When you’re a small business owner, time is always working against you. There’s a lot to get done and you typically don’t have a big staff, or a staff at all, to help.
You could try working more hours, but that can actually work against you. You can hire employees, but that’s not always financially feasible.
Or, you can use the time saving tips below to work more efficiently and boost your time management skills.
Prepping for Better Time Management
These time savings tips are more effective when implemented on top of a solid foundation. Here are some ways to get your mind and body ready.
- 10 Steps to Make Over Your Mindset and Adjust Your Attitude: Zig Ziglar said that, “Your attitude, not your aptitude, will determine your altitude.” Use these tips to get into a positive mindset that will enable you to succeed.
- Want Better Productivity? Start With The Healthy Workplace: a healthy body is the base for better productivity and morale. This book will show you how to help your employees, and yourself, build a healthier environment.
- Spend Your Time Doing The Right Work: are you working hard but not reaching your goals? Maybe you’re working on the wrong things.
- 18 Minutes: Find Your Focus, Master Distraction and Get the Right Things Done: planning is a big part of time management. Learn how to plan each day in 18 minutes with this book.
The Enemies of Time Management
No matter how good your intentions, sometimes things get in your way.
If you want to make the most of these time saving tips, you need to watch out for the factors that will prevent your success:
- 10 Things That Sabotage Your Work Day Focus If You Allow It
- Kill these Productivity Killers at Your Workplace
- 4 Things That Fritter Away Your Key Productivity Hours Every Day
- 4 Ways to Boost Employee Productivity
- Your Biggest Culprit to Workday Productivity
Procrastination: Friend or Foe?
Sometimes, it pays to put off an action or decision. In these cases, procrastination can help you.
On the other hand, procrastination can be one of the greatest enemies of time management. Try these tips to get your procrastination under control.
Time Saving Tips
Here’s the first round of tips in this post. Each link leads to a post that will help you improve your time management skills and get more done in your day.
- 50 Ways for Small Businesses to Save Time
- 6 Ways to Shave Hours Off Your Week
- 20 Tips to Save Time and Money in Your Small Business and At Home
- Save Precious Time with These Community Tips
- Get More Done in Less Time With These Community Tips
- Top Time Management Tips Straight From Tech Industry Geeks
- 10 Useful Productivity Hacks for Small Business Owners
- Time is Money: Are You and Your Employees Effectively Managing It?
- A Dozen Ways to Use Your Time More Effectively During the Holidays
- Using the Double Time Method for Successful Project Outcomes
- How to Capture Spare Bits of Time — And Other Growth Strategies
- 7 Keys to Mompreneur Productivity
- Too Busy Doesn’t Equal Getting Lots Done
- 9 Ways to Work Less and Make More Money in Your Handmade Business
- 7 Essential Productivity Tips — and The Tools to Achieve Them
- 20 Tips for Improving Productivity Among Small Business Owners
- 3 Simple, Yet Genius Productivity Systems to Try This Year
- To-Do List Tips that Boost Productivity
- 6 Ways to Be More Productive
One More Book
Aside from the book mentioned earlier, the book, Deep Work: Stop Being Shallow With Your Minutes is another resource that “deals with the paradox of time management in the age of social media.”
Time Saving Tips for Social Media
One of the best places to reduce time spent in your small business, without reducing quality or quantity, is with social media.
There are many ways to save time and become more efficient when using social sites, all without becoming a “social media robot.”
- It’s About Time: 5 Tools to Streamline Your Social Media
- How to Automate Social Media Lead Generation and Engagement
- 12 Tips and Tools for Better Facebook Management
- 20 Time Saving Social Media Apps and Tools You Should Be Using
- 7 Social Media Tools For Small Businesses To Manage Their Social Presence
- 5 Automation Tools to Boost Your Small Business Social Reach
Using Cloud Computing to Save Time
You can also move to the cloud use the cloud to save time on everything from your everyday tasks to more long-term projects.
Using Automation to Save Time
Automation enables you to save time like nothing else. Here are some posts to help you make the most of automation tools.
- Scaling Small Businesses to Get Best Impact from Automation
- Effective Tips for Small Business Automation
- Automate Your Business Where Possible and Boost Employee Productivity
- 5 Steps to Automate, Streamline and Grow Your Business
- Cruise Control: 20 Small Business Tasks You Can Automate
- What is Marketing Automation?
- Your Marketing on Autopilot: 5 Things You Didn’t Know You Could Automate
- 5 Marketing Tasks Your Competitors are Successfully Automating
- 5 Ways to Enjoy Your Labor Day Holiday While Automation Works for You
- 7 Ways to Automate Conversations with Your Customers
- Automation Software Universal Best Practices
- 10 Time Wasting Tasks You Can Automate in 30 Minutes
- How to Make Your Most Tedious Business Tasks Disappear
- Content Marketing Automation with Zapier to Drive Leads and Sales
- The Small Business Guide to Virtual Assistants Both Human and Digital
- Problem: Average Time to Prepare Taxes? 80 Hours for Some Small Biz and solution: Avalara Tools Provide Tax Automation and Resources for Small Businesses
- Nate Shaw of Brooklyn Music Factory: Automation Provides Time to Create Value for Customers
Next Generation Automation: Chatbots
Chatbots use artificial intelligence and machine learning to provide customer service and even sales support.
