“A stitch in time saves nine”, “Time and tide wait for none” – These are a couple of important proverbs directed at encouraging individuals to plan and manage their time. Time is an invaluable commodity. You can earn your money back, retrieve materials and objects, but lost time doesn’t return.
Establishing and running a business is a time-consuming endeavour. It involves various processes compounded by challenges that require commitment, fortitude and skills to make it a successful enterprise.
In an entrepreneur’s journey, one of the most important lessons to learn is the importance of managing time. Often time tends to ebb away without a person realising it. While the person might have entered the business with a desire to accomplish a lot, there is very little accomplished with one common question lingering in the person’s mind – “Where did all the time go?”
In reality, everyone has equal time. But some people accomplish more due to their ability to manage time and conquer tasks every day. So, here are my most effective planning and time management tips for all entrepreneurs to become effective and successful in their business.
5 effective planning and time management tips
Is planning and time management an easy task? Well, it might seem easy at first, but perhaps it is one of the hardest and most thought-probing tasks. Most people tend to avoid it and directly dive into the deeper end without a proper plan. This usually results in unsatisfied outcomes and a sense of being frivolous.
My initial experiences have been similar to most people. I would start without a proper goal extremely excited, but then, I’d end up feeling overwhelmed due to the seemingly insurmountable task. I would look for excuses and try to run away from the task. In the end, I would achieve almost nothing. In turn, this would lead to frustration and a sense of being undone by my own inadequacies.
But with time, I was able to appreciate the process and understand that certain tasks require more time or perhaps a few tasks need to be dropped to accommodate important objectives. This mindset helped me become more efficient and productive when it comes to achieving more in business. So, here are some important steps that I incorporated into my journey.
1) Plan
“An hour of planning can save you ten hours of doing.”
– Dale Carnegie
I can’t stress how important this step is. A plan is a foundation for almost anything that one wants to achieve. Without a proper foundation, the structure will not sustain itself. This principle, perhaps, applies to all domains. A plan is essential for an entrepreneur to become successful.
A plan ideally includes a long-term vision that would define where the person or an organisation intends to go. Moreover, it also encompasses short-term goals. This could include yearly and monthly goals that would go hand in hand with a calendar or a list of events scheduled during the year. It could be an annual event or a monthly meet, important client meetings, prospecting etc.
This is crucial as it defines the culture in an organisation, and for an individual, it defines standards of their work ethic. Moreover, goals provide a clear target to aim at, rather than making their journey a meaningless pursuit. Goal-setting is yet another key element of the plan that requires a person to devote thought and effort.
Speaking of creating goals, the next step is equally important. Entrepreneurs need to be meticulous in their approach if they want to become successful.
2) Schedule
Creating a To-Do list is one of the most basic ways of planning for the day. It ensures that they are on track with their goals. A To-Do list includes all the tasks an individual achieves during the day. The list may have small tasks such as reading, writing a page in the journal to important tasks related to the business like prospecting or a client meeting.
What’s important is to categorise and allocate time-based on the importance. Another important parameter to consider is immediacy or how urgent is the task on hand. It’s obvious that if a task is urgent and important, the individual would need to prioritise it and get it done immediately. However, if the task is neither urgent nor important, for instance, a conversation not related to work during work hours. This task could be something that a person could pass or schedule for a different time.
One of the biggest advantages of having a To-Do list is that it helps in avoiding time-consuming tasks that don’t add to productivity. So, creating a To-Do list is vastly helpful in becoming efficient and helping complete day-to-day objectives and achieve more.
3) Prioritise
We briefly understood the idea of prioritising above. However, let’s understand how it can completely alter how one approaches things. Perhaps one of the most important things in the life of an entrepreneur is the ability to say NO to things. Often, they get misled into situations where they feel that they must agree with something or spend their time on things that do not help them or their business.
The idea of prioritising is to understand and ignore things that are irrelevant grand scheme of things. Most entrepreneurs get lost in trivial strife and tasks that seem important at that moment. Prioritising is the key to avoiding unnecessary tasks and situations which might take away important time. An instance of prioritising is well demonstrated by the Pareto Principle or the 80-20 rule. It suggests that only 20 per cent of the things contribute to productivity, while the other 80 per cent are things that can be avoided.
We’ve got to remember that time is important. We need to conserve and use it with caution. Remember to say NO to things that don’t add to your development or take you closer to your goals. This particular step had a huge impact on my business. I was able to finally pay attention to things that matter while letting go of anchors that would generally take my time.
4) Delegate/Assign
After developing a business and growing a team, an entrepreneur will probably realise that they cannot be in all places at all times. Thus, it is important to either delegate or assign tasks to team members. Another important reason is that they might be in a better position to perhaps dedicate their time to the project, or they could be a subject matter expert. The key idea is to realise the opportunity to assign tasks so that the entrepreneur can focus on getting other tasks completed.
Most people try to get everything done by themselves and forget that sometimes it takes a team to cross the line. Another reason for not delegating is that entrepreneurs don’t want to be accountable for others. A key facet of becoming a successful entrepreneur is being accountable and managing their team. This can further help them get the tasks of the organisation done.
One thing that helped me during my experiences was to have a schedule for my teammates. The schedule allowed me to understand what they were working on while also allowing me to schedule tasks. An added advantage was that it helped me prioritise tasks that needed my attention. On the whole, the process of delegation can be a huge time-saver, and it is something that one must learn to do in their business.
5) Take a break
Now, this might seem counter-intuitive, but the concept of “rest” or, in general, parlance “taking a break” is almost as essential as work. Most people who work hard might often feel tired and fall victim to a common phenomenon called burnout.
One of the best ways to avoid burnout is to take necessary breaks. Now, this could be taking a few days off in a year for a vacation. It could also mean something as small as participating in small co-curricular activities at the end of their working day. What this does is that it optimises one’s performance and keeps one refreshed. Another important reason to consider breaks is because an individual will not waste time looking for breaks if it is already planned. Thus, also saving a lot of time in the process.
Entrepreneurs need to take their time off and do it consciously without being carried away. All of this comes back to commitment and how badly one wants to achieve their set goals. In the end, the goal is to ensure that one optimises the time that helps them become more informed and efficient in their journey.
So, these are some of the steps I took or rather practice even today. All these steps have helped me grow as a business person and made my journey more fruitful. I would urge other entrepreneurs to become conscious of their time and effective planning for their business.
Effective planning and time management
Entrepreneurship is truly a fascinating journey. Entrepreneurs need to invest time and effort to establish and grow their businesses. There are no shortcuts, and there is no easy way out in this journey. We might get overwhelmed, just like I did during my initial days. There was often so much that had to be done yet not enough time to do them. Moreover, I would often end up feeling tired and fatigued. However, with time and experience, I was able to adapt certain techniques and follow methods that helped me optimise my time and increase productivity.
The key to improving my work is effective planning and time management. It wasn’t something that I was able to implement right away. It took me a long time before I even got used to the idea of creating a schedule or having a plan. But in hindsight, it was time well invested as I was clearly able to chalk my path towards my goals.
Entrepreneurs are often advised to learn new skills for their development. Perhaps, one of the most important skills that all entrepreneurs need to learn and practice is planning and time management. To learn how to manage time and plan for the future is perhaps one of the most important endeavours in an entrepreneur’s journey towards financial freedom.
I hope these tips have added perspective and encouraged entrepreneurs to think about their time and manage it responsibly!
If you’d like to read more about ideas and skills to optimise your journey as an entrepreneur, be sure to check out – https://qnet-india.in/category/knowledge/
