How do you think about your time? To better your time management to increase productivity, first, you need to consider it your most valuable, non-renewable resource.
Why time management is so important
Now, this is important do you know where you're spending your most valuable resource?
Why is it your most valuable resource?
We overlook our time as a valuable resource, in truth once it’s gone you’ll never get it back. Have you thought about it like this before? It can be surprising how many people don’t. If you get it, good for you!
How to improve in time management
Stay with me here as this may sound daunting, but you need to keep a time journal or track your time somehow. Not forever, unless you want to, but for at least a week or two.
Here’s how to do it yourself online with a few applications. Toggl is for time tracking and has a chrome plugin.
RescueTime is an app that runs in the background to track your time.
You’re not able to improve what isn’t measured.
The only way to know where you're actually putting your time in is to keep track of it.
But here’s the thing once you’re aware of where your time is spent. This is when you’re able to improve your time management and productivity as an online small business owner.
Tracking time is a huge eye-opener into how long you’re actually spending your precious time on different tasks.
This allows you to make the decision if the tasks that are receiving your time are worth it.
Once you get really great a knowing exactly where your time is going and how long those different tasks are going to take. You guessed it time management becomes a ton easier.
Be sure to give yourself grace in the beginning, not everybody knows where they truly spend time wastefully.
It's a matter of keeping track of your time and shifting your mindset to viewing time as valuable.
Time management to increase productivity
How time management helps you to increase productivity?
How? Simple it keeps you out of doing the tasks that aren’t providing you a return on your investment.
With your time journal in hand figure out the return on investment (ROI) on each task.
Or another way to handle it if figuring the ROI feels difficult, ask yourself “Could I outsource this for under $20 per hour?”
put the dollar amount next to the task in the journal.
You need to make sure that the tasks you're doing are tasks you should be doing.
As a small business owner, you need to know that the tasks that you invest time into are actually connected to revenue in your business.
If you're not able to connect a task to an ROI, it may not, let’s be bold, it should not be an activity that you are doing in your small business and would be better served to hire a contractor for a few hours a month to do that.
Hey, we get it at Miss Task as we’ve been in your shoes when you're first starting out, you're like, no way am I going to outsource.
In order to increase your productivity, you must become a steward of your time.
How time management helps to reduce stress
And the best part is as an owner time management helps to reduce stress when you’re not getting caught in all the low returning, high energy tasks.
As a result, it feels really good when you can invest the time to focus on tasks that only YOU can do in your business, the tasks that bring a true return on investment in your small online business.
If you're stressed out about a $10 task that somebody else could do and handle for you, then you’re not going to have the ability to grow and scale your online business.
Time management strategy
One of the best time management strategies is repeatedly performing a mind sweep.
If you’re not familiar with the term mind sweep, it is the same as a brain dump.
In other words, making sure that you're going through and clearing your mind by doing a mind sweep of everything that you have going on and the things that need to happen?
Here’s how it works take that mind sweep and figure out the return on investment.
“Ask yourself is this the best investment for my time or could I hire somebody else to be doing that for you.”
Owner do not forget this applies to your personal life, as well as your business life.
Outsourcing
Next, pull out that time journal again of all the things that you’ve been doing, what are the things that you could easily outsource?
What are those things that you just cannot stand to do and you want somebody else to do?
Because it drains you completely of all your energy.
And it takes you a lot of time, a lot more time to do than it should.
You can either spend your time being busy, or you can spend your time being productive.
It necessary you're spending your time on productive revenue-generating tasks that are moving your online business forward.
A few other tricks to time management
Another great trick for your time management, making sure you're planning things well. Take the time up front on a project and break down everything that needs to be done.
Put all those tasks on your calendar in focused time blocks. Rome wasn’t built in a day and neither will your next great idea.
It gets better putting those tasks on your calendar lets you know when those tasks are going to get done.
Then if you’re not able to get to it for some unplanned reason, because you know, things come up that we aren’t expecting they always do.
Well, you need to take those non-essential tasks that you may have on your day and move them over to another day.
So it's very important that you're actually taking and planning out time.
In case you have a whole bunch of tasks that will take five or 10 minutes for each or a couple of minutes here and there, put them all into one time block so that they're all getting done all at once during a single time block.
That's a great way to manage your time and your tasks as well.
Similarly, one point that Brooke Castillo made in her YouTube video on tips for time management make sure you schedule your free time.
Why is that? If you're taking longer to do something, it's gonna cut into your free time.
Guess what happens it puts a little bit more fire underneath you to actually get it done in the time in which you have scheduled it for.
And on top of that, track your time leaks. A time leak is some unforeseen event that causes your schedule to get completely out of control.
For example, a poodle or a golden doodle who do things that you don’t anticipate and requires giving them an unplanned bath.
Bottom line, keep track of your time, what are the things that take the time that you didn't plan for in your schedule, and took away from doing the things that would have been more productive.
So where do you spend your time?
Given these points, you need to figure out where you spend your valuable time so that you can make sure that you're completing the tasks that only you can do.
Thank you so much for reading, I appreciate you and I hope you have a wonderful day.
Little Side Note
We either pay for things in time or money. Which is more valuable is up to you. Here’s the big secret you can earn more money you’ll never be able to earn more time.
✁ Just a Snippet
Here is just a snippet of the important points for time management to increase productivity, you know for the skimmer in you. 🤪
- Time is your most valuable non-renewable resource. Do you know where you spend it?
- Keep a Time Journal – Since I plan where I spend my time
- Put a dollar amount on your time
- Mind Sweep everything that you want to do and have to do. Keep going. What else is on your brain? Here is a link to David Allen's Podcast with mind sweep
- Business owners spend too much time in busyness
- Planning well reduces stress in getting everything done
- Tasks must hold a place on your calendar
- Estimate the amount of time to get it done if you've never done it before double the time.
- The point from Brooke Castillo – schedule your free time. If you don't get it done it will cut into your free time.
- Know your time leaks, they could be too much time on social media
- Ask yourself is this the best use of my time or what is the return on investment