The control of your time is key to being productive especially as a
small business owner or new entrepreneur. With the sheer volume of
things to do each day it is critical that you are organized and not
falling prey to distractions. Since you only have so many hours in a
week, I strongly recommend that you create a proper “To Do List” either
on your computer or on paper that reminds you on a daily basis, what you
are trying to accomplish each week. 56 83 Equally important is to
“schedule” tasks for a specific day to keep things in priority. When you
need to really focus on things such as marketing or accounting work,
close your door. The natural culture of a small business is for the
“door to always be open”.
While being available for customers is often
necessary as an owner/manager especially in a start-up situation, having
staff come and go constantly will interrupt your train of thought and
could cause you to miss something significant. Employees should come to
understand that when the door is closed, you are focused on growing the
business that pays their wages. Phone calls, opening mail and emails can
all be scheduled into certain times of the day to give you better
control over your environment and time. Large businesses schedule
closed-door boardroom meetings with management and department heads
regularly specifically for this purpose and while you may not yet have a
boardroom, closing your door to quietly contemplate is equally if not
more important for your small business. Setting a weekly plan therefore,
on a Monday morning or even on a Sunday night preceding your week, is
most important. Sit down and ask what you’re going to accomplish, each
of the five or six work days and don’t deal with Thursdays matters on
Monday. If your plan determined that it was good enough to get it done
on Thursday and you’ve got some priority items Monday, Tuesday etcetera,
stick to the plan.
As a businessperson you have to be mature
enough to know what you have to get done and then do only what you
should do. Don’t grab the garbage bag on the way out the door and take
it to the back lane and dump it in the dumpster. If you are a one-person
business that’s one thing but in many cases you see owners of a small
business doing things that might seem to be setting a good example but
it’s frankly not a good use of their valuable time. As the driving force
behind the success of your start-up, put a value to your time and ask
yourself, would you pay somebody that much money to do this task? So if
you are worth $50 an hour, why are you doing a job that you would pay $7
an hour to have done? It’s not about ego or position. It should be
completely about what is in the best interest of the business and where
your time is best spent. So, delegate, delegate, delegate. When the end
of the week comes and you’re checking off all of those items as “done”
because you were disciplined and controlled the interferences, the
satisfaction will be inspiring.
My goal is to help you succeed, Bryan M. Fenske, Founder – www.startingabusinesscoach.com