Are You Making These Time Management Mistakes as a New Entrepreneur?

Being an entrepreneur means being in a position to convert your ideas into a reality, and guide a young business through growth and development to become a highly successful enterprise. But the early stages of building a business can often be difficult, and there are many challenges a new entrepreneur will face: making the leap, leaving a previous career behind, securing financing, building a team, and earning a positive reputation.

However, one of the biggest challenges a new entrepreneur will face is time. Small business owners have a tendency to ‘wear many hats’; in the days before bustling teams and organisational structure, entrepreneurs dip their toes in across all aspects of business operations, wherever they’re needed, which can lead to feeling burnt out.

Being an entrepreneur means being busy, but it shouldn’t mean feeling overwhelmed. If you’re struggling to keep on top of things, you may need to manage your time better.

Here are five common time management mistakes, and how to fix them:

1. Being TOO flexible

As a new entrepreneur, it’s essential to ‘go with the flow’ and take a flexible approach to business operations. But there is such a thing as being too flexible! Starting a new day without a plan and simply seeing where things take you is unlikely to generate results. Instead, create an action plan for each day to ensure that vital tasks are accomplished, but be sure to leave a generous buffer to handle unexpected surprises.

2. Not being flexible enough!

Being too flexible can be problematic, but so can not being flexible enough. New entrepreneurs have a lot riding on their shoulders, and it’s natural to want to oversee everything yourself. However, one of the most vital aspects of time management is knowing when to delegate. While difficult, taking a step back from some of the more predictable or low risk business activities is a great way to free you up for new tasks.

3. Failure to prioritise

Entrepreneurs will often have a very long list of things to do, and one of the biggest mistakes that you can make is ticking items off the list in the order that they came in. It’s certainly the most organised method, but it’s not great for ongoing growth and development. Tasks must be prioritised based on urgency and importance, and this is also a time to be ruthless: if a task isn’t 100% necessary, remove if from your list for now.

4. Not considering support

No one said that entrepreneurs have to do everything themselves. In fact, there are all sorts of support tools available for small businesses today which really can take some of the pressure off. If the tools are available, then use them! Small business apps are ideal, especially tools which automate some aspects of day-to-day business operations to free up your valuable time so that you can concentrate on other important activities.

5. Lack of review

Time management is a complex area, and the truth is that what works for one entrepreneur may not work for another. The secret to success is to try a variety of techniques and review these methods at a later date. What works? What doesn’t? A time tracking app can be useful for this, showing you when you’ve been most productive, and when you’ve struggled. Use this data to tailor your approach.

Identify Your Weaknesses

While fixing these 5 mistakes are essential for better time management, there is one aspect that is the most important of all: acknowledging the problem. As a new entrepreneur, it’s easy to justify feelings of burn out as being part of the process, but unless you acknowledge that there’s a problem, there’s no motivation to do anything about it. Everyone has a weakness. Some people naturally have less-than-perfect time management skills. Don’t hide the problem under the rug. Embrace it. Solve it. Simple