these into your personal schedule.
Extend time efficiencies by considering your employees. Surrounding yourself with the right team members is crucial to the success of your business. These individuals also need to have mastery of time management so that current items can be tackled along with future planning. You may need to train your staff, or, in some cases, you may need to replace people in key positions. The goal is to have the entire company working as one, everyone focusing on achievements for the here and now but still understanding the long-term objectives of the organization.
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