Here’s what you need to know about these time saving tools:
- Dharmesh Shah of HubSpot: Chatbots Are the Most Important Technology in Decades
- 6 Ways to Use Chatbots In Your Small Business Strategy
- How To Use Facebook Chat Bots to Market Your Business
- What Microsoft’s New Chatbot, Zo, Means for Your Business
- Use Chatbots to Connect with Customers in a More Personal Way
- Chatbots Will Soon Discuss Your Banking Info With You
- New Sephora Chatbot Aids Customers in Finding the Right Beauty Products
- 3Dprintler ChatBot Shows Bids on 3D Printing From Your Phone
- Dave Gerhardt of Drift: Using Marketing Bots to Get Rid of Website Lead Forms
- You Can Use Microsoft Bot Framework to Build Small Business Bots
- PullString Offers a Set of New Tools for Creating Chatbots
Managing Time Through Delegation
If you’re lucky enough to have employees, you can manage your time, and theirs, using delegation. Here are some time saving tips related to doing just that:
- How to Work ON Your Business, Not IN it
- Know the Difference Between Delegating and Abdicating
- How to Let Go and Delegate a Task
- Delegate and Know When to Let Go of Small Business Operations
- How To Delegate Social Media (And Other Things)
- Virtual Assistants Help Entrepreneurs Grow Sales
Managing Time Through Outsourcing
On the other hand, if you’re a solopreneur or have a small staff, outsourcing is a solid way to get more done over the same time period. Here are some time saving tips related to that approach:
- 23 Tips to Consider When Outsourcing Operations
- 20 Advantages and Disadvantages of Outsourcing from Your Small Business
- Why Payroll Is One Function You Should Outsource
- 4 Reasons Small Businesses Should Outsource Payroll
- Are Small Businesses Too Quick To Outsource Data Analytics?
- The Small Business Guide to Virtual Assistants Both Human and Digital
- 35 Freelance Sites to Explore for Assistance and Jobs
- Best Freelance Sites and Outsourcing Services for Business
- 11 Ways to Get Tedious Tasks Off Your Plate
- 16 Tips for Outsourcing Call Center Operations
- Don’t Want to Sell Your Own Stuff? eBay Valet will Do It!
- Outsourcing Social Media — Can it Be Inexpensive, Yet High Quality?
- Outsourcing Your Non-Core Sales Tasks
- Your Small Business Should Outsource These Marketing Tasks
- Outsource or Else: How Smart Outsourcing Saved One Company From Going Bust
Good Project Management = Time Saved
Using tried and true project management techniques can save time, every time. If you’re looking for a way to implement project management practices, here’s a list of 20 project management tools.
Time Management Tools and Apps
Happily, you have your pick of online tools and mobile apps to use for managing your time. Check out these posts for suggestions:
- 20 Best Time Management Apps for Small Business
- 50 To-Do List Apps and Solutions
- Eisenhower.me Puts New Spin on Productivity Apps
- Get More Done With These 5 Productivity Apps
- Improving Employee Procrastination: Can Science Help?
- Enjoy Your Vacation With These Business Productivity Apps
- QuickBooks App for Mac Can Save You Time Running a Small Business
- How AI Powered Personal Assistant x.ai Works
- Save Time When Managing Multiple WordPress Sites
- 4 Simple Small Business Productivity Solutions
Tracking is the Key to Successful Time Management
It’s hard to understate the importance of time tracking. After all, if you don’t track how you use your time, how can you manage it?
- Benefits of Time Tracking
- How Small Business Can Benefit from Time Tracking
- 3 Benefits of Tracking Your Time Accurately
- The Blink Factor: Time Management Can Build or Break Your Business
- The Good and the Evil of Time Tracking
- Tips to Make Time Tracking Effective in your Organization
- How to Choose the Best Time Tracking Software
- Time and Expense Tracking Apps: 27 Solutions
- Automatic Time Tracking with Chrometa
- Toggl: Time Tracking Made Easy
- Two Year-Old ZenPayroll is Offering Time Tracking Features
Clocks Photo via Shutterstock
Great post, Matt!
Not that you asked, but my biggest time-suck…when I’m writing: finding images. That takes me so longgggg.
The Franchise King®
I hear ya’ Joel – it can take a while to find just the right image or (as I saw you use in one of your posts the other day) GIF.
This might help: https://smallbiztrends.com/2015/11/places-to-find-images.html
-Matt
It is also important to veer away from repetitive SEO spamming tasks. Focus more on building relationships instead.