The term “entrepreneur” is a broad one. When you’re an entrepreneur, one constant is that you’re building a business. When you’re building a business, time is one of the most valuable resources you have, and it’s probably in short supply.
You’re trying to build an empire, and you’re likely doing a lot of the hands-on work yourself. Even if you’re at the point where you can outsource some of the work, you might still prefer to have a hand in everything that goes on in your business. You also have a life outside of your business that you want to manage.
How do you do it all when the amount of time you have in a day is limited? The following are some tips to make your life easier as an entrepreneur, both inside and outside work.
Outsource Household Tasks
While you may be an entrepreneur who’s still in the early stages of growing your business, with a limited budget, you can still outsource some of those household tasks that take you away from more important things.
If you’re a renter, choose a community that offers a host of services included in the cost of your monthly rent.
For example, there are companies like Valet Living that partner with rental communities throughout the country to handle everything from door-to-door trash pickup to pet walking and care. These small tasks take more attention everyday than you might realize, and instead of working on your business or spending time with your family, you may be dedicating too much time to these chores that could be otherwise outsourced.
Set Hours for Yourself
While we’re often told to think like an entrepreneur instead of an employee, if you are an entrepreneur, you might want to shift your mindset to that of an employee.
What does this mean?
Create boundaries and set specific working hours for yourself just like an employee would have. You can’t work 24 hours a day because you will experience burnout at the least, and at the worst other parts of your life such as family life will suffer greatly.
When you set your hours stick with them. That includes making sure you’re not responding to emails all night.
Additionally, schedule your unstructured time. It might sound counterintuitive, but having unstructured time where you enjoy your personal life or other interests is critical to avoid burnout. If you schedule your unstructured time, you’re more likely to stick with it and give yourself the break you need.
Identify Non-Essential Work Duties
Just like there are non-essential home duties, there are also work duties that can be characterized in the same way. It’s important for entrepreneurs to put the majority of their work hours and their mental energy toward higher-level tasks and strategy.
Sit down and write a specific list of the work duties that you’re doing, but that you don’t have to be. You can also include things that aren’t necessarily your strong points because you’re not going to be good at everything.
Find ways to outsource these either to existing employees or to contractors and freelancers.
Do An Audit of Your Time
You may have no idea how much time is going toward tasks, and there could be more productive, efficient changes to make. Do a time audit, just like you would do a financial audit. Create a list of things that you’re doing on any given day. Time yourself and write how long it takes you to do them.
Then, use that audit to identify places where you can cut down on time spent. As part of your audit, prioritize these tasks. Put them in a list starting with the most important and essential first. When you’re prioritizing tasks, you’ll need to consider deadlines, ROI and overall significance a task can have in terms of growing your business.
A time audit can help you see where you should spend less time and also where you can delegate.
Create a Roadmap
Finally, sometimes as an entrepreneur, you can get bogged down by the day-to-day tasks that need to be done. There will be some of these tasks that are inevitable, but it can make you lose sight of the big picture and ultimately that big picture is what’s important as you build a business.
Create a long-term roadmap for your business and yourself. Determine long-term goals and keep focused on these, even as you’re managing the day-to-day. You can break down long-term goals into more manageable milestones.
