15 Tips to Manage Your Time as Entrepreneur 2023

Regardless of how hectic their schedule is, every entrepreneur has to devote the appropriate amount of time to each activity.

Here are 15 time management tips from company owners to kick off the New Year in 2023 with a practical and profitable enterprise.

Table of Contents

1. Pay Attention to the Fundamentals of Productivity

By following productivity advice, you may accomplish more in less time.

But there are more challenging solutions. Instead, you need to alter your behaviors if you want to do more.

Making a list of daily goals can help you focus on attaining them, so do that first.

Next, be careful to set aside time for serious work and resist the urge to do irrelevant short jobs.

If you adopt a regular strategy, your productivity hacks will eventually become habits. These are the four components of productivity:

Think ahead. Get a firm handle on the timetable for your workday or project.
Remain focused. Set aside uninterrupted time for intensive work.
Consider your options carefully before deciding.
Setting the appropriate priorities can help you stay on course.
Keep your constancy. Maintain a steady pace of work.

2. Energy and the Environment Should be Considered:

Your daily chores will be divided into three categories based on the amount of time you have available.

The first group of tasks is dumb ones.
You can accomplish these activities while you sleep.
Examples include exercising, doing laundry, dishwashing, and filling envelopes.
We have distracted activities in category 2.
When your children or a coworker ask for your assistance, if you take care of these things, you won’t feel irritated when you return to your job.
You may, for instance, reply to social interactions or send administrative emails.
Focusing-related tasks are within the third group. It would be best if you gave these duties your full attention.
You get upset when interrupted while doing tasks or need more mental clarity.

If you have a strong intellect, you should always do worthwhile work. On the other hand, when you are tired or distracted, you can never finish the concentration chores you need to do.

After evaluating your mental state and surrounding circumstances, you may determine if you must complete a focused, distracted, or thoughtless task list.

Furthermore, suggest adding these chores to your Calendar. You’ll be able to give each task a deadline if you do this. You value your time and your duties as a consequence.

By doing this regularly, your time will grow without your effort. As there are only so many hours a day, doing this will also teach you to prioritize much better.

You will become more attentive and concentrated on the job at hand because of time restrictions.

Additionally, it will increase your awareness of activities that could be more worthwhile.

3. Make Self-Appointments that are Non-Negotiable:

People often put other people’s needs ahead of their own.

How will you fit in time to reflect on your performance over the last week, learn something new, hang out with college buddies, and learn something new?

Entrepreneurs can only find the time to focus on these tasks while also taking care of hundreds of other things by scheduling self-appointments. You may self-appoint in the following ways:

Keep abreast of the most recent developments in the markets you are interested in.
Learn via a portal like Coursera or online tutoring companies.
Talk casually with other company owners and your college pals, or post some icebreakers on the social accounts of influential people in your industry.
Plan your duties for the next week, month, or year.

4. Avoid Becoming Combative:

Entrepreneurs often move swiftly and want to get a lot done quickly. After all, one of the most crucial characteristics of an entrepreneur is the ability to achieve more with less.

However, being aggressive and naive may be quite different things.

Someone who makes plans but needs to follow through is likely to establish arbitrary deadlines. Several things may lead to unrealistic timescales, such as:

Omitting trivial information, such as the distance traveled between meetings.
Dependencies from outside sources are not considered.
Unknowns or uncertainties are not examined.

Being aggressive is a fantastic attribute if deadlines are handled appropriately.

However, persistently missing deadlines and exceeding limitations may negatively affect motivation. Put, and scale down on the ambitious planning of your day and week.

5. Stop Setting Strict Deadlines

To effectively manage your time, you don’t necessarily need to understand how to spread out all of your responsibilities. It’s about letting go of the stress that restricts your growth.

6. Allocate Time for Unstructured Activities

Unstructured time is time set aside for nothing, as the term implies. Anything other than job schedules and personal appointments is “nothing.” In other words, your unscheduled time is your “me time.”

However, effective time management also involves controlling your unscheduled or “slack” time.

Why is that? You become busy as you add more items to your Calendar.
You push yourself more and more to the point of physical and mental tiredness as your workload increases.
Burnout or even illness might be the final outcome.
To succeed, entrepreneurs need to take care of their health.
Even if it’s just for one or two hours, if you have some free time, you may sleep, work out, or take care of yourself.

This may be carried out once a week or twice a week.

You are more creative, rested, and stress-free during these periods of mental freedom. You’ll feel more energized, focused, and attentive as a consequence.

7. Give Technology a Rest:

The importance of technology to today’s businesses is practically universal. A firm may use it in every area, including communications and customer relationship management.

Today’s businessperson knows how to use technology to save important minutes and hours.

Despite this, many individuals feel tempted to check their preferred social media websites or channels while at work.
Some people may grow too dependent on technology, which might work against them.
But whether you can stop scrolling or if you keep clicking while working depends on how strong your willpower is.
Larry Rosen, Ph.D., was consulted by the American Psychological Association for guidance about attention deficit disorder.

He advises studying how to boost it, for instance, to lengthen your attention span.

Check your emails and notifications after working for 15 minutes. Increase the period when you can avoid using technology for more than 15 minutes.

8. Be Ready for Diversions:

For business owners with responsibilities to their families, being interrupted during the workday may be devastating.

You can find yourself dealing with unneeded issues, even from coworkers.

Your vehicle may break down on a remote road, a star performance might cause you to take an extended leave of absence, you might get into a car accident at work, or your top client might send you a scathing email.

It’s challenging to adapt to these unanticipated occurrences when your Calendar is packed with your duties.
Maintaining white space in your daily plans can help you stay on track with your daily and weekly goals.

9. Comply with the Chain of Command for Communications:

Entrepreneurs often have to accommodate demands. But the actual query is: Can we constantly be in meetings?

