When you’re trying to run a business on your own, it might seem that every available hour is consumed by your work. This is perfectly normal, and even healthy – in the short term. It’s a sign that you’re passionate and industrious. These are qualities that correlate strongly with success.
If you want your success to be sustainable, however, you’ll need to think about setting some boundaries, and establishing a little bit of structure. So, what might that structure look like?
Find out where your time is really going
The first step toward claiming back some time for yourself is to simply notice how often you’re working. Track your working hours for a couple of weeks. Divide every hour according to the way that you spend your time.
New entrepreneurs tend to focus on their comfort zones. If you’re running a restaurant, then you might want to spend time cooking. But this might leave you with less time to make the creative and strategic decisions that will really change your fortunes. In other words, you’ll need to learn to delegate, and to avoid being a ‘busy fool’. An audit of your time will allow you to do this.
Protect your highest-value hours
Once you have the results of your audit in place, you can start to build a schedule that preserves your most productive hours. Think about how you’re going to block your time, and when you’re going to perform the more demanding tasks. Checking your email, or dealing with routine administration, can be done at any time. But when you really want to think, talk, and make decisions, a dedicated session is what’s required.
Automate or delegate work that doesn’t need you
You might find that you’re performing certain tasks over and over again. In many cases, these don’t make for a particularly worthwhile use of your time. For example, you might send the same kinds of emails over and over again each day.
It might be that you can hire someone to take this work off your hands. Or, you can automate it. A custom-built LLM, or a Python script, might help you to claim back priceless mental energy and innumerable working hours.
In other cases, it’s worth looking at outsourcing. Just as you wouldn’t attempt to wire your own electrical systems, or build your own premises, it often makes little sense to keep things like logistics and packaging in-house. A next-day courier service might allow you to offer better value to your customers, at minimal cost.
Build systems that keep giving time back
Reclaiming time isn’t a one-off exercise, but something that you’ll need to do regularly. You can think of it as akin to patching up leaks in a boat. You’ll need to come up with routines, habits, and schedules that make wasted time impossible. This might mean setting rules for yourself, developing automated solutions, or scheduling regular reviews and audits.
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