by Richard Avdoian
All right already. I have heard it enough: Business owners complaining that they can’t effectively manage their time and that they feel helpless and frustrated. Well, let’s call a spade a spade: It really isn’t time you need to manage; you have to learn how to manage yourself – your energy, attention and actions throughout the workday.
Being in sync with your self-awareness is very important to effectively deal with the endless demands on your time. Being in tune with your body system and behavior, knowing your strengths, and setting limits are important indicators for effective use and management of time.
Here are a few ways you can minimize feeling under the gun to complete tasks, conserve energy and effectively master use of time:
1. Establish set opening and closing workday hours. Business owners need to clearly separate work and personal/family time. Let’s face it: We never accomplish all that we want or need to accomplish. Too often, business owners extend work hours only to tax their bodies, which can lead to poor decision making and errors. Setting start and ending times helps maintain good mental health.
2. Schedule routine morning and afternoon break times and a lunchtime. It is never a good idea to not eat lunch or to eat while working. You may believe you are using the time wisely, but you are taxing your body and mind. You need to use these times to nourish and re-energize your body and relax your mind to prepare to address the remainder of the day’s tasks, meetings and challenges. Avoid scheduling business lunches. Be selfish – use the time to eat something, relax and take care of you. Take a walk to clear your mind.
3. Determine whether you are an a.m. or p.m. person when it comes to peak performance (more alert, energized and productive). You need to recognize that there are daily, weekly and monthly tasks you either thoroughly enjoy or dread. If you are like most, you put off the dreaded tasks until the end of the day. Wrong idea unless you are a p.m. person. You will always find the energy and time to rally to tackle the tasks you enjoy. On the other hand, tackling tasks you dread when you are less alert and energized can be extremely taxing and frustrating and increase the chances of making errors and poor decisions.
4. Let it go – you do not need to know how to handle every aspect of your business. Spending valuable time learning new social media tactics or computer systems can be extremely time-consuming and stressful. Instead, use the time for efficiently working on your business and leave working in the business to your staff or outsource the tasks.
5. Take immediate charge and set your priorities as to what really needs to be addressed and when. We often first tackle tasks and projects we like regardless of their importance. We need to avoid putting daunting time-sensitive tasks and projects off until later, which may lead to frantically working extended hours.
So remember: The more you overextend yourself with meetings, appointments and an endless to-do list that doesn’t have realistic deadline dates, the greater the chances that you will be overwhelmed, frazzled and stressed, which leads to being increasingly less effective. So plan your daily tasks and projects accordingly to be most productive.
Richard Avdoian is president/CEO of the Midwest Business Institute Inc., a business consulting and training firm. For information about training and seminars, contact Richard at 618-972-8588 or Richard@RichardAvdoian.com.
Submitted 8 years 364 days ago