7 Ways Entrepreneurs Can Stay Ahead By Time Management

“You don’t need more time. You just need to decide.” - Seth Godin

The contemporary business world is rapidly evolving, and with such high competition, it often gets difficult for entrepreneurs to manage so many things simultaneously.

This is why they often have to pre-plan and try their best to stay ahead of time to win against all their competitors. Moreover, as entrepreneurs are majorly responsible for all business operations, this is exactly why time management is one of the biggest needs for entrepreneurs in the modern world.

To continue, effective management of time for entrepreneurs will assist in keeping their business on track and ensure that every function works properly on time.

However, we all know everyone has 24 hours a day, so how exactly are few successfully managing their time, and some are miserable failing at the same? This is precisely where the implementation techniques make a difference. 

Identifying the right techniques and implementing them successfully will assist today's entrepreneurs to stay ahead in making their businesses successful.

So, if you are an entrepreneur looking for some actionable time management strategies, this blog can be of great help.

So, let us dive right into the blog and unveil the secrets for you to stay ahead of time in managing your time effectively for running a victorious business in the enterprise world.

7 Strategies for Entrepreneurs to Effectively Manage Time

1. Finish difficult tasks first

We have all heard the phrase, “Eat the frog first,” and that’s why it’s our first strategy for entrepreneurs like you to tackle their time-tracking issues. To simplify, the phrase ‘eat the frog first’ means that you should always solve the most difficult tasks first.

It is one of the most effective ways to eliminate the tasks that scare you the most. 

To elaborate, when you finish off the difficult tasks first in the day, it will give you relaxation to get through the remaining tasks of the day energetically.

As you would have completed the difficult tasks first, it will generate positive energy to help you complete the rest of the tasks more efficiently. 

Moreover, most of us are most energetic during the daytime, so completing hard tasks first will give you affirmation that there won't be any difficult tasks during the day. This will encourage you to finish off the tasks more speedily.

Otherwise, if you start with easy tasks, the stress of difficult tasks will keep interrupting the efficiency and productivity of your other tasks as well. 

Finishing tasks with utmost efficiency and without any stress will assist you in saving your time and managing it more efficiently. This way, you can utilize the saved time to do something more productive to enhance your business performance in the future.

2. Embrace the Pareto Principle

We have all heard one of the most notable quotes by Dale Carnegie: "An hour of planning can save you 10 hours of doing.” This quote significantly highlights the importance of planning your day to manage your time and life in the most effective way possible. 

Keeping that in mind, one of the most effective techniques to plan out the day is the Pareto Principle. This principle states that 80% of the productive outcomes come from 20% of your efforts.

So, in reality, the need is to effectively understand the most important tasks that will yield 80 percent of the results in terms of productivity. 

Effectively using the Pareto Principle will help you make your to-do list for the day. Creating a well-thought to-do list will assist you in enhancing your efficiency for performing the most important tasks first. 

Moreover, as an entrepreneur, you might also agree that you have millions of tasks to deal with in a day, including both important and unimportant tasks. So, prioritizing your tasks according to their importance will assist you in giving your best attention to the tasks that matter the most to you. 

Otherwise, there can be scenarios where you might give more attention to the details of the tasks that won’t benefit the growth of your business in the long run. 

Hence, effectively utilizing the Pareto Principle will assist you in eliminating the risk of investing a lot of time in unimportant tasks. This will assist you in saving time that can be invested in strategizing your business plan more effectively.

3. Bring technology into the picture

Technology has always been one of the most effective helping hands for businesses in the contemporary world. From handling business operations by automation to handling the finances, technology has handled it all very well. 

If technology has its space in almost every aspect of the business, so, when we talk about time management in business, how could technology not contribute to it?

Technology can effectively assist in managing the time of the entrepreneurs as well. 

There are many time management tools that can assist you in keeping track of time. Keeping track of time will assist you in saving time that goes to waste by getting caught up in unnecessary tasks.

Moreover, you can also set time blocks for every task to assist you in setting deadlines for each task. 

For those who don’t know, time blocking is an effective time management technique that can be used to divide the day into different time blocks, assigning each task the deadline time of completion. 

Working as per the deadlines and using time-tracking tools will assist you in keeping track of the time utilization of every task.

This will not only assist you in planning your whole day but will also make sure that you do not waste your time on unnecessary tasks. Based on this information, you can reduce the time for future tasks and manage them more efficiently.

