10 golden strategies to become a perfect master in BUSINESS time management

The entrepreneur is a real hero of our time! This is a person who must keep up with constantly changing laws, manage his own business, keep track of all the details of his business, keep financial records, communicate with clients, and work with staff. This is a real juggler, in whose hands there are many balls, and none of them should fall. An entrepreneur, unlike a hired employee, cannot leave the office at 18:00 and forget about work. He constantly thinks about his business: how to improve, how to earn more, how to attract customers, how to build a team. And often the entrepreneur burns out because the energy runs out. So, how can you take back control of your time and attention?  Here are 10 golden strategies for overcoming distractions, reclaiming your focus and being more productive.

1. Be in control of your time: Make a spot for all activities that take your time. Knowing exactly how you spend your time can help you make decisions such as delegating certain tasks or using software to speed up certain processes. These days, you can automate a variety of work functions and activities. If you’re producing a physical good, you can likely automate production with the right machinery. If you’re working in a digital space, you can automate your sales, recruiting, customer service and even your marketing campaigns. If you are a freelancer or business owner, using online financial services such as Finom can dramatically cut the time you spend on boring administrative accounting and can help you to switch focus from problem-solving day-to-day tasks to generating fresh ideas, improvements and creating  innovations. Let’s have a quick look at key benefits of automation:

• Time savings. It is a bit of a no-brainer that automation saves time. If you spend 15 minutes a day on a task that can be completed automatically by an algorithm, introducing automation could save you one hour and 15 minutes each week. Imagine, that adds up to more than 60 hours a year.
• Error reduction. We’re all capable of making mistakes, but robots don’t have the same weakness. If you send a series of onboarding e-mail messages to new clients from memory, you might forget a step or omit customers occasionally. But an automated drip campaign will never make such a mistake.
• Scalability. Automation makes all your workflows scalable. Instead of hiring and training new people one by one, you can use the same algorithms and the same tools no matter how large your company grows.

2.Setting a time limit for an activity can also be fun. Set a defined time limit, for example an hour or two. Then try to complete the activity within the allotted time. Think of it like a race and this can actually be fun.

3. Avoid perfectionism, avoid over-analyzing everything you do. This doesn't mean being careless, but once you've finished a task, you need to move on.

4. Having a to-do list always saves time and keeps you focused and motivated and allows you to see and track your progress. Flagging things as “DONE” feels good!

5. Planning ahead is a key part of time management. When you know exactly what needs to be done for the day or the week, you'll stay organized and focused. Even spending just a few minutes planning ahead can transform the way you work.

6. Start the day with your most important tasks. All those stressful tasks, most of your work, the hardest tasks, do them in the morning. The reason is simple. You have more energy, so you will be able to deal with them at your best.

7. Delegate and outsource: you can't do everything alone, so delegate if you can. Maybe it's time for you to instruct someone to do some of the simplest processes in your job. This allows you to focus on bigger projects or more complicated tasks. Again this is where Finom can help you out. For example when you need to reconcile invoices with payments or when you need to issue an invoice to a client on the fly! With Finom you will get paid 20% faster and don’t waste time matching invoices with bank payments. Easy, quick and reliable.

8. Focus on one task at a time: if you are carrying out an activity, follow it until the end. Avoid abandoning your current task and doing something else. It is not only bad time management, but also a loss of concentration. You will lose your momentum.

9. Use software tools for time management. On the Internet you can find a large variety of apps and tools useful for business management, especially for monitoring and evaluating daily processes.

10. Try some of the most famous methods to manage priorities, organize work and avoid distractions. Our mind is like a muscle. We need to train our brain to be concentrated and focused for longer periods of time. A great way to begin doing this is a  famous “Pomodoro Technique”. It works with a timer to break down work into intervals, traditionally 25 minutes in length, separated by short breaks. Each interval is known as a pomodoro. The idea is like to make a game of it - challenge yourself not to distract until the timer rings. Just try, and you will be amazed about your productivity results!

In a business environment, where entrepreneurs are swamped with things to do and where employees are hired based on their productivity, learning time management skills is a great way to gain both immediate and long-lasting benefits. Our tips will help to keep focus, avoid distractions and engage fully in the working process, instead of fighting with small day-to-day activities and stress. Being aware of time will give you inspiration for self improvement and more likely for achievement business goals and bringing your business to success.