Who here wishes they could save time in their day so they can get more done? Maybe your ever-growing to-do list is getting you down? Or perhaps you feel like it’s an uphill struggle to get stuff done every single day?
Getting more done in a day as a solo business owner is a dream.
Being productive is the dream, but being effective is even better.
In this post, I will share three tips on how I can help you manage your time, so you save time in your day.
1. Time blocking.
Time blocking is a technique where you allocate a certain period of time in your day or week to do a particular activity. And that is all you do in that time. No distractions, just complete focus on the activity at hand.
For example, you could have the first 30 minutes of the day checking emails, and that’s it. At the end of the 30 minutes, you finish and move on to the next time block activity. Or you maybe can allocate an hour in the afternoon and decide this is where you do your social media posts. Or perhaps you can assign the entire morning to a particular activity. You determine the size of the time block and the action you do in it.
Blocking that time out means that you focus solely on that activity.
It may surprise you to know that if you are not distracted with other activities, you WILL get more done than you expected.
So avoid distractions.
2. Create a routine to save time.
This is building on the time blocking theme, and it’s about creating a routine in your working week.
With time blocks, you allocate specific periods of the day to a particular activity. With a routine, you take those time blocks and assign them every week to particular days of the week.
For example, maybe on Monday mornings, you create and schedule all your social media. On Tuesday afternoons, you allocate time to work on your business. And between 6 and 7 every night, you package up your orders for the day ready to be posted first thing in the morning.
Whatever you decide to do, having a routine that you repeat every week means that you don’t have to think about what you should be doing on any given day. Or any given time of the day.
The routine means that you know what activities to work on and you can just crack on and do it. No time wasted trying to decide what to do next.
3. Focus on no more than three tasks in a day.
You know how it is you have a mountain of work to do, yet you just can’t get started because you keep thinking about everything you need to do.
The next trick to save time is to decide daily the 3 most important things to work on. Then only concentrate on completing these 3 things. You will find that by no longer worrying about everything else, you actually manage to move forward.
You may have more to do than 3 things, and if you can fit more in that day, that’s fine. But your key aim at the beginning of each day is to complete the three tasks you’ve identified.
Perhaps there’s just one big task to focus on, then just focus on that, that’s ok. What you don’t want to do is overburden yourself with too many tasks or tasks that are too big they can’t be completed in the time you have available. If this is the case, break the big task down into more manageable chunks, so you still feel like you are making progress.
3 tasks are about the optimum number that stops you from worrying about ‘everything’ that needs doing and still makes you feel like you have achieved something at the end of the day.
When you plan your day (which you should do every day), make it clear which three tasks you want to achieve that day and just get on and do them.
The art of managing your time is something you need to get control of to make sure you save time and avoid wasting time.
It is a challenge each and every day, but the more you practice it, the more it becomes a habit. And once it is a habit, you no longer need to think about it too much as it will come naturally to you.
If you need help managing your to-do list, check out My Business Hub. This is a template built on the free Notion framework aimed at getting your to-do list under control. It will help you track everything you need/want to do with a handy Dashboard to show your progress.
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