Productivity tips for the time-poor entrepreneur

By Angie Nelson

latest version December 20, 2021. Disclosure: We may receive compensation if you sign up or purchase products linked below. Details of offers may vary and you should confirm them with the company before taking action.

I asked mine recently Facebook Followers for their biggest home business or blogging hurdle. No. 1 was the answer Time management.

Let’s be honest, productivity can sometimes go out the window when you’re not clocking in or out like traditional work. This leaves many home business owners feeling “time poor” and all they do is work. It doesn’t have to be that way. You’re probably wasting more time than you realize.

Here are a few tricks to help you manage your time like a boss.

Turn off notifications

There are three things that can blow up my day before I know it: inbox notifications, social media notifications, blog comment notifications. You want to think that it will take a moment to open and read the message. Before you know it, 30 minutes have passed. And this can go on all day! It doesn’t need to be as present as we’ve come to believe. If someone expects an immediate response from you, they don’t respect your time. Retrain yourself to check email, social media, and blog comments every few hours while you’re on the clock.

Set a time limit

Now that you’re only checking for periodic updates, set a deadline for your responses. This will help prevent “wandering”. If you only have 15 minutes to respond to Facebook messages, you’re much less likely to hit your newsfeed, start clicking through links, start clicking through more links… same goes for breaks. If you step away from your desk to change laundry and use the restroom, give yourself 10 minutes. That’s enough time to do what you need to do but not enough time to start a family project.

Work with your internal clock

We all have times of the day when we are naturally “in the zone.” I get up early, do most of my communications, networking and short blog updates in the morning, zone out from mid-morning to late afternoon on client work, and then I write longer posts until I’m ready to call it a day. This is what works for me. Recently. You can even change your productive times with the seasons. Whatever they are, work with them, not against them.

Smart Outsourcing

Regardless of your budget, there are times when outsourcing is simply smart. If you’re spending 3 days trying to learn something you’ll only do once, that’s a poor use of your time. If you hate a job so much that the very thought of it makes you want to avoid your home office, give it to someone else (like a virtual assistant) so you can get back to making money. You should always be aware of your profit margin. If you can make more money doing something else than the time you spend doing that crap, outsource it. This is good business sense.

Use apps

I recently installed any On my browser and phone. This app allows me to manage my personal and work to-do lists anywhere and anytime. I can also set it to send me priority task notifications and mark them as they are completed.

hug “delete”

Stop saving everything! I know you have dozens of things in your Google Drive, Inbox, etc. that you’re saving for some day. It is subconsciously stressing you out. Prioritize it at the end of the week by removing unnecessary items that haven’t been taken to the next step, completed, responded to, planned, etc. Get it out of your way! Same thing goes if you have 30 browser tabs open at any one time. Turn them off if you don’t need them immediately; You can hide them in the bookmark manager and they will be waiting for you.