Sense, Statistics and Productivity… Part 3

The third part of my Time & Motion series is about saving time – which ultimately saves you money (and stress). If you’ve missed the other blogs and want to catch up, you can read part 1 and read part 2.

As a self-employed business owner time is your most valuable asset – literally every second counts so it’s important that you spend time doing the things that add the most value to you and your business and the things that add value to your life. Before I dive into this topic I thought I’d give another top tip for going through the Time & Motion study process…

Overestimate but don’t overdo it – it’s so easy to underestimate your time and your effort when you’re looking at things, most of us are very guilty of doing this when we quote for or take on work. Make sure that as you’re noting everything down you are realistic about how long things take and how much time is dedicated to certain tasks. However, going too far and putting too much time against certain tasks is counterproductive because it will give you a false impression of your current situation.

So, the two questions you need to be asking yourself after reading this blog are:

·       Think about how long it takes you - is it a one off or a reoccurring task?

·       Think about the systems you use – are you doing this the quickest way or is there a more efficient system that may cost money but save you time and effort?

How long it takes you…

For me personally, I find it best to split tasks into reoccurring and one-off tasks because I dedicate certain chunks of time to reoccurring work, to project work and to fire-fighting tasks. Sometimes when I take on new clients it takes me a while to fully understand their needs and which tasks/time I have to allocate and plan into my schedule so it’s an ongoing piece of work for me.

As I mentioned above in my top tip, the key to working out how long things take and how to fit them into your schedule is to make sure you’re incredibly honest with yourself about how long things take – but don’t overestimate too much or you’ll defeat the purpose.

Systems you use…

Systems are great and a lot of people think that they’re only for larger businesses but they’re not at all, there are hundreds of really great tool out there that can make life easier for any business owner but how you use these and to what extent can have a real impact on your business.

Think about Mailchimp – the free version is brilliant for writing simple emails and creating a single customer list. However, if you want to send emails at optimum times (e.g. 6pm in the evening) or you want your list to work harder by segmenting it then you need to invest in the paid version. Although spending money might sound off putting the savings in time and effort from having the ability to automate emails, pre-schedule content going out or run multiple lists really outweighs the financial outlay.

Are there systems you can implement to make things run more smoothly or that you could adopt to make things easier for you?