As a small business owner, are you constantly in a balancing act juggling activities, tasks, and events each day?  Do you ever get to the end of your day and wonder where the time went?  Having good time management skills will not only lower your stress level, but also allow you to efficiently and effectively accomplish the tasks associated with the multiple hats you wear as a small business owner.
Here are 8 ways to make sure you make the most of your precious time:

1. Start your day by spending 15 minutes planning your to-do list.  A to-do list serves as a reference that allows you to stay on task, so you spend more time getting things done instead of trying to recall what you need to do.
2. Organize your business cards and make it easy to reach out and follow-up with your contacts.  Implement a CRM tool if you do not have one yet and it will be even easier to keep track of important details and reminders connected to your contacts.
3. Follow the “2 minute rule.”  If you have a task that can be accomplished in 2 minutes or less (like answering an email or paying a bill), do it right away, rather than put it off for later.
4. Create an efficient workspace to ensure you can find what you need, when you need it.  If items you use often are within easy reach, it will cut down on the time you spend walking back and forth to retrieve supplies.
5. Schedule blocks of time to return phone calls, read and respond to emails, and be available to your employees.  Investing the time to respond and interact allows you to be proactive with your time, rather than reactive and constantly interrupted.
6. Make the most of apps.  Think about a challenge or situation that leads to a loss of your productive time.  If you spend a great deal of your time on the road, consider a traffic app that will help you avoid back-ups and delays.  Does trying to remember passwords take up your time?  Use a password manager app.  With a little research you’ll find, “there’s an app for that.”
7. Manage your social media efficiently by using apps like Hootsuite or Tweetdeck to provide an easy dashboard-like view of your social media conversations throughout the day.  Tools like these enable quick management of your various accounts from a single source.  You will be amazed by how much time you save now that you won’t have to log into six different sites each day to see your messages, news, etc.
8. When possible, delegate tasks or responsibilities that someone else can handle.  We can’t always do it all ourselves, so when you need to, ask for assistance.

 
This is guest blog post by Innovatively Organized, a productivity consulting firm that helps over-extended executives and teams of small and medium sized businesses become more effective.