Entrepreneurship: Top 9 Strategies for Time Management

1. Personal Time a.k.a. Self-Care: It’s essential to track personal time to ensure you maintain a work-life balance and avoid burnout. Maintaining a positive and healthy mindset is essential and including these hours as an essential part of our time-management should always be at the top of your list.
2. Client Work & Billable Hours: Time spent directly on projects, tasks, or services that generate revenue. If you are doing the work, the time must be accounted for from start to finish.
3. Administrative Tasks: Time spent on essential but non-revenue-generating tasks like bookkeeping, invoicing, emails, and scheduling can be tedious. So, it is imperative that you pay very close attention to the time spent in this area.
4. Product Development/Innovation: Hours dedicated to creating new products, services, or improving existing offerings. To manage time in product development, set clear goals with milestones and prioritize tasks that align with your objectives. Use methods that allow for regular progress checks and focus on completing tasks in specific time blocks. Delegate tasks to the right people, reduce distractions, and keep meetings to a minimum. Make time for testing and improving, aiming for a basic working version first, not perfection. Keep track of how time is spent, review what’s working for you, and ensure a healthy balance by setting realistic deadlines and taking breaks for self-care. These steps help you stay on track while encouraging and sustaining your innovation.
5. Learning and Development: Time spent on personal or professional growth, such as attending workshops, courses, or reading relevant materials. Effective time management is essential in learning and development, as it helps individuals and organizations maximize growth while balancing other responsibilities. By setting clear learning goals, breaking them into manageable tasks, and allocating dedicated time for skill-building, individuals can stay focused and progress and maintaining consistency. Prioritizing development activities, avoiding distractions, and scheduling regular reviews of progress ensures continuous improvement without overwhelming one’s schedule. This approach fosters consistent learning while managing time efficiently.
6. Team Management: If you have a team, track time spent on managing, training, and communicating with your employees or contractors. In team management, effective time management is key to achieving collective goals and maintaining productivity. By setting clear priorities, delegating tasks based on team members’ strengths, and establishing timelines, managers can ensure that work progresses smoothly. Regular check-ins and efficient communication help keep the team aligned, while minimizing unnecessary meetings and distractions preserves focus. Encouraging a balance between productivity and rest also helps prevent burnout, leading to a more engaged and efficient team environment.
7. Time Management App: Tasks related to the day-to-day running of your business, such as managing supplies, equipment, or logistics.

   Here are six of the top time management apps that can help you streamline your business and while effectively managing your time:

   • ASANA: A popular app for organizing tasks, projects, and workflows. It offers features like task assignment, due dates, timelines, and collaboration tools, helping teams track progress and manage time effectively. While ideal for larger teams, it’s also versatile for individual use.
   • Toggl Track: A simple yet powerful time-tracking tool that helps you monitor how much time you spend on different tasks and projects.
   • Todoist: A task management app that allows you to organize tasks, set priorities, and track progress with a clean interface.
   • RescueTime: An automatic time-tracking app that provides insights into how you spend your time on digital activities, helping identify distractions.
   • Trello: A visual task management tool that uses boards, lists, and cards to help you organize and prioritize your projects and tasks.
   • Clockify: A time-tracking app that’s great for tracking work hours, setting goals, and monitoring productivity over time.
8. Sales and Marketing: Time spent on promoting your business, handling sales calls, or developing marketing strategies and materials. To effectively manage your time for sales and marketing as an entrepreneur, implement a time-blocking system to dedicate specific periods for these tasks, prioritizing high-impact activities that align with your immediate business goals. Leverage technology by using CRM software, social media scheduling tools, and email marketing platforms to automate repetitive tasks. Consider delegating or outsourcing certain responsibilities to focus on strategic initiatives, and regularly evaluate your time management strategies to identify areas for improvement. By working smarter, you can ensure your sales and marketing efforts drive your business forward.

   Here are five apps you can use to effectively manage sales and marketing:

   • HubSpot CRM: This free CRM offers tools for sales, marketing, and customer support, allowing you to track contacts, manage your sales pipeline, and automate tasks. It integrates easily with email and provides detailed reports on sales activity and performance.
   • Salesforce: A robust CRM solution that offers extensive features for managing customer relationships, sales processes, and marketing campaigns. It’s suitable for businesses of all sizes and provides powerful analytics and reporting tool.
   • Pipedrive: Known for its user-friendly interface, Pipedrive helps sales teams manage their pipeline effectively. It includes features for tracking leads, automating repetitive tasks, and visualizing sales processes.
   • Nutshell: This CRM is designed specifically for marketing teams, offering features like customizable reports, marketing automation, and lead tracking. It’s an affordable option that helps streamline marketing efforts and improve customer engagement.
   • monday.com: A highly customizable CRM that allows you to manage sales processes and marketing activities in one platform. It offers automation features, task management, and integration with various tools to enhance workflow efficiency.
9. Planning and Strategy: Hours devoted to long-term business planning, goal setting, and reviewing your business performance.

   Ruthlessly Prioritize your Strategies: Without a team to delegate to, prioritization becomes even more critical:

   • Categorize tasks based on urgency and importance.
   • Focus on high-impact tasks that directly contribute to your business goals.
   • Be willing to let go of less critical tasks or find alternative solutions, if and when a VA or delegating tasks is not an option.

   Create Accountability: Even without a team, you can create accountability:

   • Join entrepreneur groups or mastermind sessions to share goals and progress.
   • Use apps like Stickk or Coach.me to set goals and track your progress.
   • Consider hiring a business coach for periodic check-ins and guidance. Accountability is a huge part of the overall of entrepreneurs.

   Practice Efficient Decision-Making: Streamline your decision-making process to avoid analysis paralysis:

   • Set clear criteria for making decisions.
   • Establish time limits for deliberation on strategic choices.
   • Trust your instincts and experience when faced with complex decisions.

Conclusion

Tracking these categories can help you identify where your time is going, optimize your efforts, and ensure you’re focusing on activities that drive your business forward. If and when you find that you are spending more time than you’d like in one area or another, then it is time to reclaim your time! It is time to invest in an assistant or virtual assistant (VA). Assess your budget and adjust it accordingly to include your greatest and latest investment…your new assistant.