The phrase “time is of the essence” gains a whole new level of meaning for ladies who decide to kick-start their own business endeavors. Managing multitudes of tasks every single day, ranging from accounting, client communication, all the way to your personal chores and responsibilities can get very hectic, and you don’t always have the energy or the resources to keep up the same pace of completing tasks.
No matter how skilled you are, or how marvelously supportive your family may be, there’s always room to improve your time management skills and wrap up your tasks in less time. Simply put, more time for self-care and less time for stress is a perfect recipe for the success of any female entrepreneur.
Here are a few tested techniques that can help you strike that fine balance and achieve more in less time.
Keep distractions at bay
How fast do you grab your phone as soon as it pings notifying you of yet another Messenger text? Probably too fast. Distractions are everywhere, and they are every entrepreneur’s greatest nemeses. To keep your mind focused, turn off social media notifications, log out of your social media accounts, and mute devices that would otherwise bleep and beep with numerous alerts.
Is food a distraction, too? Ditch your bowl of snacks, then, and replace it with a lovely house plant to perk up your desk. If healthy snacks help you focus, keep it moderate. All in all, you need to recognize distractions and eliminate them to be more productive with your time.
Craft a dedicated work area
Working from home should be as effective as owning an entire office building. At this point, it doesn’t matter which environment you actually choose, as long as it’s conducive to productivity and suitable for your business needs. If you still don’t have the right desk and the right chair at your disposal, chances are that you’ll spend more time getting annoyed about neck and back pain instead of immersed in your business growth strategy.
Keep your work area neat and organized, have ample storage for your digital files, and always make sure that you have access to freshwater and healthy snacks that will fuel you when you need it most. Above all, keep your work laptop and phone in this area only, so as to avoid turning your entire home into a comfortable office. This lets you build a productive mindset, and as soon as you enter your work nook, your brain will go: “work mode, engage.”
Use tech to your advantage
As soon as your business starts to flourish, you’ll need to get a clear overview of all your tasks, assignments, team members, and deadlines. To do that, you should use a project management system such as Taskworld to organize your work and collaborate with other team members more efficiently. When you start working with more clients and hire more people, this will be the only seamless way to simplify your workflow and to ensure that everything gets done stress-free.
Tech tools allow you to focus on your business rather than micromanaging your staff. Plus, you will be able to see how each project evolves, spot the hardest and the most creative workers on your team, and refine your processes with each passing project.
Write clear and detailed schedules
Nothing beats a planning mindset when it’s time to impress your clients and manage your grocery list in a single day. To avoid setbacks and hurdles that will postpone your creative work, you should take one day each week to plan out your weekly routine.
Depending on your work hours and workload, you can set aside the early morning to check and respond to emails, a healthy breakfast, and a workout, then spend some time on your business, moving on to household chores. The more detailed you get, the easier it will be to organize your time in a way to leave plenty of it for enjoyment, self-care, and still complete all of your tasks efficiently.
Don’t neglect your health
You might not be the pampering type, and you might be the first person to get fired up whenever there’s a new project, but sometimes taking the time off will make more of a difference than any other approach you could use. By taking good care of yourself every day, you actually provide your mind and your body with the energy, nutrition, and vibrancy you need to tackle the tasks that lie ahead.
So, before you cancel your workout or skip a decent meal in favor of takeout, rethink your choice and go back to the drawing board to add some self-care to your everyday routine. Schedule sleep just like you schedule client calls and vendor negotiations and treat your menu much like you treat every project you handle: with care and attention to detail.
If all these were as simple as delegating, using an app, or turning off your phone – we’d all be entrepreneurs by now. Mastering the art of managing time and increasing productivity takes the one asset you need the most: time itself. Use it to refine your methods and to analyze your own behavioral patterns, and you’ll soon notice all the areas where you can improve with the help of these and other useful ideas.