Managing Your Time Better

April 13, 2006

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Plan some "toes-up" time for yourself every week. The time demands of owning your own business will always be greater than you ever dreamed possible. If you fall into the trap of working seven days a week and 20 hours a day, both you and your business will meet an early grave. Plan your time well and include time for rest and recreation.

When you work for someone else, your work life and personal life are usually fairly compartmentalized. At, say, 8 a.m., your workday begins and at 5 p.m. it ends. The workweek ends on Friday. Your personal life begins in the evenings and on weekends. For most people, of course, there are times when you work late or on weekends, but the schedule is still fairly rigid.

When you work for yourself, however, there is usually no schedule as such. Being a small business owner is an around-the-clock job that will consume all of your energies and almost all of your time. You'll probably find that even when you're not working on your business, you're thinking about it.

But small business owners are people too, and they have the same need for personal time and space as everyone else. So being able to manage your time effectively is an important skill to develop. In fact, effective time management can be the difference between success and failure.

Here are some suggestions for managing your time more effectively:

Set priorities — your priorities should be determined by the goals you set for yourself (for a review of that process, see setting your goals).

Suppose you are a human resources consultant with several clients. One of your goals is to add three new clients within the first six months after you start your business.

Suppose you feel bogged down because there are so many demands on your time. One solution would be to give priority to those tasks that help you achieve your goals. Therefore, you might give priority to sales calls on potential clients for three uninterrupted hours each week until your goal is met.

Take control of how meetings are scheduled — Try not to meet with anyone who doesn't have an appointment. Of course, this is often easier to follow in theory than in practice. If an important client drops by unexpectedly, you're probably not going to tell that client to go away. But you can politely ask him or her to schedule a meeting next time. For example, you could say, "I'm concerned that you might drop by and I won't be here. I don't want you to waste your time, so could you please call ahead to make sure I'm in?" It won't always work, but it's worth a try.
Take control of how meetings are run — Meetings have a way of spinning on needlessly. Two big time wasters are "the tangent" and the "post-meeting chit-chat." The tangent is a conversation that begins on point but then veers off to some topic that may be more interesting than the one you began with but isn't relevant to the business at hand. For example, if a conversation with one of your suppliers about delivery of some product reminds the two of you of something that happened on "Seinfeld" and you launch into a discussion of your favorite character on the show, you're in a tangent. You need to recognize when that happens and firmly but politely get back to the subject at hand. The post-meeting chit-chat is the polite social discussion that begins once the meeting is over. If you let it, it can last longer than the actual meeting. That's especially true for home-based businesses where meetings often have more of the feel of a social call than a business meeting. If you're to control your time better, you have to cut it off. Don't be afraid to be firm but polite in ending the conversation.

Save Time

To keep meetings on track, always develop an agenda and send it ahead of time to all participants. Put a start time and an end time for the meeting at the top of the agenda. If you don't want the meeting to last more than 30 minutes, don't be afraid to put, for example, 2:30 p.m. to 3:00 p.m. on your agenda. Stick to the items on the agenda and you'll be surprised how often you will meet your time targets. And be sure to establish what the next steps are going to be; do this before the meeting concludes so everyone will have a clear understanding of what they are to do.

Take control of phone conversations — The same general rules about keeping meetings on track also apply to phone conversations. The better you are able to stick to the business at hand, the better you will be able to manage your time effectively. Most of us are taught that cutting someone off on the phone is rude. We also don't want to hurt a person's feelings by appearing not to want to listen to what he or she has to say. Those rules are good and we do want to honor our social obligations to others. But if you're a small business owner, you also have an obligation to your business and to yourself. The person at the other end of the line may not realize it, but he or she may be costing you money. Again, be firm but polite in keeping the conversation on track.
Keep track of your time — Every small business owner should also have a schedule organizer of some type. Some prefer the desk-top printed versions, while others prefer the hand-held electronic organizers. It matters only that you have one. As a small business owner, you will have responsibilities for every facet of your business so it's essential that you keep track of what you're doing. Also, try keeping a daily to-do list.
Don't let neighbors, friends, or family distractions cut into your productive time or interrupt your momentum.