Time Management 101: How to Better Budget Your Time in a Small Business

For a small business, the keyword defining most of your existence is “limited.” You’ll have limited access to capital, a limited reputation, limited resources to work with, and of course, limited time to get everything done.

As an entrepreneur, it’s your job to work within these confines and get the most out of everything you can. You need your team to work efficiently, your opportunities for reputation building to go perfectly, and your resources to be used to their fullest potential.

However, the most important resource of all often goes neglected—time. There’s only so much time you can spend on your business, so how you end up using that time could significantly impact the future course of your business.

Just because you’re working doesn’t mean you’re working efficiently, nor does it mean you’re working on the right thing. So how can you optimize your efforts to maximize your time?

Plan Your Day in Advance

Take the first 20 or 30 minutes of your day to plan out what you want to do. Take inventory of everything currently on your plate, and identify the two or three biggest priorities. Make sure to allot plenty of time to accomplish those priorities, and don’t let anything else get in your way.

For the remaining time in the day, work on lesser priorities, or dedicate time to administrative responsibilities like tending to your team or organizing yourself for future days. This advanced scheduling will help you identify your key priorities and will keep you on task throughout the remainder of the day.

Schedule Time for Communications

Communication is vital to the health and success of a business, but it can also be a major distraction. For example, if you’re working heads-down on a new client deal, but you’re constantly checking and responding to emails, you won’t be able to concentrate or work efficiently on the document. As a result, your email responses will be scatterbrained and your client dealings will take twice as long—or longer—to complete.

Set aside time for communications such as emails, phone calls, or even team meetings. Outside of those dedicated hours, don’t let communications distract you.

Delegate What Isn’t Your Responsibility

As an entrepreneur, your job is directing the company and tackling the high-level tasks your business needs to accomplish to be successful. If you get dragged down by minutiae, you’ll stay busy, but you’ll be spending valuable time on things that could be addressed by someone else.

If you’re a hands-on entrepreneur (or if you have control issues), delegating these tasks can be downright painful, but you’ll have to do it if you want to make the most of your time. If you catch yourself doing anything that could—or should—be done by someone else, stop yourself and delegate. You have a team is in place for a reason.

Track Your Time

Use a time tracking app to keep track of how much time you’re spending on each task throughout the day. Over time, you’ll be able to spot general trends—for example, you might spend an hour a day or more on the phone, or several hours a day talking to people on your team. This information alone can’t make you more productive, but it can lead you to conclusions that will help you learn where to improve your productivity.

For example, if you notice you’re spending a disproportionate amount of time doing research, you know you’re either researching inefficiently, or you’re researching things that don’t need to be researched. However you choose to address this weakness, you’ll have the opportunity to improve.

Block Key Distractions

Everyone has distractions, whether they like to admit it or not. Understanding and eliminating those distractions is critical to spending your time as efficiently as possible. For example, if you find yourself often browsing the Internet and reading unimportant articles, consider unplugging your Internet during periods of focus, or install an app like StayFocusd to keep yourself on point.

If you find yourself having difficulty focusing around lunchtime, consider breaking for lunch earlier or keeping healthy snacks around your desk to satiate your hunger and avoid those fleeting thoughts. Keep tabs of your distractions as they occur, then come up with a plan to get rid of them.

Know When You’re at Your Limit

Everyone has a limit, including you and your team. No matter how efficient you get at working or how good you are at prioritizing and delegating, you’ll hit a point when the amount of work to do exceeds your team’s capacity to do it.

At that point, rather than putting your nose to the grindstone and risking burnout, your best bet is to bring on new resources that can alleviate that extra burden of work. You could hire a new person to your team, but you could also pursue more cost-efficient options like introducing a new app to your workflow or bringing on an intern to tackle some administrative duties.

These strategies can’t offer a guarantee that your time will be spent productively. However, they can lead you to more efficient strategies, fewer distractions, and better prioritization, which cumulatively impact the total effects seen from your efforts. The biggest time-wasters are little habits that don’t seem significant at the time, but if you can notice those habits and remove them, you will notice a big difference in how much you can get done.