Meetings are, without a doubt, the most significant time wasters, particularly when they are external and require travel.

For instance, after four meetings, it appears as if your day magically vanishes. But is going to every meeting really necessary?

Fortunately, adhering to the chain of command’s communication will save you time and money. When arranging meetings, work your way down from the top.
If an inquiry cannot be resolved by email, think about setting up a call or online conference using Zoom or your preferred calling service.
What should you do if you cannot answer a request via phone or online meeting? Only after that should you arrange a face-to-face encounter.
Accepting an in-person meeting when a phone call or email may answer a request is inappropriate.
Have you recently gotten a call or a request for an appointment?
Before scheduling a time, ask your partner if they have any queries. You can usually answer them by email.

Consequently, if you attend the meeting, you’ll know exactly what will be discussed.

It is often preferable to meet in person with clients, partners, advisers, and future workers to negotiate or forge connections.

You can convert a couple of your in-person meetings to online meetings or even emails by going through your meeting schedule.

You may do more work and save hours with just one little tweak. The chain of command for communication is summarized as follows:

Initial, Email
Next, make a phone or web call.
Final Face-to-Face Meeting

10. Use Automation as much as You Can:

The amount of time spent does not indicate how hard you are working. It would be best if you worked more effectively and innovatively rather than harder.

An intelligent business person can put in only a few hours of hard effort to succeed.
They can accomplish their objectives by using technology.
To save time, the objective is to identify which tasks or procedures may be automated.
As an entrepreneur, you undoubtedly have a never-ending list of projects, goals, and business worries on your mind.
You may quickly eliminate numerous tedious jobs with the help of several excellent time management applications.

With the help of these tools, you may increase productivity and simplify your job.

To manage things like contracts, invoices, and proposals, you may also want an automation program like Hello Bonsai.

You may submit bids and request contracts for independent contractors with Hello Bonsai.
You may manage your leads and customers, keep tabs on your spending, and manage freelancer invoicing and payments.
Additional scheduling tools include Calendar. When booking a meeting, Calendar checks the associated calendars for available times.
You may choose the meeting’s duration and add or delete times.

A physical address, a phone number, or a Zoom link may also be included. You may email meeting participants your availability after setting up your preferences.

They may reserve a time with just one click, and Calendar will add it to your Calendar and send out invitations to the guests.

11. Give in to Change:

As we learn to do things and create methods for doing something, we all develop habits of doing things a specific way.

As a company owner, things might sometimes alter. Systems, inventions, technologies, and your company strategy fall under this category.

For instance, compare calendar applications vs. physical calendars.
There are times, however, when it is beneficial for a company owner to assess their operation.
Ask themselves, “Are you stuck doing things in the old, outdated, inefficient, and unproductive manner, wasting your time? “
It’s great to have a method that increases your productivity.
The purpose of systems is precisely to do this.

However, being upfront about whether your plans are stealing time from you would be best. Again, there is no condemnation here.

You will gain a lot from your response to this question. And keep in mind that you are the one who must effect this transformation.

12. Create a Kill List:

In essence, he must uphold the promises made on the notecards. The fact that he writes these cards in the morning makes them an excellent way to start the day.

13. Efficiency or Productivity?

Efficiency and productivity often need clarification. Although It is often seen as equivalent, there is a substantial distinction between the two ideas.

The amount of an individual’s production is their productivity. It is just the quantity of work you complete.

Contrarily, efficiency concerns the amount of time and resources you invest in your task.Consider that there are two teams.

Five members of Team A will complete Task 1 in 10 hours.
Team B has three employees to complete Task 1 in the same amount of time.
Task 1 is completed by both teams simultaneously; however, Team B seems more effective in this case.
You must simultaneously be effective and productive if you want to thrive as a manager or entrepreneur.
The quality and standards of your job, not just the quantity, set you apart.

Knowing your objectives and purpose can help you choose the best action. That is how to maximize your time.

14. Develop a Success Mindset

Do you know what “entrepreneurial mentality” means? Yes, it’s true! Different from everyone else, entrepreneurs have unique perspectives on time.

They can concentrate on the task because of their open minds and solid self-belief. For these reasons, entrepreneurs will only squander their time or anybody else’s.

How, however, does this apply to time management? You eliminate non-essentials from your day by concentrating on achievement.
As a result, as soon as you begin focusing, planning, and prioritizing, you will succeed quickly. Are these abilities innate, or can they be developed?
They may be set through time.
An entrepreneur tries to “bite off a little bit more than he can chew, expecting he’ll rapidly learn how to eat it,” in the words of Roy Ash.
This is the core of what becoming an entrepreneur entails.

It doesn’t matter how much time you put in, how much money you earn, or how you seem to others. It instead relies on how much you value your time.

Never underestimate the power of your thoughts. Maximize your use of it.

15. Acquire Batch Master Status:

What is the most effective time-management tip for business owners? Batch processes.

In the context of batching, comparable jobs are grouped together.

Just check these three things three times rather than checking your email and social media every time you receive a message.

Additionally, you may group meetings on certain days.

The very best? Any related task may be easily batch-processed, whether writing, taking product photos, or doing research.

Instead of switching between them, it’s essential to schedule time for these activities once a day or once a week.
Without batching, you move quickly between tasks as they are assigned to you.
You could update your website, make a lot of phone calls, write many emails, and handle your money daily.
Your job includes that. However, it takes your brain a little while to activate and concentrate when you switch jobs.
In fact, getting back on track takes 23 minutes and 15 seconds, according to research from the University of California, Irvine.

Three context switches each day will cost you more than an hour.

In general, switching between things causes you to save time and energy, and it may make life feel disorganized and chaotic.