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Being an entrepreneur is indeed a tough and risky task. Time management is one of the major obstacles that needs to be dealt with, well in time. So how well do you deal with your time?
In case you’re among the various individuals who face some time management issues, your answer may not be positive! Maybe you feel stressed out after a hard day at work especially when you regularly need to work late to hit your deadlines.
Then again perhaps your days appear to travel between various chaotic situations and it may be distressing and dampening.
The time management mistakes happen to be very costly for entrepreneurs. To make the full use of your time it requires rigorous analysis of time management practices.
There are some very common time management issues which are very common to entrepreneurs and managers. But don’t worry…
I have got your back as these mistakes can be remedied swiftly to make improvements in your daily routine. You can achieve more by doing less but in a systemized way.
1. Failure to Delegate your work:
Be it entrepreneurs, managers, or employees. Delegation and dividing the work helps a lot in the workplace. An entrepreneur cannot achieve their business goals solely. This is the reason that they hire managers and their subordinates so that his stress and work can be divided.
If someone in your team is more capable of doing a particular task better than you then why you are still doing it? Outsourcing and delegation allow you to give off your job to somebody who can complete it on your behalf successfully.
You know why is it really important? This will allow you to focus on more important activities. You should be saving your energies for the most critical tasks.
This depends on the organizational culture you built in from day one of your company. This value should be taught to your team from really start so that they don’t mess up on things.
2. No clear vision
Having no clear vision and goals is one of the most common mistakes made by startup entrepreneurs and managers.
Whatever task you are doing the ultimate goal should be in your mind. This is quite necessary to achieve your goals efficiently and avoid any distractions. There is no big picture without a plan and it’s more likely that you will lose focus.
In many organizations, it is the norm that management does a weekly or monthly meeting to discuss the issues and remind the people of the ultimate goal of their organization.
When you have a clear vision you can set up a clean path to achieve your goals. Many successful managers have a clear indication of the results they are going to achieve; that is the reason they achieve their desired goals.
3. Not maintaining a To-Do list:
When I started my professional life I also thought that maintaining a To-Do list was just a waste of time and pose no benefit to me at all. But you know what happened next?
I end up with chaos and mismanagement. I missed out on major tasks due to the load of work. However, with time I realised that keeping a To-Do list and prioritizing your tasks is a very important thing.
Entrepreneurs should keep a To-Do list by keeping in mind a clear vision and organizational goals. Once it is done it would be easier for you to differentiate between important and unimportant tasks. The less important tasks can be delegated to subordinates so that you can focus on more important tasks.
4. Not taking breaks:
You know what? I took a 5-minute break before writing this 4th point.
Working for straight 16 hours is not a big achievement as we are human and can’t do it daily (however eliminating some exceptional cases). The main thing is to be persistent and not continuously work to achieve goals higher than your expectations.
Breaks are essential to keep focused, productive, and achieving high-level results. If you do not take frequent breaks you will very soon become distressed and procrastinate.
I have seen a lot of successful entrepreneurs using the Pomodoro technique. It is dividing your working time in equal intervals like working for 45 minutes and taking a 15-minute break in each hour. In this way, you will be able to give 45 minutes to work with full concentration.
Read more: The Pomodoro Technique
5. Losing Focus along the way:
Even after developing your vision, goals, and To-Do list most of people get distracted along the way.
We are living in a tech and social world. Our gadgets like mobile phones and laptops is full of different apps which are a big distraction while we are working. For example, when you are working and trying to meet the deadline. You suddenly get a notification from Facebook as your friend commented on your image. What do you usually do in this situation? You will be willing to check Facebook and reply to your friends.
