Small business owners must juggle running a business, taking care of employees, dealing with customers and generating profits, all while being crushed by an ever-growing list of business tasks.
The only two ways to increase your productivity is to work more hours or simply work smarter. Although you can't buy more time, you can of course try to achieve more with the time you already have.
These productivity tips for the self-employed or small businesses will help you find new ways and manage your time more effectively.
Get plenty of sleep
Arriving first to work and last to leave the office is a great way to set a positive example for your potential employees.
The entrepreneurial rut is very real; occasional night owls and long work hours are practically guaranteed in the first few years of starting a business. This frenetic pace can take its toll on even the best of us. You have to realize that constant exhaustion and constant sleep deprivation has consequences; you may experience decreased or virtually nonexistent concentration, increased stress levels, frequent mood swings, and poor problem solving.
Prolonged sleep deprivation increases your risk of developing heart and weight problems and can wreak havoc on your hormones. If you have trouble falling asleep and waking up in the morning, consider creating and sticking to a sleep schedule. Avoid staring at a smartphone or laptop during your bedtime routine. Regular sleep not only boosts productivity, but it also helps your brain repair damaged neural pathways and improves both short and long-term memory!
Prioritize and delegate tasks
Another important item on our list of productivity tips for small businesses and the self-employed is prioritization and delegation.
Delegating and prioritizing are two of the most important time management and organizational skills every business owner should master. When setting your priorities, the best way is to put a difficult, urgent, and time-consuming task at the very top of your to-do list and make sure you finish it first.
Identify tasks that require your personal attention and delegate tasks where possible that can be outsourced or handled by someone else. This allows you to focus only on the most urgent matters and prevents you from being distracted by all kinds of trivial matters that are less important or can be easily performed by someone else.
Eliminate as many distractions as possible
Whether it's avoiding all notifications on your smartphone, the appeal of social media, that one quick question from a friend or colleague – distractions and interruptions are absolutely damaging to your productivity and your business.
Close the door of your workspace at times when necessary, keep your smartphone out of sight when you are working. Also make sure that others can adhere to this for more focus, while it is of course important to take sufficient breaks.
Focus on a single task
Did you think so multitasking on a list of productivity tips for small businesses? No, on the contrary.
Multitasking sounds like a perfect solution for the increasingly demanding work environments of growing and evolving companies. But this couldn't be further from the truth. In fact, multitasking results in a decrease in efficiency and work quality; it makes it even harder to filter out unrelated information and organize our thoughts.
Multitasking also increases the production of the stress hormone cortisol and leads to mental exhaustion. Instead of multitasking, try consolidating your tasks and work-related errands.
Then focus on a single task at a time and stick to it until this task is also successfully completed.
Automate as many tasks as possible
If you've been in business for a while and dealing with business, you know that many processes and activities are still done manually. These are often small but essential tasks.
But what if those tasks could be automated so that you and any employees could spend more time on more complex processes or tasks?
Evaluate your company's operations and invest in software that automates as many of those processes as possible, so you can do everyday work efficiently and focus much better on other tasks.
Due to the current demand for mobile infrastructure, there are now more of these solutions available than ever before, especially since the corona outbreak. This means that now is an excellent time to reassess which functions and tasks can be eliminated so that you can devote more time to more pressing needs that require critical thinking from you as a human worker.
Create an efficient and organized workflow
A long to-do list and pressing deadlines that crop up between your already busy schedule and plethora of notifications can overwhelm you and any employees. Redefine your workflow to find a balance that gives a sense of priority, clarity and control between the plethora of notifications of tasks to be completed and agenda items flashing across every screen.
Rate your daily to-do list and rank each item according to its importance. Rearrange the list and decide which projects can be postponed or paused. For an overview of our own projects, tasks, priorities and deadlines, we use the project management tool Clickup – fantastic!
Success and work today with these small business productivity tips.
Sources ao Business (link), BusinessFixer (link), SmallBusinessOnFire (link), VegoMums (link)
Thanks for the tips! As a freelancer I can totally relate to this and any new advice helps !
We're big fans of productivity in our team, we even wrote about it.