10 Useful Productivity Hacks for Small Business Owners

Do you feel like you are always running out of time?

Do you think that you are working hard as a business unit and you are providing your 100% but still it is not enough?

The simple solution to these things can be having more time. But, this is something that cannot be achieved practically. You cannot increase the time that you have, but you can decrease the time that it takes you to perform certain tasks. This is known as increasing productivity.

In today’s time, everyone needs to be productive to get the desired results whether they work in small scale industries or in a big organization. This is the time to brush your and your employee’s skills and become more productive.

Benefits of Increased Productivity:

1. It increases the profitability of your business.

2. It lowers the operational costs of your business.

3. It ensures an optimized use of the resources.

4. It improves the customer service of your business as you will be able to deliver all the projects at or before time.

5. It helps in the growth of your business.

6. It reduces waste and improves the working environment of your business.

7. It improves the competitiveness of your business.

8. It reduces employee burnout.

9. It enhances the wedges of your business.

10. It improves your and your employee’s morale.

11. It improves the engagement of your employees.

You can experience all these benefits when your and your employee’s productivity increases. This may take some time and cost you a little too, but think of this as an investment that will improve your skills and will produce effective results in the end.

Today’s input and the time you spend will save a huge amount of stress and time in the future. Productivity hacks are what we call “working smart instead of working hard.”These tips will help you in producing the same results in less time. Let’s have a look at some productivity hacks for your small business.

10 Useful Productivity Hacks for Small Business Owners:

1.   Prepare a list of Priorities:
As an owner of the small business, you will always have your table full of various tasks that you have to perform. You may or you may not have an employee for help and therefore there will be dozens of tasks that you will have to perform yourself. Let’s say you are an ecommerce merchant and perform various tasks in your logistics software or store management software. Then you must Prioritize your task with different filters to get desired results in your business.

There can be tasks like calling a customer for taking orders and you may have a task of ordering a new chair in case more customers come to your shop. Both the tasks are important but the later one is more important and profitable, and therefore you should perform the later one first.

Prioritize your tasks based on their importance in the following order:

●  Must do

●  Want to do

●  Will do in free time

There are better tools available in the market for prioritizing the tasks which could provide accurate result regarding the task handling. One such tool is SmartTask. It is considered as good Clickup Alternative in the project management department.

2.   Choose your least preferred task first:
In your priority list, there will be some tasks that you will like to perform and there will be tasks that you will avoid to perform again and again. The reason can be as simple as the task is boring and you don’t like to do it, or the task can be really hard and you are not up for the challenge as of now.

However, if the task is on the priority list, you have to perform it sometime soon, and therefore the best time for such tasks is to perform them first. If you are able to complete the worst task first, then you will be left with only the good tasks, plus you will also have the satisfaction that the worst task is completed.

3.   Delegate the work properly:

A task like the packing of the product can be performed easily and in speed by your employee, however, if you sit to perform the same task, you may need twice as much time as they do. And when it comes to preparing the accounts, you will be more effective than your employee.

This shows that in order to save time and work effectively, the task should be given to the right person. Likewise, understand the strengths and weaknesses of yourself and your employees and delegate work to the person that can handle it better. You could also get the productivity with your team members If you use communication tools for assigning, sharing the work with each other. 

4.   Stop checking the emails again and again:
If anyone has replied to your newsletter? How many people have subscribed today? These are some unproductive questions that will pop-up again and again in your mind and will force you to refresh your mails.

When you are doing something, your full focus should be on that thing only. If you switch tasks in between, this will affect your productivity and project scope.

In order to avoid this, set a spare time for checking and replying to emails. Having a dedicated time for emails will save you from checking emails again and again.

5.   Avoid Social Media:
Using social media is inarguably the most unproductive thing that you can do while working. It is the most distracting thing while working. You may think of using social media for a minute or two and you will end up using it for an hour straight.

While working, make sure that you mute your mobile. If you will get messages from customers or company messages, then make sure that you logout of all the other social media sites which will not be used for your work.

When you are working for many clients then your client management becomes important for you and your business. So Social media channels must have to be avoided when handling different client works in the company.

6.   Shorten your meetings:
Meetings are very important for a business to run, but at the same time, you should know the difference between a productive meeting and a meeting in which less work is discussed and more time is wasted.

The meeting should be on point and no time should be wasted in it. Make sure that you do not call random meetings , but you do consider the full flow and the agenda of the meeting beforehand. Call a meeting only if the particular agenda requires a meeting, and cannot be sent via an email or message.

A tip in this case can be to have a meeting while everyone is standing, as this increases their concentration and alertness.

7.   Shift your business to online means:
Paying an electricity bill by going to the office and paying it online has a huge difference. The offline way can take hours while the online process will just take a few minutes.

Think about all the activities that are better when they are shifted online. How long does the process of sending a message via flyers take vs sending the message on an online group? The difference in the time that you save will help your business in achieving the productiveness that you need.

This is the point where you understand the need or importance of project management in your organization. Everything will be under one software and you will be able to manage all your and your employee’s tasks from one place.

8.   Don’t Multitask:

Multitasking is just a myth and a very big contributor towards unproductiveness. Believing in multitasking is like believing that Santa is real.

When you multitask, you are just wasting your time. You will be switching between two or more tasks again and again and nothing else. If two tasks can be done in 30 minutes each, while multitasking it will take 90 minutes or more, because as you switch between tasks, your concentration is shifted and it takes time to do something in flow.

9.   Schedule “Me Time”:
All work and no play will make you unproductive. Have you ever noticed that your mind works much faster after a happily spent holiday and works the slowest on Saturdays?

This is what happens when you do not get ample rest or fun. In order to be productive, you will have to be happy and relaxed, and that is not possible when you are working all the time. Set some time alone for yourself and do things that make you happy. This will have a huge effect on your productiveness.

10.   Move around:
If you are stuck, don’t force your way and move around. Get some fresh air and walk to ease up a little bit and then you will be able to get unstuck.

If you are not feeling productive, it will not come to you if you force it. You will have to wait or explore to get new inspirations, This doesn’t mean that you go on expensive tours to explore, you can simply go out to a coffee shop or anything that you like, and in the way, you will come across some sort of inspiration.

Conclusion

Follow the above mentioned 10 Useful Productivity Hacks for Small Business Owners to achieve productiveness in your small business. These small steps may take some time, but consider them as an investment that will bear fruitful results for your business in the near future. 

10 Useful Productivity Hacks for Small Business Owners