If you’re in charge of a small business, you have a lot of say in how you spend your hours. Customer demands and employee needs may dictate when you should take certain actions, but for the most part, you create your schedule.
Some business owners may put too much responsibility on their shoulders and stress themselves beyond the point of productivity, while others may waste time on needless tasks. Here are four best practices you can use to fulfill your responsibilities and manage your own hours:
Schedule, Schedule, Schedule
If you need to perform an action, create a report or make a phone call that contributes to business success, you should write it down. You should carefully detail your daily, weekly and monthly activities and predict how much time you think each project will take. The schedule you create should be complete and convenient.
Entrepreneur magazine suggested business owners should carefully log the time it actually takes to perform tasks and compare it to predictions. This will help you be more accurate and design future schedules based on precise information. It might help if you ditch the pen and paper. A digital solution creates a permanent data record which can display details in convenient forms. A cloud-deployed mobile solution keeps tools handy.
Initial schedules should be flexible. It’s impossible to plan for everything that comes up and initial predictions could be way off, so the first attempt should feature chunks of backup time.
You should create a schedule you can easily transport and adjust.
Don’t be afraid to delegate
As a business owner, you probably have a lot of investment in your company’s success. It can be hard to share responsibility with other team members, but it’s important to place trust in your employees. It provides your workers with agency and stops you from spreading yourself too thin.
If you can’t trust your team members with critical business activities, you either have a staffing problem or issues with delegation. The National Federation of Small Businesses said business owners and managers should always hire workers who show potential for individual work ethic and investment in business success.
Avoid redundant tasks
Time might be wasted on tasks you don’t have to perform. First of all, if projects don’t need your insight and expertise, you should delegate the assignment to other employees. Second, when back office responsibilities are simple enough that anyone can do them, there may be a more efficient solution.
You have to be open to new time management ideas. The Guardian said you should constantly be on the lookout for technology that can simplify daily routines in cost-efficient ways. Automating tasks like alarm billing, could save money in the long run by eliminating the new need for resources and saving man hours.
Prioritize Personal Time
You shouldn’t disregard your own wants. While business success directly profits you, it shouldn’t completely negate your need for recreation and family time. ABC News said many business owners need to add personal demands into schedules to make sure they allocate the necessary time.
Family time has to be just as important as business schedules. If you start ignoring allotted personal breaks, you may create bad habits that will lead to great amounts of stress.