3 Time Management Tips for Small Business Owners

As small business owners, you’re always looking for ways to save time. If you’re reading this, you’re likely a busy retailer with a mile-long to-do list. Here are my favorite 3 time management tips for small business owners (plus a bonus tip 😉 ). I’ll keep this short and honest. Nothing I’m going to share is groundbreaking. But it’s true. And it works. 

📝 Write it down.

Seriously, just make a to-do list and watch your life change. I actually wrote a blog about this one tip in 2019, One Easy Tip to Getting Organized. I share the project management tool we use and the fact that you’re 42% more likely to achieve your goals if you write them down. That’s the added bonus to saving time. Writing things down works two-fold: You’re not wasting time trying to remember that great idea or thing you needed to do, AND you’re organizing your thoughts. Organizing leads to planning. Planning saves time. 

💡 Plan ahead and be realistic.

Fail to plan. Plan to fail. I warned you, it’s not groundbreaking information here. Failing is fine, I have no issue with it. It’s wasting time because of failing to plan that I can’t get behind. Planning ahead and being realistic will save you time. At Crystal Media we recently started creating project briefs to help us plan. A project brief is an overview of a new project and a condensed version of the plan. It’s usually during this phase that we start to see holes or extra “things” we’ll need. Learning these things at this stage allows us to make realistic plans, in turn saving us time working on something that isn’t right or goal-oriented. 

🤚🏼 Touch things once.

If it will take you less than 2 minutes to finish something, do it right away. Contrary to the first tip, don’t write it down. Do it and move on with your life. Touch it once. Along the same vein, don’t open or read an email if you don’t have time to respond to it. Touch the email once, when you have time. I understand if you’re on your sales floor and a customer walks in that you have to stop what you’re working on. This tip would not apply then. 

🌟 Bonus tip. Become an Insider today and save time marketing your store.

Get instant access to our Clarity Portal and on-demand training videos, our signature training course, Social to Sale, and so much more. We’ve just added Pinpoint—the ultimate time-saving search feature that finds instant answers to your social media questions. Learn more about Insider and join before the price increases on April 1st. 

Time is our most valuable resource and I want to encourage you to work hard to protect yours. If you’re not worried about this, try to remember to take time to just think. And making time to think allows for endless possibilities. ✨

Do you have any time management tips for small business owners? Please share them in the comments below.

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