Have you ever gone to work and looked up and you have less than an hour before it’s the end of your shift and you haven’t gotten hardly anything done? If that’s happened to you, don’t beat yourself up about it, the time has slipped away from us all, especially on our busiest of days. But that doesn’t excuse the fact that you weren’t able to fulfill your work responsibilities for the day, either… The real question is WHY are you not able to complete your workload in a day’s time?
To be fair, some people do have incredibly large workloads that would be impossible for anyone to complete in a day’s time. But in most cases, people aren’t able to complete their job responsibilities because they’re not optimizing their time at work.
That’s not necessarily saying that you’ve been goofing off at your desk but more so that there’s a lack of organization that’s preventing you from getting the most out of your workday.
As a business owner, time is money, and time is your greatest asset. You can lose money and get it back… You can even lose a business and get it back, but time… time is something that’s irreplaceable. Once you lose it, you can’t ever get it back, and that’s why you have to run and operate your business with a time strategy to get the most amount of work done in the time you have in your workday.
Let’s take a look at some tips to help you get the most out of your workday.
Ways to Effectively Maximize Time in Your Workday
Identify and Minimize Distractions
It has been said that distractions are the number one killer of productivity. Things like emails, smartphones, social media, and unnecessary meetings are some of the biggest and most common workplace distractions there are and can slow the productivity of any business. Once you can identify the distractions in your business, you can put together a plan of action to reduce, and ultimately, eliminate them.
Have the Right Systems in Place
Advancements in technology have completely changed the face of business operations. It was once thought that having paper documents and filing cabinets were a thing of the past, but our world has become so advanced that if you’re operating a business from multiple different forms of software, your business operations are now looked at as “prehistoric!”
To run a successful and efficient small business, you need an all-in-one, fully integrated program like JDE software to streamline your daily operations. Not only will all business reports and documents be located in one place, but you’ll have access to all company data in real-time. With the right systems in place, you’ll standardize processes and boost productivity.
Plan Your Day/Week
You have to look at your workday or workweek like going to war in the sense that you shouldn’t go into it without some plan of attack. As a business owner, you’re the one having to make the decisions, complete various types of paperwork, handle employee and customer issues, and meet deadlines… Without some kind of plan for your workday/week, you’re going to be spending the majority of your time putting out fires that could have been prevented had you taken time to properly plan.
At the end of each workday, you need to take 30 minutes to an hour to plan out the next day so that you can know exactly what needs to be done as soon as you mentally “clock-in.” The same goes for weekly planning. If you set your hours for Monday through Friday, you can take a little time on Sunday to roughly plan the entire week and set goals so that you won’t blindly enter the week with no direction.
Efficiency is key to time management. Follow these tips to ensure you’re getting the most out of every workday.
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