Finding your lost time.
Sue Richards, Business Coach
Business Coach | helping businesses scale to 8 figures with effective marketing and high performing sales teams
You can lose money and regain it, but once time is lost you can never get it back. The stark reality is that as a small business owner, time is your most valuable resource, and we all have the same amount of it. Luckily, there are ways of managing time to make the best use of it.
Here are a few tips to help you get the most out of your hours.
1. Where does the time go?
The first thing you need to do is keep a record of what you’re spending your time on at the moment. Use Toggl or just a pen and paper, but track what is taking up your time at the moment.
2. How much time did I spend on…?
Some tasks may be taking up a lot more time than you realise, and are an unnecessary drain on your precious minutes. Look especially at the essential admin tasks – could they be done more quickly? Would a short time spent on organisation mean you have to spend less time in the future on finding things? Some things may need to be done slowly and carefully, even though they’re time consuming – consider the amount of time re-work would take if you rush a job and make mistakes.
3. 25 minutes on, 5 minutes off
Try the Pomodoro technique – this involves setting a timer for 25 minutes to complete a task, then you time yourself for a 5 minute break. You may find timing your breaks stops the time drifting away, or you may find you need the discipline of making yourself pause for a while. Either way, it focuses the mind on the task at hand, even though sometimes you may need more than one ‘Pomodoro’ to complete a long task.
4. Plan ahead
Set yourself goals, and make plans to achieve them. If you work backwards from the end goal, it can help you decide when to start the job and avoid a rushed finish.
5. Avoid distractions!
Turn your notifications off, put your phone on silent, and try to avoid looking at your emails more than a couple of times a day.
If you’re finding your 24 hours a day just isn’t enough, despite optimising your time management, why not see if Pink Spaghetti can give you a 25th hour? Contact us to find out how we can help.