Some entrepreneurs may say that a 40-hour workweek is for wimps. You’re busy beyond belief, and that can become overwhelming. Are there ways to clean up your schedule without sacrificing productivity? Yes!
The best thing you can do to declutter your schedule is learn how to be a master delegator. Leaders are meant to entrust tasks to others so they can keep an eye on the bigger picture. Delegating will take tasks off your hands that you may have been struggling to accomplish.
Here are some tips for effective delegation:
Know which tasks you should delegate. The exact tasks that you’ll delegate will depend on the nature of your business and what your goals are. However, in general, you should let others take care of tasks that involve little creativity, such as invoicing. You can also assign out things like managing customer relationships and addressing customer complaints. The employees you assign to do such things may have questions or run into problems, but for the most part, they should be able to handle their jobs without your constant oversight.
There are some tasks that you should keep to yourself. For example, if something is unique or is crucial to the long-term success of your company, involve yourself in these matters. Another thing you should have a direct hand in is hiring new talent. After all, the people you hire will have a pivotal role in determining the ultimate success or failure of your business.
Be realistic about what employees are capable of. You want to be able to trust your employees. However, you don’t want to trust them to the point where you expect them to accomplish something they aren’t qualified to do. Carefully observe their skills and personalities before you assign any new jobs to them, and make it clear that your door is always open if they have questions.
If someone is struggling with a task you’ve delegated to them, you may want to set aside some time to train that person. Yes, the training will slow things down in the short term, but it will save you countless hours in the long term. If an employee expresses an interest in learning a new skill, encourage that desire for growth. The more you cross-train your employees, the lighter the load on your own shoulders will become.
Consider outsourcing or hiring independent contractors. The great thing about hiring another company or an independent contractor to take care of some tasks is that these people already have a high level of expertise. You won’t have to invest a ton of time in training them. All you have to do is set clear expectations from the beginning. Once you get the ball rolling, you’ll have a team of trustworthy people outside your office whom you can rely on for occasional work or essential everyday tasks.
Delegating is essential in taking items out of your schedule that are bogging you down, but there are other things you can do to free up more time for yourself.
Organize your schedule
Before you can effectively organize your schedule, you need to understand how you spend your time. For a week, track every activity you do and how long it takes. Be a little anal about this. Make sure you include even mundane tasks, like traveling to work and getting ready for work. Also, record how much time you spend answering emails, training others, communicating with customers, etc.
You can use a memo app or a notebook to keep track of how you use your time. Once the week is over, reflect on what you’ve recorded. Ask yourself:
- Did I unnecessarily do anything that I could have delegated?
- How much time do I waste on distractions like television and social media? Were those things really a distraction, or were they necessary for me to keep my peace of mind?
- How much time do I spend taking care of my family and myself? Am I doing enough to avoid burnout?
Start looking for what you can cut out of your weekly schedule. Maybe you can save on a heavy commute time by working from home one or two days a week, or maybe you can rent a coworking space that is closer to your home for days when you need to be by yourself to get work done.
Set priorities
Organizing your schedule really comes down to setting priorities. To prioritize your tasks, you can use the time management matrix by Stephen Covey. The matrix has four quadrants:
- Urgent and important tasks. These are things you need to take care of yourself, and you need to do them soon.
- Important but not urgent. You need to get these things done, but there is no hurry to accomplish them.
- Urgent but not important. These are things like distractions and unexpected phone calls. If you can, eliminate or reduce any items that fall into this category. You may be able to delegate these tasks.
- Not important and not urgent. Get these things out of your schedule as soon as possible since they’ll have little impact on the overall success of your business.
Keep track of your schedule
Once you prioritize, set up a method for keeping track of your priorities. You can write out a daily plan, with specific blocks of time dedicated to important tasks; place the urgent tasks at the top of the list. You could also use an app, like Google Calendar.
When something throws a monkey wrench in your planned activities, readjust your schedule right away, so you don’t forget to do any essential tasks.
Make technology your friend, but don’t let it distract you
Many businesspeople experience inbox overload. They’re constantly barraged by emails. While you should make it a habit to respond to emails promptly, you don’t want to let yourself be constantly bogged down by them. Only give immediate attention to emails that are marked as urgent.
A good practice is to set aside specific blocks of time each day for sorting through email. Depending on how full your inbox is, this might be a half-hour before lunch and the half-hour before you go home in the evening.
Use your inbox’s settings to help you sort through the cyber mess. Many email service providers enable you to automatically send items from certain senders into designated folders. For example, if you’re planning a business trip, any emails from your travel agent could automatically go into your trips folder. Sanebox is a great tool for organizing your emails. It highlights important emails and summarizes the rest in a daily digest. Inbox by Gmail also has some smart features for taming email chaos.
There are oodles of apps out there that are designed to help you save time. Here are just a few:
- RescueTime. Remember the suggestion to keep track of your daily activities for a week? RescueTime can help you keep tabs on your internet activity. It lets you know how much time you spend on certain websites. If you find that you’re squandering precious minutes on Facebook, reddit, or your favorite sports website, it might be time to adjust your surfing habits.
- Google tools. Google Calendar and Google Drive are both awesome tools for collaborating with others. They cut down on time you would otherwise spend communicating with your team members.
- Wunderlist. Keep track of anything with this app. You can share the lists, too, when you need to delegate tasks or let others know what you’re up to.
Have clear objectives
Before you embark on any task, be sure about what you want to accomplish. When you have a clear objective in mind, you can dismiss anything that won’t push you toward achieving your goals. For example, you might want to give instructions for a project to an employee. If you insert information about unrelated tasks into the conversation, you could confuse the employee and waste time.
Time management might be one of the most difficult challenges for entrepreneurs. However, decluttering your schedule and becoming the master of your own time comes with great benefits. You’ll be less stressed and more productive. Plus, effective delegating will enable you to build trusting, positive relationships with your employees. Use the above tips to take unnecessary items out of your schedule so you can focus on the things that are most important.
