Happy New Year from OfficeTime! Besides vowing to take better care of our body (losing weight, joining a gym) and our money (getting out of debt, saving more for retirement), one of the most common New Years resolutions is to take better care of that other priceless commodity — our time!
For those of you who are juggling running a business with family and the occasional recreational interest, there never seems to be enough time to get it all done.
Here are a few tips just to help you make better use of your time in 2016.
1) Delegate more. Why are you so frazzled trying to micro-manage your business? Leverage the resources and talents of your team and let them own their jobs. Holding people accountable for their own performance can take a lot less time than spending all of your time doing the work yourself.
2) Do business planning each week. If you make planning a weekly event, you can better assess what is working and what is not and make better use of time in the week to come.
3) Schedule time for yourself. So many people schedule their work-life, but then don’t plan any time for themselves to do the things they enjoy outside of work. A healthy work-life balance requires time out! Block out time on your calendar to “meet with yourself” and don’t be late to those appointments!
4) Set realistic goals. If your goals are too lofty, you’ll create more stress and tax your time too much trying to achieve them. Your New Years resolution should be to accomplish achievable goals. If you have a big goal in mind, break it down into more bite-sized micro goals that after all of them are completed, the macro goal will be as well.
5) Kill the time killers. If you’ve been using a technique or system that doesn’t seem to be working, stop using it. If you’re engaged in a business relationship that’s eating more time or money than it’s worth, break it off. Move on from time killing activities (and people) and focus on what works.
6) Track your time…of course! At the end of the day, many people look back and don’t know what they accomplished. Tracking time isn’t just for billings. Just like with your financial investments, if you know where your time is going, you’ll know how to better invest it.
We wish you a prosperous, successful and very Happy New Year!