6 ways business leaders can tackle the beast that is time management

Time is essentially the most vital resource there is, not only in business, but in life in general.

With expectations for making the most out of your business and personal life, while also maintaining a positive attitude, here are some tricks and tips that provide that extra edge, making one feel prepared, calm and ready to take on the week’s tasks.

1. Create a daily to-do list and prioritise your tasks

Given the wide array of duties that business leaders have over the course of their workdays, it is very easy to get side-tracked and fail to complete never-ending check-lists.

As a result, it is important to take some time at the start of the day to create a to-do list of the most pressing items to tackle for a given day. Many also find it useful to list items in different colours, indicating their urgency.

Additionally, it can also help to break down a task into small achievable items through which one can gradually tackle a larger task without feeling overwhelmed.

2. Avoid multitasking

Multitasking might sound like a skill, but different studies have pointed towards it being a potential source of long-term negative effects to a person’s memory and focus. It could also prompt a downturn in productivity and quality at the workplace.

Therefore, it is integral to focus on one task at a time until its completion. There is no better feeling than ticking off an item from your to-do list, instead of having several open items where some work has been done on each, but none are entirely closed.

3. Be efficient with your emails and organise your inbox

Taking the time to go through and respond to a flooded inbox is often one of the most taxing and tiring tasks during a workday, especially on a Monday morning.

You can work towards minimising this by setting certain times in the day for emails, and by resisting the urge to respond to any email notifications that pop up on their screen. Employees can be informed that non-urgent emails will only be seen to during specific hours of the work day.

Additionally, there are multiple ways through which business leaders can organise their emails to reduce the congestion in their inbox, thus saving time of having to go through a series of emails that could either be needless or of no interest to them. Check out our extensive list of ways to do this by clicking here.

4. Make proper use of your calendar

Calendars have been a mainstay in life for centuries, yet they are still very often overlooked as an effective tool to manage one’s time.

Whether a physical one, or on a phone or computer, a calendar helps a great deal when it comes to keeping track of what and by when tasks need tackling. If business leaders can make use of one that is accessible on different devices and is regularly synced, even better.

It is important, however, to ensure that any appointments, meetings and other tasks that are agreed to on paper or speech are immediately inputted in the calendar to avoid completely dismissing something important.

5. Clarify meeting goals and objectives at the start

Meetings can take up a large part of one’s day, and constantly going from one long meeting to another can prove to be tiring, causing a lack of focus.

Therefore, prioritise making meetings more efficient and productive by clarifying the discussion’s goals and objectives right from the very start.

This can be done by asking oneself some simple questions, such as “what are you trying to achieve?” and “how will it be done?”, which will help keep everyone taking part in the meeting on track.

6. Delegate and outsource

A great business leader is marked by one that recognises that they cannot do everything on their own.

While some might be inclined to take up most of the work themselves when initially delving into the world of business, they will immediately notice that more assistance is required.

As a result, whenever possible, delegate some of responsibilities to competent and reliable employees, as this will not only help in terms of time management, but it will also boost morale as it shows that the particular leader trusts them.

Another idea that business leaders can consider is whether to strike a partnership with a trusted outsourcing agency to alleviate some of the pressure. These include skills such as web development and SEO analysis, along with more repetitive ones like accounting and data entry.