The Good-Hearted Business Owner & Time Management

Time management isn’t actually about managing time; the purpose of it is to actually manage tasks. It’s about making the time to get the things done that need to happen so that you can get to the things your business needs from you. Most good-hearted business owners misuse their time, they see not spending time on tasks as not being personal, not being friendly, or being too limited.

But, as an owner and leader, time management is in your jurisdiction; it’s a backbone to you being a good leader. Managing your time is you being responsible to your sub-contractors and to your employees. Because it is essential that you give them feedback, and that you delegate, managing your time allows you to do that.

When you hand off a project to a sub-contractor, for example, a website redesign, you get confirmation of their timeline and note when the project is due back to you. But, without writing it down or being aware of the time, with everything else going on, bit doesn’t come back on time because you forgot to follow through. And if you’re like me, you’ll hand a project off, and three weeks later be woken up at 3 am remembering that the date has gone by.

Keep yourself, your employees, and sub-contractors accountable by marking the due date on your calendar. If you to have agreed to a date, say March 20th, then mark your calendar and on the 15th, check in on them via email. Ask whether they have any questions, and reiterate that you’re looking forward to seeing the project on the 20th. You can actually write that email after the initial conversation, save it in drafts or schedule it to send automatically on the 15th. And when it’s end of day March 20th or on March 21st, send an email asking for the project if you’ve not received it.

This is worth doing because you want the best for the team and for your business. Following up shows them that you care and holds you accountable to being on top of your project. When you don’t follow up, you’re telling them that what you’ve given them isn’t important and their work isn’t important. Keeping track, and managing your time is actually friendlier; it is what a good-hearted business owner should do.

The Process Of Delegation

The first part of delegation is for you to get clear on what exactly you’re delegating. Be clear on the goal, the vision, and the final end result.

The second part is to have the person you’ve delegated to them take it over. Grant them autonomy, and make it clear what the vision for the company is. If they’re handling the website redesign, inform them that an updated website means your site will be branded and integrated with everything else you’re doing. Tell them that their work will be helping them to drive the branding home; put the project inside of the context of what you want from them, and the vision of what it will mean for the company. You’ve now empowered them to be a contributor to the company, and not just hired them. And they now add to the overall and longer vision, which will also ensure you get higher quality work done by them.

Lastly, offer an, “Is there anything you need from me to get it done?” That question eliminates the excuse of them not being able to finish it because they couldn’t reach you. Offer support from the beginning, it encourages them to be accountable. It also places you in the position of being a servant leader, something that resonates with most good-hearted business owners, leading by being of service.

Personal Care

Are you giving your business everything? Is every free second spent on your business? That feeling of being driven, overwhelmed, or panicked will be helped by having a time management system in place. It will help you get all the things out of your head and down onto paper. Your mind will slow down if you use the system, and if not, your mind will continue to race because it won’t trust that you’ve written it down and are going to do it. You won’t get to every task every day, but you will feel productive when you’ve done some of those items, and you’ll have a clear idea of what needs to get done tomorrow.

Do a mind dump, put projects on the project list, action steps on the to-do list and now you have your next steps. Write it all down, keep to the list, make the time to do each task, and you’ll form the habit of trusting yourself to act on your system. If you jump from one thing to another, you’ll get stuck doing something that wasn’t on the list and the rest of the list gets ignored. Manage your time by leaving time for your tasks.