Time Management for an Entrepreneur: Do Less, Achieve More

Are you struggling in a hustle and bustle trap? Do you have enough time for the things you consider important? Every now and then it is worth asking yourself if you are focusing on the essential. Focusing helps you develop your time management and achieve better results.

Entrepreneurs of today are increasingly busy. More than half of them need to hurry up in order to get their work done. The stretches of uninterrupted work time are very short - less than ten minutes. Entrepreneurs often work long hours. Doing things in a constant hurry leads to hurry sickness and constant stress, and as a result, life becomes ceaseless achieving and toiling. In the following, some ideas on how you can prevent hurry sickness and concentrate on the essential are presented.

Segments of Time Management

Doing the right things is more important than doing things right.

Focusing, or concentrating on the essential, boosts your enthusiasm and makes doing things a pleasant, relaxed and effortless experience that leads to good results.

Work tasks can be subdivided into four segments of time management according to their urgency and importance. Things can be urgent or not urgent, important or not important. Thinking in terms of these segments helps you prioritize your daily tasks and focus on the essential.

The first segment is the Crisis Segment: important and urgent tasks. These tasks can come any time from the outside and they usually require immediate attention. Some examples of tasks belonging to the Crisis Segment are handling of complaints and dealing with some e-mails and phone calls coming from your customers and business partners.

The second segment is the Quality Segment: important and not urgent tasks. This is the segment in which you should invest as much of your time as you can. Doing things with foresight, planning actions, getting started on time. Establishing connections with people, maintaining and developing them. Creating opportunities, finding and seizing them. Recreating oneself and relaxing, taking mini breaks, recovering from the stress of work and everyday life during leisure time. Reading and learning, personal development.

The third segment is the Confusion Segment: not important and urgent tasks. Because the tasks are labeled as urgent, we easily perceive them as important, but compared to the tasks belonging the first two segments, these ones are not important. These include for example some letters, e-mails and phone calls you receive, as well as some meetings.

The fourth segment is the Waste Segment: not important and not urgent tasks. Puttering around (e.g. excessive surfing on the internet), a large part of e-mails, useless meetings, excessive attention to detail, and striving for perfection belong to the Waste Segment.

The problem of many entrepreneurs is that the tasks belonging to the Crisis and Confusion segments take so much time that there is not enough time left for maintaining and developing relationships or acquiring new customers. Similarly, these two segments often act as barriers to personal development.

In the ideal situation you should be able to devote at least 40 per cent of your time to the Quality Segment and cut back on the time spent on the other segments. In this way you are less busy, more goal-oriented, more balanced, more disciplined and achieve better results. You will also find yourself facing fewer crises.

Invest in flexible weekly planning and set the three most important goals for each workday in advance. Start the day by working on one of these goals. Take enough time for independent, uninterrupted work.

Have a nice and fluent day!

References: First Things First (1994), Covey, S. R., Merrill, R. A., Merrill, R. R. & Getting Things Done (2001), Allen, D.