When you start your own business, you often expect it to bring freedom, creativity, and shorter work hours. Paradoxically, many business owners find themselves struggling with chronic time constraints, feeling enslaved by the clock.
Time management techniques teach us prioritizing things and creating the to-do lists to help. But in the long run they frequently add on the excruciating frustration and disempowerment.
Strategies for Effective Time Management
There are several optional strategies to adopt here, but I would like to share with you two of them which saved my life massively and helped me to introduce tremendous changes that are in my experience currently.
Strategy #1: Save Yourself
Look at your list and ask yourself:
- Which of these tasks are absolutely essential TODAY?
- What will happen if I do not do it TODAY?
Funny enough most of the items could be easily passed to another person, done some other time or even not done at all!
Strategy #2: Ultra-short to-do list
This strategy allows you to be very selective about the tasks you would give your full attention to and make sure they get done. The strategy works regardless of the task size or area. The same process and principles apply to your personal stuff or business activities.
- Select 3-4 priorities and work with them
- Decide what is the task
- Which identity/persona you need to adopt
- What do you want to achieve (be very specific)
- How do you want to feel during the process
Here is what happens when you adopt this strategy. You become:
- Super focused on the priority activities
- Make sure they happen that day
- Feel absolutely the way you wanted and planned as you programmed yourself to feel that way
- Level of stress decreases – productivity increasing
The ultimate long term result is gaining the capacity to create more value
author: Maggie Biernacka
