Making time to work on your business

The phone is ringing, you have too many emails in your inbox to deal with, you need to get work done for a customer, and a staff member has just called in sick.

For too many business owners that is a typical day, spent keeping staff and customers happy, fighting fires, and not getting to the tasks that you know you should be working on to improve your business.

There are always things you know you should be doing, but just don’t have the time to do, such as working on the next marketing activity, improving systems and processes to increase efficiency, or working on the business strategy to keep moving the business forward.  But how?

The Eisenhower Important Urgent Matrix is a good way to put things into perspective.

Daily firefighting is both important and urgent and is where most business owners spend their day.  Working on your business falls into Important but not urgent and often gets put aside.

But here is the magical part.  The more time you spend in the green box (important / not urgent), the less time you have to spend in the red box (important and urgent).

The first step to freeing up time to work on the important tasks, is to hand off those tasks that are not important, either by delegating it, or just not doing it (how many hours get spent scrolling through social media for example).

The second step is to schedule time in your week or month to work on your business.  It is important to schedule it, not just rely on when you get a chance to do it.  Prioritise the tasks so you know what is important to work on first.

Find a way to have someone hold you accountable if it doesn’t get done.  It could be your business partner, or it could be letting your team know when you expect have it done by.  It could be by working with a business coach or consultant.  Think of it as having a training partner at the gym – you are more likely to go if you have agreed to go with them.

Don’t put off improving your business, otherwise every day will be a fire fighting day.