How to Maximise Time to Improve Your Productivity as a Business Owner

“If you love life, then don’t waste time for life is what time is made of” Bruce Lee.

This is a profound truth especially for business people. Knowing that there can only be as much time to get things done, it is then very important that every business leader learns to effectively employ his time.

Here are some insights that can help…

Streamline Systems and Processes

You have to take a critical look at your workflow and come up with systems and methods that help you get results on time. One of the mistakes that many a business owner make is to borrow systems and methods from other places instead of developing their own unique flow.

This shouldn’t be because as no two individuals are the same, also no two businesses are the same. It then means that adopting a process straight-line from another business might actually become a clog in the wheel of performance.

Paying attention to this is very important especially for those coming from big corporates to start their own businesses.

Outsource and Dedicate

Many founders are doers who always believe that they can do better than everyone else. While this might be great at some point, at many other points, it doesn’t make sense.

Dedicating and outsourcing things should be one of the specialities of a smart business owner. You are supposed to hire people that are smarter than you and dedicate a whole lot to them so that you can concentrate on the very few things that make the business move such as design, contract/funding negotiations, sales and marketing, etc.

Spending your time micro-managing and trying to be everything will kill your productivity. So, don’t do it.

Observe, Select then Act

The business world has a lot of noise that distract many people. For you to stay focused and win, you have to study and observe what’s going on to be sure that it is truly worthy of your attention then select the important battles and fight them till you win.

Being this methodological will ensure that you don’t give your attention to the wrong things that will sap your energy, destroy your attention and make you less productive.

Focus

 Define your work properly and focus only on what matters at the moment.

For me, work is divided into active and passive.

Active work is anything that you need to do that will bring in money or help you monetize value in the next 30 days or less while passive work is anything that you need to do to bring in money into the business or help you monetize value in a future time frame that is more than 30 days.

It also means that work produces active and passive results as well.

For example, if I need to get on the phone to call a client who reached out to me on WhatsApp, that is active work while trying to build a website will be passive work, one has the potential to give me money in less time than the other.  Knowing this order will help you stay really focused on the work that truly matters per time.

Be Purposeful

A business built on purpose inspires action.

A lot of people started their businesses out of hunger and the need to sack their bosses. Businesses started on these grounds might not drive passionate action especially when things don’t go as planned.

If you want to build something that inspires you and those around you to keep working even when it doesn’t make sense to, then get a clear purpose for your business and always communicate it to yourself and all stakeholders.

This is how enduring businesses are built.

Schedule Effectively and Keep a Clean Agenda

There is no way you will know what should be done and when it should be done without an effective schedule.

For me, a clean schedule must have:

1. CONSTANTS. These are things that are always done in the business on daily basis.

2. MUST DOs. These are the few new things that are scheduled to be done each day. It could be to have a meeting with a cofounder, talk to important stakeholders, attend a publicity event, etc.

The MUST Dos need to be few enough that they can clearly fit into a daily performance schedule. As much as possible, no MUST Dos should be left unattended to.

3. MAYBEs: these are things that are nice to be done but don’t possess any serious threat or opportunity in the immediate.

If you have some extra time in the day to attend to them, that would be fine but if you miss, nothing would be missed!

The strategy for keeping a clean agenda and being effective is to make sure that each day, the constants and the must DOs are done without fail.

Conclusion

The main goal in every business should be to get ahead. And for this to be possible, strategies for personal effectiveness like the ones shared in these posts must be kept close to heart as they will surely go a long way to help.