4. Find your most productive self-time 

It is no hidden fact that some entrepreneurs are early birds while others are night owls. Although both are completely fine, you must find your most productive time and work accordingly effectively. 

To effectively find your most productive self, you need self-awareness about when you are the most productive version of yourself.

To achieve self-awareness, you can conduct a SWOT analysis that will assist you in highlighting the key factors that contribute to your strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats. 

If you successfully find your most productive self-time, you can execute your most important plans at that point. The reason is that as you will be the most productive or creative during your own time, it will assist you in executing your business plan in the most efficient manner.

Moreover, decisions taken during this time will be well thought out and examined so that any part of your business plan does not backfire. In short, using your 100% brain during your most productive time will assist you in enhancing your business’ efficiency. This can generate more revenue or scale your business to another level. 

Furthermore, as you will be in your most productive mode, you can effectively save time and concentrate on the most important tasks. This will assist you in maintaining your tasks and time more efficiently. 

So what are you waiting for? Find your most productive self, and you are halfway in planning your time and staying ahead in the race to be the best among your competitors.

5. Eliminate distractions

From getting distracted through a notification on the phone to losing concentration because of construction going on nearby, we humans are used to getting distracted all the time. Moreover, we all know that time is money; in entrepreneurs' case, it is true in every possible sense.

As mentioned above, the contemporary business world is changing rapidly, so losing time equals losing money in the enterprise world. 

It is obvious that we can not avoid distractions because human minds are prone to making mistakes. So, the best thing to do in this scenario is to eliminate the sources of distractions. For example, we discussed two types of distractions at the beginning of this point: phones and nearby construction.

To eliminate the sources of distraction in both cases, you can move away from the construction site or keep your phone away from your reach. Eliminating the distractors will assist you in keeping yourself concentrated and focused. This enhanced concentration will make you more productive in completing your tasks. 

Furthermore, this will assist you in saving time, and you can effectively invest the saved time in more productive tasks. This will not only help you save time but will also assist in making you more productive and overall efficient in terms of completing all the desired tasks in a day.

6. Use Pomodoro Technique

Pomodoro is another vital time management technique that can assist entrepreneurs in managing their time efficiently. Using this technique, you can divide your workday into small chunks called Pomodoros.

According to this, you can work for 25 minutes and then take a 5-minute break.  After having 4 to 5 Pomodoros, you can take a longer break of 20 to 25 minutes. 

Utilizing this technique and effectively taking breaks after the chunks will give you time to re-energize yourself after working for a certain amount of time.

Moreover, taking breaks will also assist you in reducing the stress that comes from doing all the work in one sitting. It is essential because, let’s face it, we all know entrepreneurs already have a lot of stress to deal with. So why increase it?

Furthermore, using the Pomodoro Technique will ensure you complete tasks on time and efficiently. The reason is that we are not able to perform our best whenever we are tired or restless.

So, using the Pomodoro technique will assist you in taking the required breaks and gathering the required energy to complete the tasks to get the desired results. 

7. Avoid multitasking

We all know that entrepreneurs have a lot on their plates. From handling financials to handling digital marketing of the business, all the stress comes on the shoulders of the entrepreneurs. But this does not imply that you have to do it all at the same time.

We understand that we have always presumed that the person who can multitask is a genius, but in reality, multitasking does not make your work finish faster. In fact, as per statistics, multitasking reduces productivity by 40%. 

On the contrary, shifting your focus between multiple tasks can make you lose concentration, leading to decreased productivity and efficiency. Moreover, shifting your focus again and again in completing different tasks can make you prone to errors which, according to us, no entrepreneur can bear.

Having said that, you need a well-structured strategy for delegating tasks and authority so that you don’t have to engage in clueless multitasking constantly. 

It is always advisable to avoid multitasking and put all your energy into one single task at a time. This will ensure that you will not make any mistakes. Moreover, keeping your focus on one task at a time will also assist in completing tasks quicker and more efficiently.

This will assist entrepreneurs in saving their time and performing every task in the most efficient way.

Summary

To summarise, time management is unquestionable for today's business leaders. You need to effectively identify what techniques work best for you and implement them wisely.

Moreover, the above-given time management strategies will effectively work best for all the entrepreneurs out there trying to figure out the best techniques to stay ahead of time to build a successful business.

Written by Jessica Robinson