How To Improve Your Time Management Skills

Time management skills are important for any business owner, no matter what size your organisation is. Everyone has different ways of mastering their time but there are four top tips that go far beyond the traditional time management hacks.

1. Automate wherever possible

Many people forget about this simple trick to help save you time and money. If you have certain tasks that need to be carried out regularly, or on a set schedule then automating them can make your life a lot easier. The same goes for repetitive tasks that have the same process time and time again. If you can easily give the job to someone else, maybe have a think first to see if it could be automated entirely. 

The key thing with automation is that you need to reallocate your time to those tasks which are going to generate more revenue. Why waste your valuable time on mundane, repetitive tasks when you could be out there meeting new potential customers and bringing more work into the business.

2. Master the 3 essential time management skills

Harvard Business Review carried out a study which concluded that there are three specific skills which determine whether or not someone will succeed with their time management:

• Awareness: realistic thinking, and understanding that time is a finite resource
• Arrangement: how you create and organise goals, plans, schedules and tasks
• Adaptation: how you monitor your use of time, how easy you can adapt to changing priorities and interruptions such as phone calls.

Once you have taken a look at the tasks you carry out on a daily basis it is always a good idea to see if there are any quick changes you can make in order to be more productive. For example, if you often get sidetracked when emails come through you might want to turn your notifications off while you are working on important projects. That way you won’t be interrupted and will be a lot more productive.

3. Schedule tasks

Have you ever tried to complete a really difficult task on a Friday afternoon? If you have, you will probably know how much of a struggle that can be. When you are scheduling your daily tasks, start off by completing a few quick ones first as this will help you to feel like you have achieved a lot in a short space of time. That will help motivate you to crack on with the rest of your day.

Also if you find yourself struggling during the day with something that requires a lot of creativity, try swapping to another job and coming back to it. Even though it can be tempting to push through, a change is often a great way to shift your mentality. By completing a task that requires less brain power you will almost be having a break, and is a much more efficient way to use your time.

4. Outsource mundane jobs

We are all human and sometimes it gets to a stage in business where there is no physical capacity to add any more work to our schedules. This is when you need to sit back and think about whether there are tasks or projects that don’t necessarily have to be handled by you. Could you outsource the work to someone else who may have a slightly better skillset? 

Outsourcing can also include tasks outside your business that drain your time. For example, cleaning your house or doing your laundry. Would it be more cost-effective to get someone else to do these time-consuming tasks? Think about your hourly rate and how much you charge customers. Will you earn more money by spending an hour working on a client project than you would cleaning your house?

A virtual receptionist can be a perfect addition to a busy business, and is a very affordable solution. By having someone on hand to professionally answer your phone calls, forward your mail and take over some customer service tasks you will save yourself lots of time. If you would like to know more about the additional services we provide here at Venture Offices which could help save you time in your business, contact us today.