When you are an entrepreneur, one of the most essential practices you can learn is time management. Creating and sticking to a schedule will reduce your stress, increase focus, and keep every precious minute of your workday accounted for. When done right, calendars can go from a mess of sticky notes and scribbles to a tool that helps you visualize your tasks for the week, month and quarter. Through my years of experience as an entrepreneur and business owner, I have cultivated calendar management strategies that have helped me use my time wisely, and am happy to share them! Here are some of my tried and true tips for calendar management as a business owner, as discussed in my recent Learn-A-Latte chat!
The Importance of Calendar Management
While you may feel like you can juggle all of your appointments, meetings, and work blocks in your head, there will eventually be a tipping point in your entrepreneurial career when it becomes too much. Here are some of the reasons calendar management is vital to your success:
- Keeping Appointments: Not remembering meetings or appointments is not a good look for a budding entrepreneur. If you want to make connections and make first impressions count, keeping track of your meetings is essential. Keeping track of dates, locations, and times for meetings in one place will prevent you from forgetting about things or double booking yourself.
- Making Room For Networking: There are likely going to be networking events each month that fill up your nights and weekends. Keeping track of these events can open you up to new connections and opportunities, so it is important to have reminders for these events and their details in your calendar.
- Scaling Your Business: If you are spread too thin, then the opportunities to grow your business simply will not arise. Rushing from appointment to appointment can lead to burnout–trust me, I’ve been there. If you have a time management system, you can hustle while still finding room to breathe in your workday.
Tools and Strategies For Time Management
- Building an Effective Team: Do you take way too long to do a particular task to a mediocre effectiveness? This is not a fault, it is just proof that you likely should hire someone to help you do the work. While the hiring and training process might seem daunting and time consuming, investing in other team members can help your business grow in ways you wouldn’t be able to achieve alone. If you can free up two hours in your day by passing on a task you hate or do not feel equipped to handle, that’s a win.
- Content Batching: As discussed in a recent Learn-a-Latte chat, scheduling consistent content batching every few months provides you and your team with plenty of content to work with while also freeing up your schedule for weeks. As a business owner, you should absolutely be in the photos and content that is the branding of your company, but you also don’t have time to stop your tasks and head out for a photoshoot each week.
- Scheduling Tools: Google Calendar is a great, free resource, as you can compare your calendar with others to find times that work best for you, and also create reminders for upcoming meetings or events. You can also invest in a physical calendar or planner to keep in tandem with your online calendar.
- Saying No: A popular business philosophy is to say “yes!” to every opportunity or event that comes your way. Sometimes, however, the most effective way to use your time is to pick and choose what opportunities truly align with your vision for yourself and your company. You don’t have to sign up for every networking event taking place around your area, or say yes to every request for coffee. Valuing your own time is another way to demonstrate the value you have for your company.
As CEO and founder of Piccolo Solutions, I have had to create strategies for managing my time and my business in a way that works for me. I am happy to share the tools and strategies I have picked up throughout the years with budding entrepreneurs. At each Learn-a-Latte talk, I talk about relevant topics with like-minded business owners interested in shaking up their business for the better. I encourage you to attend the next Learn-A-Latte chat in September!
