As a small business owner, time is your most valuable asset. While you can recover lost revenue and replace staff members, you can never get time back. Honing your time management skills is important to the success of your small business, and My Admin Co can help you to guard your time carefully.
Track Your Time
Before you can identify areas for improvement, you need to understand where you are currently spending your time. Use a spreadsheet or sheet of paper and track your personal and business-related activities for at least one typical workday. List the tasks you completed, start times and end times. Try your hardest not to alter your behavior, even if that means jotting down that you spent 45 minutes on Instagram before bed.
Find Your Weak Points
Once you’ve tracked a day, you should pay attention to where you are wasting a lot of time. Categorize your activities by what purpose they serve (personal, business, etc.) and then categorize them further. Many small business owners are shocked to see how much time in an average day is devoted to things like answering the phone, scheduling meetings, checking emails, running errands and playing phone tag with clients.
Delegate Wisely
When assessing some of your time-consuming weak points, you should consider delegating them to other team members and outside experts like My Admin Co. Even if you’re only spending 1 hour a day answering the phone and scheduling meetings, those 5 hours a week could be put towards much better use by hiring a phone answering service. And, by outsourcing these tasks to professionals, you also don’t need to worry about training employees how to take over. Instead, you’ll be simply handing the reins to a trained professional who knows what to do.
Avoid Multi-Tasking
While some small business owners will say that multi-tasking is an important skill, multiple studies have shown that people who multitask think they are getting more done than they actually are. By focusing on one task at a time, turning your phone on silent and honing in on what you need to do, you will increase your productivity and your performance. It’s better to do one task well than do 5 tasks poorly.
Help for Small Business Owners from My Admin Co
My Admin Co understands how hard it is to juggle running a small business with playing receptionist. That’s why we offer convenient and affordable administrative services, including answering service and meeting scheduling. To learn more about our services and take administrative tasks off of your plate, visit us online or call us today at (410) 324-3934.