3 Tips to NOT Let Time Management be the Death of Your Small Business

Whether you are a small business owner, managing a department, or working on a project with your team, time management is an important part of running a successful small business full of passion and provision. Keeping the plates spinning and knowing who’s on first and what’s on second is essential in keeping up with the demands of your role as well as your needs as a human being- like sleep and rest and free blocks of time to use your creativity to solve problems, envision the future, and build something bigger and better.

But you may feel like you are metaphorically in chains, constrained to deadlines. It feels like walls are built around you so that you have no room to be flexible and it is squeezing every bit of your creativity and spontaneous spirit to death.

Or you are constantly responding to fires you need to put out, one after the other and whatever phone call comes in, you jump on it. Outlook notifies you that a new email just came through and you stop what you are doing to respond. At the end of the day you got A LOT done, but none of the big projects on your list even got started.

Deadlines are a must, time management tools are helpful, but you are still feeling like you are drowning in the work that needs to be done and unless you get locked in a room all by yourself without butterflies to distract you, you are getting none of your big projects done.

Here are 3 quick tips you can use this week for managing your time:

If you have a hard deadline in 2 weeks for a large project, separate out the project into smaller chunks and set short deadlines and STICK TO THEM!

If you know you need to write a list- do that. If getting reminders to your phone helps you stay on track- get the app you need. Basically, find a management tool that meets your needs.It may be one that isn’t too constraining, but helps you organize your tasks. I use and love Basecamp. Since I pretty much live in my email at work, my favorite feature is that I get a reminder directly to my email when something is due.

So this week, as you start off on Monday and jump into the list of to dos, stop and take a few minutes to prioritize your short tasks with deadlines, use the tools that are most helpful to you and block out at least 1 hour of free time for envisioning the future or creating a new strategy, exploring something you have been meaning to explore.