Everthereva

‘Efficiency is doing things right, effectiveness is doing the right things’

Peter Drucker

Time is a finite resource. It is easy when running a small business to become overwhelmed. According to Starling Bank’s “2020 Make Business Simple” report, micro businesses (one to nine employees) can spend up to 15 hours every week on admin? Solo entrepreneurs can spend an eye watering 31% of their week sorting finances. 

1. It is important that you know how you spend your time. Complete a time audit or journal for a week or two. It doesn’t have to be complicated. You could simply colour block in your google calendar, for example; Monday – 9am to 12am chase up phone calls, Tuesday 1pm to 5pm – Producing invoices, Wednesday 2pm to 5pm – Emails and diarising meetings with prospective clients. Be consistent and honest with this exercise. Once you have a week or two of entries, you will be able to see realistically where your time is going. If you are spending 10 hours a week on basic admin maybe this is when either you need to employ an admin assistant or collaborate with a virtual assistant, particularly if you could be earning a substantial amount of money if they were ‘billable’ hours instead of unpaid hours.
2. Prioritising is key. “But what is everything is urgent?” I hear you cry. Well, you have to be realistic in what you can achieve in a specific time frame. If you have several projects on the go. all of which need to be continually making progress, create time blocks for each project in your diary for the week. We have to be honest with ourselves about our work habits. How effective and efficient are you if you are sat at home at 9pm doing the dreaded paperwork, absolutely frazzled from a full working day? Is it taking you three hours because of procrastination and tiredness? Is there a different point in your day or weekly schedule where you would be more effective? As part of the time audit, identify when you are working at your are your most productive and when you tend to lull and allocate your tasks accordingly.
3. ‘No meeting’ time blocks can be beneficial to focus on anything you need uninterrupted headspace for, that dreaded annual report, a presentation or collating paperwork for your accountant. There is often an expectation now with email, instant messages and platforms such as Slack where we are available instantly and constantly. Stopping and starting heavy tasks such as data analysing, report writing etc can be counter productive, more time consuming and lead to mistakes. Have you ever had that feeling that you have proof read the same sentence of a report three times because of the phone or constant emails coming through?
4. Scheduling a ‘housekeeping’ hour each week to get yourself organised and plan your workload in terms of priority for the following week can help you to feel more in control and prepared.
5. Try using time management tools / project management software to help you manage the multitude of tasks and responsibilities you have. Trello is a user friendly tool I use to set up all my tasks in front of me. As a visual person myself, I find it helps to get everything out of my head and onto the screen in front of me and allows me to work more systematically on tasks but still keep all those plates spinning! Imagine a giant dining table and all your tasks are prompt cards in front of you. You can add notes, documents, comments and collaborate with others. Super useful. I believe Click Up and Asana are also good.
6. Learn when to say ‘no’. This isn’t easy to do for us people pleasers. However, it is important to protect your time. If you have one hour allocated for a meeting with a client or colleague, then an hour and no more should be given. It can be very stressful overrunning, particularly if you know you should be in another meeting or doing something else which is important. A certain level of assertiveness can help to keep you afloat and keep all the plates spinning!