As a small business owner, there's one thing that you never have enough of and always want more of: time. Unfortunately, they're not adding an extra hour to the day anytime soon, so our job is to make the most of the 24 we've got. Here are some tried and true frameworks for managing your time as the owner of a small business.
Prioritization
When it comes to prioritizing your time, it's important to look at things from a yearly, monthly, weekly, and daily perspective. What are the big picture goals and milestones for the year? What needs to get done this month to keep you on track? This week? Today? Having clarity on your priorities at all of these levels is critical.
It's also valuable to look at the things you do habitually versus what is actually moving the needle for your business. We can all fall into patterns and habits that provide a sense of busyness without true productivity. Try using the Eisenhower matrix to separate tasks into four categories: urgent and important, not urgent but important, urgent but not important, and not urgent and not important. Focus your energy on the important tasks, and eliminate as many of the non-important ones as possible.
If you're ever feeling overwhelmed, simply ask yourself: what is the ONE thing I need to do today to keep my business alive for another day/week/month/year? Then make sure you get that ONE thing done before anything else.
Optimization
Take a look at your calendar over the past month or two. What activities and tasks are you doing over and over again? These are prime candidates for optimization through process documentation and checklists. Write out the steps, then look for ways to streamline and shorten.
You should also examine which tasks are taking up way more time than they should. Again, document the process, but then really analyze each step - can any be skipped entirely? Can technology come into play to automate part of the process? With AI capabilities growing more powerful every day, there are likely opportunities to reduce manual effort.
Be aggressive but realistic with your optimization efforts. It should be very possible to reduce the time required for many key tasks by over 50% through process improvements and automation.
Delegation
Once you've prioritized and optimized as much as possible, it's time to start delegating aggressively. First, identify the things that energize you, that you genuinely enjoy, and that nobody else can really do - keep those things blocked into your calendar.
For everything else, separate the "playbookable" tasks from the "non-playbookable" ones. Playbookable means you've documented a checklist or process that someone else could follow. If it's playbookable and you have the budget, hand it off to an employee or hire someone to take it over.
The non-playbookable tasks are trickier. You may need to keep doing them yourself for now, while working to document them into playbookable processes. Or, you may need to hire someone with the specific skills and experience to take over those responsibilities.
Whichever route you go, make sure you set very clear expectations, provide thorough training, and implement quality control checkpoints. Don't just delegate and forget about it.
Acceptance
At the end of the day, you may simply have to accept that as a small business owner, you won't always have full control over your schedule. Emergencies happen, critical decisions need to be made, and general business firefighting is part of the deal - that's the price you pay for being the founder and leader.
However, if you prioritize relentlessly, optimize everything you can, and delegate aggressively, you can minimize the number of unplanned disruptions and unpredictable time sucks. It won't ever be perfect, but you can certainly make your life as a small business owner a lot more pleasant and productive through disciplined time management.
