Productivity Tips for Time-Starved Small Businesses

As a small business owner, you have to be fiercely protective of your time, because when you’re at the helm of your company, no one else is going to do it for you. With that in mind, we’ve corralled our best tips to help you maintain your productivity when it feels like there aren’t enough hours in the day.

Focus on the Most Complex Tasks First

The mornings are when most of us are at our most energetic. That means reading emails or attending meetings probably isn’t the best use of your time at that moment. Devote yourself to the harder, more complex tasks that tend to require more brainpower and you’ll be surprised at how well you’re able to focus on them and make real progress.

Remember, more isn’t necessarily better, so just because you didn’t get a lot of tasks done in a short time doesn’t mean that you weren’t productive. You still made headway even if you spent all your time working on one large, complicated project. Even small steps mean you’re making progress.

Ditch Multitasking

It might seem like a great way to get tons of stuff done, but countless studies have shown that multitasking really isn’t the productivity booster you think it is. In fact, it can lead to greater inefficiency, which means more tasks are left half-done or not done to your ordinary standard of quality.

Plus it’s not worth spreading yourself mentally thin and risking the feelings of burnout.

Make Use of Calendar and Note-Taking Tools

Whether you schedule your to-do’s in a tried and true day planner or you’ve taken to online tools like Google Calendar, managing your time productively means being able to use your preferred tools. Whatever those are for you, embrace them. Even if that means carrying around a little notepad to jot your thoughts down in, whatever works for you works for you, so use it!

Don’t Forget to Set Aside Some Time for Yourself!

If you need a mental “reset” from time to time, schedule that in! Even if you give yourself fifteen minutes to browse Facebook or your favorite news or social sites, scheduling that in will give you something to look forward to, rather than taking that break and endlessly scrolling through the pages (which is exactly what they want you to do!) and before you know it, an hour has passed!

In addition to setting aside time for your “online” breaks, don’t forget to take care of yourself personally as well. You can’t possibly be productive when you eat unhealthy food, don’t get enough sleep, and don’t get up and move from time to time.

Beyond that, if you work from home, try not to bring your work home with you. It can be tempting to try to get ahead by working on extra things after hours, but the amount of work to be done expands to fill whatever time you give it, and soon you’ll find that you don’t have time to do the things you enjoy.

Suddenly your hobbies and pastimes fall by the wayside and in time, can be forgotten, which in turn causes you to resent your work and creates a vicious cycle.

Keep in mind, we don’t tell you this to discourage you from running your business, but rather so that you know what to expect when you’re just starting out or what to do when you’ve hit a productivity roadblock. We all feel productivity slumps from time to time, and knowing how to properly manage our time effectively is what can get us back on track and doing our best.

Let the Experts Help!

Finally, one of the most important facets to look at when you’re working to boost your productivity is what can be delegated. Oftentimes, marketing tasks are the first things to get shifted to the back burner; not because you don’t want to do them, but rather because each one is so involved that there just isn’t enough time.

When your list of marketing to-do’s keeps getting longer and longer, take a moment and reach out to the team at Workdom. Our experts run the gamut of all types of marketing services, from social media to customer service, web design to martech implementation and much, much more.

Plus, because our platform is entirely chat-based, you can log in, assign what you need done and then relax, knowing it’s in the hands of true professionals. Talk with one of our senior marketing professionals today about your business goals and your plans and let’s work together to help you achieve them — productively!

Originally published at https://www.workdom.io on June 25, 2021.