Time Management Tips For Young Entrepreneurs

Does making calls, balancing the sales sheet, responding to emails, sending reports to clients, meeting prospective customers, and attending to customer’s complaints sound like a familiar to-do list?

As a young entrepreneur, the chances are that you are wearing too many hats and biting off mouthfuls every day, which leaves you overwhelmed. This can also make you less productive and influence your business’s growth in the long run. 

The question now is—how do successful entrepreneurs juggle so many tasks successfully without letting any of them fail? 

Ask any successful entrepreneur, the one skill they can’t do without is time management. It is what helps them achieve so much within the required time. The more successful you are with time management as an entrepreneur, the easier it is for you to scale your business and succeed as an individual. 

In this article, you will learn how to efficiently manage your time as a young entrepreneur through simple yet practical tips that would help you scale your business better. 

Let’s dive right in. 

What really is time management? 

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Time management is planning and taking charge of the time you spend on specific activities to save time, increase efficiency and productivity.

Effective time management can help you produce more quality work, meet deadlines, harmonize your work-life balance and reduce your stress levels.

Although effective time management is easier for some people than for others, most entrepreneurs inculcate time management habits through an adequate amount of commitment. 

5 useful and helpful tips for managing your time efficiently

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Here are the five most effective strategies to adopt if you are looking to manage your time efficiently as an entrepreneur to achieve the best results.

  1. Plan your week ahead 

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Whether you are a young entrepreneur working from home or running a startup, the key to taking charge of your time is, to begin with scheduling your weekly activities.

By creating a weekly schedule using planner apps like Trello, you would be able to plan ahead, organize and structure your tasks to meet your expectations for the week. 

Below are a few ways to get this done.

  • Group tasks by type 

Grouping your tasks into categories can help you manage your time efficiently.

You can dedicate time to working on a group of related tasks on a specific day and put aside a group of other unrelated tasks till the next day. 

This would prevent you from hopping between unrelated tasks and help you focus on the specific tasks you want to achieve daily. 

  • Create a daily schedule 

Structure your day by creating a to-do list. List all the activities you plan to achieve for the day and arrange them according to their order of importance. 

Try to work with this schedule to achieve the best results, or the purpose of creating it would be futile.

  • Prepare for distractions 

It’s unrealistic to plan your schedule without expecting to be distracted by unforeseen circumstances and events. 

When scheduling your tasks for the week, set aside “distraction time,” which would help indicate periods when you would have to attend to urgent matters in-between your schedules.

  • Engage in deep work 

Deep work involves putting in complete concentration into the task at hand.

When engaging in deep work, you avoid every form of distraction, such as putting your phone far away from you,  shutting down your computer when necessary, and displaying a “Do not disturb sign.” 

  • Track your activities 

At the end of the day, examine all the activities you’ve done and track the time you spent on each task. 

This would enable you to track your progress and know if you are productive with your time or not so you can make improvements where necessary. 

  1. Adopt the 80/20 rule 

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The 80/20 technique has been proven to be one of the most effective strategies to aid time management. 

This theory believes that if you have ten activities to do, only two of them will produce outstanding results. 

Therefore, working on the remaining eight activities would produce little or no results.

This means to avoid wasting your time on activities that may not yield results; you need to focus on activities that would actually produce results and leave out those that would turn out to be a complete waste of time. 

  1. Set deadlines 

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Your life as an entrepreneur is filled with so many responsibilities. The key to achieving so much within the allocated time is to set deadlines for any task you plan to embark on. 

If you do not set deadlines, you will take as much time as possible to get a task done.

However, setting deadlines will create a sense of urgency and trigger you to complete the task within the allocated time frame. You can use reminder apps like Todoist to keep you on track. 

So, while you are talking to your customers on the phone, responding to emails, or meeting prospective customers in person, ensure that you have a deadline fixed for each activity and stick to it. 

  1. Delegate tasks

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Delegating responsibilities is a fundamental trait of an entrepreneur. 

Although you might be able to do it all by yourself, delegating tasks will cut down your stress levels and help you focus on the bigger picture.

The way to go about it is to analyze the different pending tasks, select the tasks you want to handle, and distribute tasks that can be delegated to trustworthy team members to help you get the job done efficiently. 

  1. Maximize business management tools 

As an entrepreneur, there are many tools you can make use of to help save time and increase productivity. Among these tools are the UX research tools and Infographics. 

  • UX research tools 

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UX research tools have been created to help managers and entrepreneurs analyze tasks, regenerate reports, recruit staff, give feedback and share their findings effectively and in the most comprehensive way possible.

UX research tools are available in different categories, and you use them based on their functions, methods required, and the size of your organization.

To conduct surveys, you can use tools like Google Analytics and Kissmetrics; for project documentation and note-taking, Google Docs, Dovetail, Slite, and many others work great too. 

To conduct meetings with clients and employees remotely, you can employ Google Meets or Zoom

The list is inexhaustive; you would find many other specialized UX testing tools, including Maze, Optimal Workshop, UsabilityHub, and many others. There are also specialized tools to make your recruitment process smooth and fast such as User Interviews, Ethnio among others. 

  • Infographics

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Infographics simplify the process of explaining data, presenting reports, and onboarding employees by providing an easy to use experience. 

Infographics save you the time of searching for images, icons, or illustrations when you want to present reports or explain the value of your products. 

You don’t have to worry about making complex and complicated data look simple; all you need to do is make an infographic to help simplify your data and grasp your audience’s attention. 

Conclusion 

Time Management is an entrepreneur’s greatest asset. It enhances productivity and improves efficiency, helping them scale their business. 

By inculcating the tips and strategies explained in this article, you will start to see improvements in your ability to manage your time efficiently to achieve best results in your business.

Adam Hansen
 

Adam is a part time journalist, entrepreneur, investor and father.