There will be times in your career when you feel the strain is too much. It feels as if there are never enough hours in the day to do all you set out to do, and that your to-do list is growing. This is a common emotion, and you are not alone in feeling this way. In fact, it may be a sign of success – you might be in a better position than if you didn’t have anything to do.
While it is typical for entrepreneurs to have a large list of chores to complete, it is also vital to understand that taking proactive efforts to minimize burden may be helpful.
Prioritize: Concentrate your efforts on the most critical tasks.
When you feel that your workload is constantly rising, the first thing you should think about is if certain tasks are more essential than others. When starting a business, it’s typical to have a lengthy list of things to do – and for the list of daily activities to grow as you discover more and more essential areas.
Taking a step back can help you uncover both crucial high-impact areas and low-value-add tasks that have a little influence on your organization.
Getting a sense of the relative significance of the many tasks you perform is a crucial first step in streamlining your job.
Simplify: Is it possible to make things go more smoothly?
While evaluating your activities may show some that can be totally eliminated, you will find that there are many more that you will be unable to do so. This is when it’s crucial to think about whether there’s a way to simplify the work so that you can get all (or almost all) of the benefits you were getting before with less effort.
Routine actions that can be generalized are one of the easiest places to search for simplifying opportunities (and potentially automated). It’s fairly uncommon for a firm to have a lot of non-standardization early on, with each activity being distinct as you find the best methods to do it. Over time, however, including some uniformity into the process can assist assure both consistency in the tasks you perform and a reduction in the amount of work necessary to complete the activity.
Understand that certain sections will be addressed later.
The easiest way to reduce your burden for other activities you’ve discovered is to schedule them for a later date. It’s impossible to concentrate on everything at once, so delegating certain chores to a later time will allow you to focus on the other duties at hand while also allowing you to put more attention into the postponed tasks when you get around to them.
Look for low-value-added jobs to outsource.
Once you’ve figured out how important each of your tasks is, see whether there are any that are so low-value-add that you can eliminate them entirely from your routine.
Perhaps it’s your twitter social media account, which you established with zeal but never got any momentum, you can outsource it to platforms like Twesocial which can help you jumpstart it. Perhaps it’s a side project that you started but never got any traction with.
Evaluating what do is vital for your company and what actions are fundamentally useless may frequently discover things you’ve been performing that can be stopped.
Is there anybody else you could delegate lesser duties to?
Consider whether there are any tasks that you may outsource to others as a last step in streamlining your activities. This is a crucial ability (if you want to grow your business apart from being a sole proprietor) and is likely the only method to meaningfully scale your company in the long run.
Last thoughts: Being clever, not busy, is what it takes to be an entrepreneur
Finally, remember that being a successful entrepreneur is being selective in what you focus on rather than being overworked. Yes, dedication is vital, but there will come a moment when you must carefully consider what the most effective use of your time is.