For many small business owners, one consistent issue is that there is simply not enough time in the day to achieve all the things that need to be done.
Have you ever got to the end of the day, having worked non-stop for the entire day, and still found yourself thinking “what on earth have I achieved today?” If the answer is yes, then you might need to consider some strategies to free up some time for productive and focussed activities.
Strategy 1: Do Not Disturb!
All too often we come into our business premises with a list of tasks that we intend to complete. The telephone rings, customers and suppliers want time, colleagues come into your office also seeking your time, and emails and correspondence continues to flow onto your desk. Many of us try to avoid this by working from home when we really need to get something done, but that’s not always practical.
If many of your employees have this issue too, then it might be worth considering whether to switch your entire premises into Do Not Disturb (DND) mode for 1-2 hours per day.
The DND mode includes no external telephone calls coming through to employees, no internal telephone calls, no disturbing employees internally, and a discipline to switch off emails other than those that are relevant for the important to-do list of the individual employee. The net result of this is that people get more of a sense of achievement at the end of a day, and this often results in a feeling of satisfaction and far less stress.
Strategy 2: Delegate
If you have ever found yourself thinking “it is easier to do it myself”, then maybe try and discipline yourself not to do so and delegate (and, if necessary, train) where at all possible. There is a fine line between delegation and abdication – supervision is required when one delegates, and feedback is helpful so you can keep control of the process.
If you have asked somebody to do something there has to be an assumption that this will be done unless you have been told otherwise. It is a mistake to allow anybody not to tell you if they can’t do something that has been agreed to be done. This may sound obvious, but the research is quite clear; there are too many occasions where things just simply do not get done despite requests, and the end result is you end up doing it yourself anyway.
Strategy 3: Manage your emails
We all receive too many emails and the methodology that may work for some employees is to have emails sent to another supporting source, whose job it is to read all emails with the following three outcomes:
- Delete emails because they are not relevant;
- Forward onto the relevant employee with the words “Please read but no action required”; or
- Forward onto the relevant employee with the words “Please read – action required”.
You can also adopt the “One touch” only rule – in the ideal world you should read an email or letter only once and deal with and respond to it there and then. To have to re-read is generally considered inefficient. Alternatively you might use flags to triage your emails, giving them a quick scan and then marking their importance so you know which ones to go back and deal with later.
Strategy 4: Manage your environment
Often we want our colleagues to feel that we have an open door policy, and that they can come and talk to us freely. But sometimes a closed door can be your super-power – if colleagues are used to the door being open they are likely to not want to interrupt when they see it closed unless they have a truly urgent enquiry.
The same goes for seating arrangements. If you have an unoccupied chair near your desk, anyone who comes to speak to you will sit in it, and the more comfortable they are, the longer that conversation will take! So maybe hide the spare chairs in a less accessible location to discourage people from lingering unnecessarily!
By adopting some or all of the ideas listed above, you could create an additional amount of productive time for yourself and your colleagues, which will let you get round to all those jobs you’ve been meaning to do… like compiling and sending us the information for your tax return!
