Tips on Time Management - Is There a Balance?

Work/life balance. A loaded phrase. Is it attainable? Is there such a thing as balance? Or, let alone a life, what about just balancing the work?

Every Founder faces the challenge of managing his or her time to be able to participate in, execute on, and be present for those things that matter most to them.For many, poor time management leads to burnout.

Yet, to scale your business you need energy and focus. If you learn to master (ha!) time management you will be more productive, more efficient, and, therefore, more profitable. 

As a Founder you are being pulled in 100 directions, responding to a range of stakeholders (employees, customers, investors, business partners, vendors, service providers…). Every day there is a fire drill and all those “to-dos” get pushed off. That list gets longer and longer, and priorities slip.

Set Boundaries

In the simplest form, setting boundaries means setting expectations. Knowing how to define your needs, your non-negotiables, and communicating those limits to those around you. In reality, most women are not bad a time management, in fact, many are very efficient, but they don’t set boundaries.

Learn to say “No”. Women, in particular, tend to be people pleasers. People pleasers say yes to everything. They don’t want to let anyone down. Or, maybe you want to say yes because it could lead to new opportunities, engagement with other kick-ass women, or a chance to grow professionally. It is hard to say no when it’s things you want to do, that may move the needle, that have a positive impact on you. But putting your head down and grinding may be the answer. Back to that word “balance”. If you are in the middle of a hiring push, product development, or any big business challenge that requires energy and focus it may not be the time to say “yes” to everything.

Leverage Your Team

It starts with hiring the right team. Trusting them and delegating responsibility and decision-making authority for the day-2-day, frees you up to focus on strategy, longer-term projects, and the building of the business.

Time spent on your team (hiring, developing and retaining) and creating a high-performing culture is time well spent particularly at the scaling stage. Sure, you also need to focus on cash management and setting strategy, but leveraging your team means you have time to focus on those matters.

You have to remove yourself from the center of it all (stop being a bottleneck); implement systems for information flow across functions and encourage collaboration; remove barriers that hinder your team’s ability to do their job; and ask yourself what resources or processes would allow them to move faster, for tasks to get done more efficiently.

Automate and outsource. Yes, resources may be tight. Maybe you hire a virtual assistant and rely on freelancers. 

Schedule Your Time

Time blocking is key. Block off time for family and work, for calls and meetings, time to tackle longer-term projects, short breaks, and free time to strategize. Align the times of day you have the most energy, most alert and focused on the bigger challenges and long-term projects. For me, I am a morning person. If I really have to really think through a challenging client project or write a blog, I do it early in the day. Exercise first thing. I schedule calls and meetings in the afternoon.

Prioritize. Most are familiar with the 80/20 rule. It’s important to focus more time on things that move the needle – high priority revenue impacting tasks, and less time on the small everyday tasks or trivial matters that seem urgent. Maybe you prioritize answering questions the team has early in the day so they can get their job done.

Stop multitasking. Women by nature are multitaskers. However, research has shown that 2.5% of people can multitask. Bouncing between projects or to-dos wastes time and the more complex the problem the longer it takes to transition and start productive work. Minimize distractions – less time management than attention management. Those conversations that will “just take minute” or those emails that pop up all day. Maybe schedule times throughout the day to answer emails in batches.

We all know time is precious. For many Founders, there is never enough time in the day. There never will be.