Essential time saving tips for business owners

As a small business owner, you know that time is your most valuable resource – after all, time is money! Unfortunately, there are only so many hours in the day, as anyone who’s ever had to scramble to meet a deadline will tell you. But while you can’t change the number of hours in a day, you can change your approach to maximizing those hours. Here are our top 4 tips to save time and boost productivity for business owners.

Time saving tip #1: Group similar tasks together.

Almost everyone who works knows the feeling: you’re doing great, cruising through your workday and making progress, when it hits you: you have a meeting coming up. And suddenly all your progress comes to a halt. And if it’s not meetings, it’s a constant stream of emails trickling in and needing responses. These things are an everyday part of running a business, sure, but let’s not pretend like they don’t have a habit of interrupting flow and impacting productivity. To combat this, try grouping similar tasks together. Here’s what that might look like:

• Instead of spreading them out throughout your week, pick one designated day for meetings.
• Instead of responding to every email individually as they come in, set aside a half hour in the morning and a half hour in the afternoon to deal with them.
• Instead of trying to prepare social media content on the fly, pick one day a week or month where you prepare your social posts for the time ahead.

Blocking out specific chunks of time to do similar tasks means that you don’t have to interrupt your flow as much, saving you time, and – of course – money.

Time saving tip #2: Know when to delegate.

When it comes to running a business, one of the hardest things you’ll ever have to learn is how to let go. And we get it! For many business owners, their company is like their baby. It’s something you’ve poured countless amounts of time and energy into – and the last thing you want is to give up part of it. But the only thing worse than giving up control of some of your business is not giving up control and failing to thrive as a result. Some tips:

• Vet thoroughly… – The best way to feel at ease? Vet any potential partners as thoroughly as you need in order to feel comfortable. See if you can find reviews or case studies for any potential partner, and when you’re ready, meet with them in person if possible to get a feel for whether they’d be a good fit. Sometimes you’ll come across partners who are great on paper, but an in-person meeting throws red flags. Other times, you’ll find partners who seem lacking in some area, only to find that in person, they can answer your questions and build a sense of trust. For an example of the kinds of questions you should ask, check out our post 8 questions to ask your next media agency.
• …then trust. – This may be easier said than done, but if you’ve done your due diligence and selected a partner to work with, try to trust that they know what they’re doing. That doesn’t mean that you should remove yourself completely – of course you’ll need to stay involved and check in on how things are going. But remember, you chose this partner for a reason – they have expertise that you don’t. Working with them can make your life significantly easier, and spending too much time managing them removes the benefit of working with them in the first place.

Along a similar line, we have tip #3: 

Time saving tip #3: Use automation to your advantage.

Long gone are the days when you had to do everything manually. These days, everything from social media posting to invoicing to sending emails can be done through automation – so use it! Whether you’re a larger company looking to schedule multiple daily social media posts through Hootsuite or a small company that just wants to send a monthly email through MailChimp, there are tons of automation companies you can partner with at a tier that suits your needs. Of course, most of these programs aren’t free – but with the money you save by using them, it’s likely they’ll pay for themselves quite quickly.

Time saving tip #4: Follow the 80-20 rule.

The 80-20 rule, also known as the Pareto Principle, states that 80% of your results will come from 20% of your efforts. In other words: you should identify the actions that deliver the most results and make those a priority. For example: if you consistently get a lot of leads from your email list, and aren’t seeing as many returns from your blog, you’ll want to make sure that you prioritize your email campaigns. This may sound counterintuitive in some ways – after all, if your blog isn’t returning results, doesn’t that mean your blog needs lots of attention? Well, yes and no. The 80-20 rule isn’t meant to imply that you should only work on your highest performing efforts to the exclusion of all others. What it means is that you should prioritize the things that work best for you.

Let’s say there’s a holiday coming up, and you don’t have time to do your weekly blog post and your weekly email newsletter. If your newsletter consistently outperforms your blog, the 80-20 rule would say that you should spend your limited time working on your email instead, because that’s what performs best.

As with many things in business, the 80-20 rule is more of a guideline than an actual concrete rule. But give it a try and see how it affects your business decisions – you might just be surprised by what you learn.

Adding more time to the day is a task best reserved for superheroes – but by implementing these time saving tips, you can be the hero of your small business.