Managing time as a business owner can become a high priority. To maximize profits, a business owner should spend more time on income producing tasks, and less time on non income producing tasks. To this end, is helpful to:

1. Focus on Generating Income — Separate your tasks into two separate lists, those that produce income and those that don’t. You want to set up a system that enables you to spend the right amount of time doing income producing tasks while making it easy to do the other tasks, which while they may not produce income still need to be accomplished.

1. Set Goals — The time-management success secret for any business owner is that there is no real secret, you can’t really manage time, but you can manage what you do with your time. Having daily, weekly, monthly goals written-out very explicitly is an important factor in effective time management for a business owner. If you don’t know what needs to be done and what you’re working toward, you will be just flailing around with no direction. What is your ultimate business goal? What one goal do you want to accomplish this year? What are the steps that you need to take to achieve the goal for this year? Will that goal enable you to get closer to your ultimate business goal?

1. Create a Plan — Another time-management success secret for business owners is that you must have a written plan. Just like you need a map to go on a cross country trip, you need a plan to achieve your business goals. The best way to create an accurate and workable plan is to start with the end-goal and work your way backwards toward today. But, making the plan does more than just help you reach your goals, it helps you to manage your time effectively while arriving at your destination healthy and happy. Having a business is an exciting journey in which to take part, but if you have no plan and are so harried that you can’t breathe it will feel more like a nightmare.

1. Schedule Everything — The truth is, you can have all time-management success secrets for business owners written out and planned but without creating a schedule you can’t get hold of the time in a helpful way. In addition to focusing on income generating tasks, setting goals, and crafting plans of action, it is imperative, for ultimate time management, that you schedule everything. Schedules can be adjusted, but if you make it a rule that you only reschedule for truly important reasons and emergencies, you’ll find yourself with more time. Time to do what you want to do with your business, as well as with your family and friends.

Track Results — This is one of the most important time-management success secrets for business owners. Once you create a plan of action and start implementing it, track the results to see if you are accomplishing the goals you’ve set out to realize. If you’re not seeing the results that you want, rework each aspect of your goals and plans. Evaluate your calendar to make sure you’re making the most of each day.

To Your Success,

Valarie Hurst

Valarie Hurst & Company