Some of my tactics might work for you, others might not be
your style. The trick to managing the balancing act of a small business
is to throw yourself behind any time-saving tricks that fit the bill.1. Take notes (by any means necessary!)
How many stray thoughts run through your mind every day? How many of them do you wish you'd held on to?
Be they business ideas or the dreaded
"I-should-call-him-backs," these thoughts are important. That's why I
always keep my information safely stored on one of my gadgets. While
most people will tell you to keep a notebook handy, I wouldn't be
America's digital goddess if I didn't have some note-taking apps to
present to you.
The best way to keep websites, images and other cool stuff that you find on the Web is Evernote. The app helps you to easily save a cool website to all of your gadgets. Perfect for my daily Happening Now posts.
Post-it notes, as many small business owners will attest,
are a real lifesaver. That's why my other note-taking suggestion helps
you take your post-it notes digital.
Post-it Plus
lets you take pictures of any Post-it note and instantly digitize it.
That way, you'll be able to carry all of the reminders and ideas that
you've jotted down on a Post-it note with you on the go. But it doesn't
just save individual Post-it notes; you can also arrange them in
infinite combinations to help organize your thoughts.
2. Rethink your priorities
Now, taking notes is just one piece of my time-management
puzzle. There are only so many hours in a day, and figuring out where to
spend them is where things really get tough. Whenever you get an email,
what's your first reaction? Do you open it up and respond to it
immediately?
Are there certain email messages that you put off for
later? Priorities start with figuring out which tasks that you have to
handle now and which ones can safely be put off until your critical
priorities are solved. While many email providers offer features that
let you tag certain email addresses and subject lines as "priority,"
it's a little tougher in practice.
That's why small business owners everywhere are excited
for Google's Mailbox app. It works seamlessly with your Gmail account
and automatically tags certain emails conversations based on how fast
you usually react to them.
Now, I'm using Email as my jumping-off point. But
obviously ranking priorities extends far beyond whether or not you wait
to open up Aunt Gertie's new dog pictures until now or later.
While everyone's priorities differ, I have an easy way to help you visualize how you organize them.
3. Graph out your 'urgents' and your 'importants'
A priority matrix is a decision-making tool for prioritizing your day. You can organize your matrix however you want, but mine is based around four categories: Important, not important, urgent and not urgent.Here's an example of how a priority matrix might look. Keep in mind that normally, you'd be filling out this matrix with your current priorities.
Organizing your business and personal
priorities around this four-square matrix does something very important.
It helps you to decide whether or not to panic.
Listing all of your priorities on a chart like this gives
you a visual depiction of how busy you should be. It also makes that
aforementioned business balancing act just a little easier to juggle.
A fun way to build a list like this would be to create a Prezi. It's a cool presentation tool with slick animations that everyone in the tech world's going wild for.
4. Solve your urgents, delegate your importants
Remember when I said that the most valuable part of the
presentation matrix was its ability to teach you when to panic? Well,
it's also the most important tool for finding the right moment to
delegate. Here's an example: You realize that you have an important
meeting today, but you have to finish up a presentation for another
client. If you've created a priority matrix and kept it up to date, then
you'll know exactly how important both issues are.
If you realize that both events classify as both urgent
and important, then it's time to delegate some of the work somewhere
else. Reputation is everything in business. Knowing your obligations and
organizing them appropriately can be a powerful tool in protecting your
biz's rep.
5. Reflect and review
For a small business owner, the weekend is the only chance
to really be "off the clock." Assuming, of course, that you're not
working through it.
Don't worry, I'm not going to tell you that everyone needs
to work through the weekend to stay productive. I have one important
caveat for how to organize your weekend.
Whenever you've got an hour to spare, it's important to
take a look back at all of the notes and events of your week. The real
secret to making your notes and priority matrices valuable is to take a
moment to reflect on how your week went.
The best way to manage your future priorities and
obligations more effectively is to understand what went right and wrong
during the past week. All of the suggestions that I've made in this tip
have had one very important feature: They stick around.
Putting some time aside to remember all of the ups and
downs that you've forgotten over the past week can help you save time in
the future.
Protect it all
There's one major hit to your productivity that's easy to predict, but almost no one does it. It's the hard drive in your computer. It doesn't matter how organized you are, a dead hard drive brings any chances of getting something done to a screeching halt.For the ones who do think ahead and back up their gadgets — I salute you. But if you're trying to back up your gadgets yourself without my sponsor Carbonite's automated drive backup, then you're wasting precious time that could be better spent.
Backing up your computers with Carbonite is a one-step, turnkey solution that protects you and your business from losing everything when you need it most. Plus, besides saving so much time day in and day out automatically backing up all your gear, if the worst does happen getting back up to speed is a snap.
I know some folks who think they are perfectly protected doing their own backups. But backing up to external hard drives leaves your business wide open to burglary, fire or flood. What good is your backup if it's gone or destroyed?
I've used Carbonite to protect my valuable information and I personally recommend it to family and friends. Now Carbonite is helping me to protect your business, too. My listeners get an exclusive free two months added to any paid order. Click here to find out the best way to protect your business.
