As a new SMB owner, you may find yourself struggling with the need to juggle multiple roles and making the best use of time. Your mobile phone is ringing in your left hand, your work phone is ringing off its hook and you’re trying to type out a response to a high importance email. On top of that, let’s not forget the deliverables due at the end of the day and an inbox full of unread emails.
Sounds familiar? Well maybe what you need to do is to relook how you’re spending your time at work.
A common question we ask busy working professionals, not just SMB owners, is this – how much time do you spend on various tasks every day? While most people are quick to offer that they spend 12 or 14 hours at their desks, few will be able to point out specifically how much time is used up on various tasks such as meetings, client calls, replying to emails, etc.
Awareness is the key to better managing your time and resources so the first step you can take is to document your time spent at work. This means logging in every minute and task throughout your work day. Do this for a week and you’ll be amazed at what you’ll likely see – a huge amount of time is spent on unproductive activities. Surfing Facebook, returning unimportant calls, engaging in mindless banter and chit chat, procrastinating on tasks. These are all little activities that when added together, contribute to a huge amount of time wasted during each work day.
And then there are other activities that may not seem unproductive but are not really contributing to the success of your SMB. These may include sitting in on meetings where you do not contribute or answering unimportant emails.
Once you’ve gained an awareness of your work day, you’ll be able to get a better idea of how to start managing your time better. You may even subconsciously begin to pull back on unproductive activities!
We all have 24 hours a day – who’s to say that you need to spend all your waking time at work and not have any time to exercise, socialize or just to catch a movie?
Stay tuned to our second post where we will share tips on how you can be more efficient at work.
You must be a registered user to add a comment here. If you've already registered, please log in. If you haven't registered yet, please register and log in.