A successful business owner values their time. More than valuing it, they master it and use it sparingly. Here are a few ideas to help an entrepreneur avoid the tragic trap of never having enough time:
1. External memory: The constant demands of running a business, from meetings and unexpected calls to day-to-day problems, mean that sometimes we can’t even remember our most important tasks or commitments. That is why an entrepreneur should always keep a diary and keep it up to date, whether on paper, on a computer or through a secretary who organises their schedule. This is what we call external memory (it keeps the main hard drive from crashing).
2. Identify and organise your tasks: You need to recognise which tasks take up a large part of your day while being the least profitable, the ones that bring you no financial return. These tasks often make us lose very valuable time that we could be using productively to increase the business’s sales.
Identify those tasks and ask yourself whether they really need to be done at all, or whether you can simply outsource them or find someone to do them for you.
3. Work-life balance: Something many business owners ignore, or don’t give enough importance to, is balancing family life with work or the business.
If you don’t manage to balance these two parallel lives properly, you can put your family life at risk, and in the long run that can hurt your business too. A divorce takes up a lot of time and usually takes part of the company’s capital with it 🙂
See also: Tips from the real estate entrepreneur who turned $1,000 into a $1 billion business
4. Make time for leisure and looking after yourself: An entrepreneur who is under stress for a long period without any outlet will sooner or later see their mental and/or physical performance decline. Never switching off from work can lead you to make poorer and poorer decisions, and even to become hostile towards your employees and/or your family.
5. Spread out your most important tasks into:
- Daily
- Weekly
- Monthly
- Quarterly
Among your important tasks, include time for your family and time for sport and leisure, and stick to it rigorously.
Tackle problems as soon as possible, so that situations that could be resolved quickly don’t end up getting worse.
And remember that, in the end, the free time you can enjoy is thanks to the time you spent training competent workers at the beginning.
Further reading
- How to become a successful entrepreneur (part 1)
- How to become a successful entrepreneur (part 2)
- Hiring a leader for your business: the qualities of a good boss
- 5 ways to grow your business
- Profitable business ideas
Featured image: M.Minderhoud, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons.
