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Task management is critical for busy business owners. Here's how to get and stay organized.
Where does all the time go? Long hours. Late nights. Snatched lunches. Some people boast about their overwhelming work schedule as if it’s a badge of honor: “I start work at 7 a.m. and work right through 8 p.m.” Often, their Herculean claims border on the absurd. “Last night, I went to bed at 3 a.m. and got up two hours later to finish a report.”
However, this type of time crunch is often a reality for small business owners and entrepreneurs burdened with too many obligations. Successful entrepreneurs must learn how to balance their crushing workloads with a positive work-life balance to mitigate stress. We’ll provide tips on task prioritization and management to help busy business owners keep their heads above water and manage operations without pulling all-nighters.
Entrepreneurs who take a systematic approach to task organization are more efficient and less stressed. Consider the following tips for making your business more organized through task prioritization.
The ABCD task-management method is an excellent way to improve productivity by focusing on the right priorities. Here’s how it works:
Plan your week carefully to ensure you attack your top priorities first. Experts advise spending no more than 2.5 hours weekly — 10 sessions of 15 minutes each — on general planning. More time will likely yield little impact on results.
Here’s how to plan your week:
Digital and mobile task-management tools help small business owners manage their time and stay on track. Here are a few of our favorites.
Forrest McCall, owner of the entrepreneurship blog Don’t Work Another Day, uses Notion to create a prioritized task list that includes the highest and lowest return on investment. “If I manage to complete all of the most important tasks, I move on to the lower-return tasks, making it easy to manage and keep up with,” McCall explained.
Notion is available for iOS, Android, Mac and Windows. It has a free offering and paid options with additional features. Visit Notion online for more information.
Task management doesn’t have to be complicated. Felipe Zambrano, vice president of Avatrade Marketplace, uses bullet points on a Google Doc and organizes them according to priority.
“You have to categorize each task as [to] how urgent it is and also the level of impact,” Zambrano advised. “The idea is to focus on things that create a large impact and push aside those which aren’t urgent and don’t make a big improvement to your organization.”
You can use Google Docs for free via a web browser or download it as an iOS or Android mobile app.
Productboard helps businesses of all sizes determine clients’ wants and establish market priorities. Kenny Kline, president and financial lead of BarBend (recently acquired by Pillar4 Media), said it’s popular among product managers and road mappers because it “provides a powerful prioritization matrix for displaying the value/effort trade-off across all objective features.”
Productboard is a browser-based platform with subscription tiers that range from free to $59 monthly. Visit the Productboard website for more information.
Todoist is a popular to-do list app that’s been around for a while and continues to provide value. Mark Osborne, director of Prestige Roof Lanterns, appreciates functions like organizing tasks by date and color-coding them. “Although the free edition has fewer capabilities, it is extremely well designed and user-friendly,” Osborne noted.
Todoist is available as an iOS or Android app. It has a free tier and more robust options for $4 and $6 per monthly user. The Todoist website has more information.
Entrepreneurs typically generate numerous tasks throughout the day. There is always a new idea to write down, another person to contact and a project that must change direction. Teamwork.com helps leaders efficiently manage in-office and remote teams and get everything accomplished. Each worker can view a My Work tab that sorts and ranks essential tasks, so a team is never left wondering what to do while their entrepreneurial leader is out conquering the world.
You can use Teamwork.com on a desktop or via iOS and Android apps. Options range from free to $19.99 per monthly user. Learn more on the Teamwork.com website.
Entrepreneurs are responsible for myriad aspects of starting a business, such as creating a business plan, writing a marketing plan, managing finances and creating a successful hiring process. If you’re overwhelmed, you’re more likely to overlook critical tasks and miss deadlines. Our experts shared several crucial reasons why prioritizing tasks benefits entrepreneurs:
Julie Thompson and Mark Ellwood contributed to this article. Source interviews were conducted for a previous version of this article.