Productivity and efficiency are the popular buzz words lately as more and more business owners try to make the most of their time during a busy day. No matter how hard you try, you simply cannot do everything yourself when it comes to running your business. Investing in your business not only decreases stress but it makes your business run more smoothly, therefore increasing profits.
If you need to improve your productivity, try these three tips:
Outsource It
Rather than being saddled with monotonous tasks and expensive software they may have to learn, many smart business owners are accepting their limitations and finding expert service providers to take over these tasks. What takes one expert an hour to do can easily take a non-savvy business owner 5 hours to complete. Is that really a good use of your time?
Start off by asking your business associates for referrals and conduct regular interviews, as though you were hiring an employee. Just because they are a virtual service provider doesn’t mean you shouldn’t have the same high standards you would expect from an employee.
Kick the Bad Habits
Are you stuck in the dark ages, doing things just because you’ve always done it that way? Analyze your business during the last year. Did you launch any programs? Were the results better or worse than you expected? Are there any new software programs or apps that will make your work more efficient? Are you still keeping your books in a handwritten ledger or are you ready to convert to a computer software program? Delegate tasks; find a new software; plan out new programs or updates; these are all things you can start doing today, not to spend money unnecessarily but to breathe some excitement into your business. Of course, if you can tell when you are making common time management mistakes and avoiding them, you will be ahead of the game.
Create an Actual Plan
Use a project management program or an old-fashioned paper planner but put your projects onto a calendar and work towards achieving those goals. Without a plan, your actions are meaningless. You might decide to work on something unrelated to your goals or you might delay your own deadlines in order to put client business ahead of your own work. A business plan is your blueprint to reaching your goals, no matter how lofty they may seem. Seeing this plan daily will give you something to focus on, therefore increasing your daily productivity.
I think one of the reasons our 52 year old busint was so successful was because I also wrote things down and had a plan. For me to see it it writing was a big help to stay focused and organized with our projects.