From the course: Small Business Secrets

Staying productive each day

From the course: Small Business Secrets

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Staying productive each day

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- For small business owners, time management is a huge issue. Part of it is because distractions are all over the place. You don't just have one job description, right? You've got 10 or 12 different job descriptions. Plus the freedom that you crave, the freedom that you wanted to have by becoming a small business owner can sometimes be your own enemy because, well, you're too free with your time. Now in my course on time management fundamentals here on lynda.com I go into great depth on how to stay on top of your time. And I recommend you go through that course. It's actually a requirement for any client who works with me personally. But in this video I'm going to talk specifically about some issues that I don't cover there that just happen to entrepreneurs, business owners. Number one is understanding the difference between working on your business and working in your business. Most business owners are caught up in working in their business. They're making sales, they're managing people, they're doing things constantly throughout the day but they're neglecting developing things for the long-term which is working on your business. Working on your business includes things like improving processes, developing systems, creating a vision. Basically being the founder and leader of your business. I recommend that you budget one hour every single day or five hours a week just to working on your business. Number two is setting a time aside for yourself. I often say that, "A business is the entrepreneur's mirror." That means that your strengths and your weaknesses are reflected back at you. What you want to do to improve the business is also improve yourself. What that can include is doing things like exercising, or reading empowering literature, or taking courses like this on lynda, serving others, or working with a coach or a mentor. I recommend that you budget one hour every day or five hours a week. And number three is processing. Now this is something that I cover in great depth in time management fundamentals. It can be summed up in three words though. What, when, and where. You decide what needs to be done with something, when you're going to do it, and where its home is. To stay on top of everything that you have as a business owner, to go through all your email, to go through everything in your inbox, it's going to take you about five hours a week or one hour a day. Processing is critical. Having that set time to do that because if you don't do it during a scheduled time, you're still going to do it but when are you going to do it? You're going to do it constantly throughout the day. You're going to be making those what, when, where decisions a little bit here, a little be there and it's probably going to take you in the neighborhood of 10 to 15 hours per week. Now, before I go onto the fourth suggestion, some of you have been doing some math and you're looking at this and saying, "Well Dave, that's already three hours a day, "I'm having a hard time staying on top "of everything that I have to do." Which is why my fourth suggestion is manage your expectations. Many business owners try to heap too much stuff on their schedule and they actually get less done because of it. Instead I recommend that you focus on two or maybe three objectives that you're going to accomplish each day. Two or three things that are highly important to improve your business and move it forward. If you keep your expectations in check, you're still going to make a lot of progress on your business, you're just going to do it in a consistent way rather than burning yourself out by trying to do too much in a day. And that leads to the fifth suggestion, which is leave room in your schedule. Leave buffer space between all those things that you need to do. As a business owner you're really right in the public eye and you're very likely to get interrupted a lot. Especially if you're in a highly interruption driven business, such as IT or auto-repair, something like that. Instead what you need to do is open up time in your schedule for these interruptions. Then when they happen you're not going to be stressed out you're going to say, "Oh I've got the room "in my schedule to deal with them." And then you deal with them and go back to those two or three objectives that I talked about. Doing these few things will give you a very important edge over your competition. Most business owners are stressed and behind when it comes to time and so much of your success as a business owner comes down to simply doing what you say you're going to do, when you say you're going to do it.

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