February Is National Time Management Month: Here's How to Effectively Manage Your Time When Starting & Forming a Business

In case you didn’t know (don’t worry, most people have no clue at all), February is National Time Management Month. What does this mean? It means it’s a time to focus on maximizing your time management in business.

Let’s be honest, time management for entrepreneurs is extremely important because the growth of your LLC depends on how productive you are during your days.

To get the most out of your days, let’s discuss six helpful tips to effectively manage your time when it comes to starting and forming a business.

1. Put Your Focus into One Stream of Revenue FIRST

Don't put the horse before the cart and walk into a business thinking you’re going to do everything right off the bat and make a ton of money — it rarely ever happens that way. Business time management involves making sure you are putting your efforts where they need to be, which is creating one stream of revenue that is a major contributor to your overall business.

If you spread yourself thin by trying to focus on building multiple branches of your business, you’re going to be spinning your wheels and may never find the growth you are hoping for. Focus your time on one main area until that aspect of your business is basically running itself and bringing in a good amount of money for you.

2. Set Measurable Goals

One area many entrepreneurs fail is in their goals — they don’t have any! How are you working towards something if you don’t have a destination? You need to set measurable goals so you have a direction to move. For proper time management in business, you want to focus on achieving short-term goals so that they lead you to your ultimate long-term goal.

Make sure your goals are also realistic. For instance, if you’re just starting a business, making $10M your first year simply isn’t attainable — if you do, you should write a book on building a business. So, make sure for National Time Management Month you put some goals down on paper so you have something visual in front of you to remind you what you’re working towards.

3. Use Time Management Tools

Looking to maximize your time management in business? Software tools can help you manage your time. This can be anything from accounting software, CRM, social media scheduling, Messenger bots, team communication software or even something like cloud-based storage to allow for the ability to access your files no matter where you are in the world.

See where you can automate or streamline your process through the help of software and invest the money to maximize your productivity.

4. Create Daily To-Do Lists and Prioritize Items

When it comes to business time management, you should have a daily list of things you need to accomplish in order of priority. For instance, if you need to do something in the next three months, it’s not a priority and not something you should have as a main focus for today’s tasks. Instead, look for things on your list that MUST be done and cannot be compromised in order to meet a deadline and focus on that task FIRST.

Consider categorizing all your tasks as A, B or C. A means it MUST get it done that day, B means it need to get it done soon but not necessarily today and C means it’s not of high importance and can be put on the back burner for the time being.

5. Concentrate on YOUR Strengths and Delegate the Rest

You probably have a certain skill set that you are extremely proficient at. Then, you probably have a list of things you AREN'T good at. Don't stress over the things you aren't good at. You can either outsource the things you aren't good at or delegate them to employees.

Many entrepreneurs think they need to do everything themselves. The fact is, it’s not the best way to manage your time and can actually lead to burnout, frustration and ultimately failure in your business.

It’s okay to ask for help. In fact, if you can make more money by putting your focus on your strengths rather than spending hours or days struggling to accomplish something you’re not good at, your time and resources are much better spent working on projects in your wheelhouse.

6. Eliminate Distractions

Junk phone calls, social media and worthless conversations are all distractions that can zap your productivity. You need to find the things that are pulling you away from staying productive and eliminate them.

That means staying off social media during the day unless it's 100% business related. It also means changing the settings on your phone to only allow certain people to cause your phone to ring, while everyone else will get filtered into your voicemail.

Don't take walk-in meetings. If someone wants your time and attention, they need to be in your calendar. If you have staff, make it known that when your door is closed, that politely means "leave me the heck alone."

And the worst time-sucker of all: leaving your email open all day long. Check your email once, maybe twice a day. If you leave your email open, every time you see or hear an email come through into your inbox, you’re going to get pulled away. This absolutely kills your productivity.

Bottom line is, if you don’t respect your own time when working on your business, no one else will.

Are you going to take part in February’s National Time Management Month festivities and help 2020 be your best year yet? If you’re just starting your business and could use a little help to figure out what steps to take, check out Bizee’s free resource called The Complete Guide to Starting a Business.