What I’ve learned the hard way is that there is never enough time in the day when you’re an entrepreneur. There’s always a thousand competing priorities, opportunities for growth, fires to put out, and every hour means another dollar you cant afford to waste. So here’s some of the things I’ve learned that have helped me maximise my time for success.
Turn off the noise
Whatsapp, slack, email, intercom, Jira, phone calls, the list goes on and on of the ways your flow can be interrupted. Multitasking isn't effective. Allocate times to tasks, focus on them, and dont let inbound noise distract you. For example, I dont answer my phone at all during the day, and then return all my calls at once at 4.30pm. Generally I find most of these ‘urgent’ matters have resolved themselves in the meantime, and when Im making the call I’m prepared with the details of the client/job/project in front of me, instead of being on the back foot and not being able to add value, whilst having whatever I was working on interrupted. Small changes like this make all the difference to productivity.
Dont waste time price on comparison
Every single dollar in a start up is so damn precious. You have fought tooth and nail to either raise it from VC/angel investors or bootstrap by giving up SO many other things (like say eating out for the last year!). But the other incredibly precious commodity is time. So whilst you want the best deal on those laptops for your team, or your office stationery order, or your weekly office grocery shop, you also dont have time to go compare prices against every single online store to find them. Thankfully another brilliant entrepreneur has solved that problem with ShopFully app, which lets you find the best deals across a range of categories, and by places closest to you. Win on the time and money saving front!
Outsource, outsource, outsource
When I started my first business, I thought I had to do everything myself because I couldnt afford to have a book keeper, or a receptionist, or a content marketer. What I had to learn the hard way was that I was actually the blocker in the business, preventing us from growing. Instead of using my time and energy to do what I was best at (client relationships, sales, PR, management) I was wasting hours or tasks that could have been outsourced to an expert who could do it in half the time! So there is a very real opportunity cost to not spending on experts. And the great thing is you dont have to hire full timers while youre scaling. With platforms like Upwork, Expert360 and Freelancer you can hire ad hoc people on a project by project or short term basis. No excuses not to delegate now!
Train your brain to have a bias for action
If a job is going to take less than 2 min to do (send that invoice, reply to that email, send the meeting calendar note) then you should do it immediately, as the time it will take to schedule it, organise it later, and review it, would be longer than the time to actually do it. It helps you eliminate brain clutter, stop procrastination, and improve your productivity. Catch: it needs to related to what youre ACTUALLY doing at the time, not just something that pops into your head (like those dreaded whats app or slack alerts) and breaks your flow. A perfect example is scheduling time to check your email, and any email that can be replied to in under 2mins, you do straight away. It doesnt mean that every email that pops in all day that could be replied to in under 2 min, you stop what you are doing and reply to it. Very important difference!
I hope these tips and resources help you get more out of your day, so you have more time, energy and space to grow your business, and get on the front foot. Dont forget that even small changes have a big impact, so even implementing one of them will be a step in the right direction.