Solutions For the
Overwhelmed Business Owner

Creating a business then constantly growing and managing your business can result in you becoming an Overwhelmed Business Owner.

Effective Use of Time

One of the first things to look at is are you effectively using the time which you do have available.

When you first become aware of something that will require your attention what is your standard response.

• Do you deal with it then and there?
• Do you leave it until it absolutely has to be done?

If you are out walking and notice that one of your shoelaces is becoming frayed. You have two choices. You can make a note of it and purchase a pair of new laces next time you go shopping. So, you have a replacement pair of laces on hand ready to replace your shoelaces.

Alternately you don’t do anything then one day your shoelaces fail. Then you need to go out of your way to purchase new laces. Resulting in adding a disruption to your day.

The moment you become aware of something that requires your attention in your business, do it then and there if you can, and if not schedule it in to be done.

This has two benefits. If you are doing it straight away, you won’t need to spend time familiarising yourself. You won’t have it arise absolutely needing to be done at an inconvenient time with no other option but to address it and throughout your plans for the day.

Your practice of addressing things as soon as you become aware of them starts to pay off. Your days progressively become more orderly, and there are less disruptions that occur. Rarely does something occur totally out of the blue, most of the time there are warning signs in the leadup which were not acted upon.

Do, Delegate and Delete

At the start of your day, at the end of your day or even as you go through your day this habit is a great one to develop as tasks come your way.

Review the tasks in front of you to determine if only you can complete the task. If someone else can complete the task, then delegate it to someone in your team. The remaining tasks should then all be able to be deleted.

As your business matures and your team develops your aim should to be delegating as many tasks as possible. So you are able to focus the majority of your time on tasks important to the growth and stability of your business.

Prioritising What You Work On

It’s wise to aim to be spending most of your time working on completing those activities that will move your business forward. The Eisenhower Urgent/Important Matrix diagram below is a great way of understanding this way of triaging your workload.

Your first priority is on those things which are Urgent and Important followed by those that are Not Urgent, Important.

After those things which are Urgent and Important are taken care of, proceed onto Urgent, Not Important, and lastly Not Urgent, Not Important.

Eisenhower’s Urgent/Important Matrix

Utilise Processes

Processes are a great way to create efficiency and reduce the time taken to do something. When something is done consistently the same way you generally become faster and faster at doing it.

You become familiar with a process and often you will come up with ideas for small improvements to the process. Overtime each of these small improvements mount up and can lead to significant reductions in the overall time tasks take to complete. Resulting in freeing up more of you and your team’s valuable time.

When developing your processes it’s a great practice to document how it’s done. This means that when it’s time to delegate a task to someone the documentation is ready. If the task is completed on a PC then screen recording what you’re doing as you are doing it is an efficient way of documenting a process.

Rather than getting another app to do this because I use Zoom, I simply start a meeting with myself, share my screen and hit record. Then I have a short video that shows exactly what I’ve done with my commentary that can be watched, paused, and followed as someone learns the process.

One suggestion I have when documenting a process always include details on how to fix mistakes. This is so often overlooked but it needs to be included as part of the documentation. It further empowers the person learning the process and can save huge amounts of time.

Tame Your Inbox

Are you being held hostage, needing to spend your valuable time clearing unnecessary emails in your Inbox to get to the few that do require your attention?

Empty your inbox each day. There is an enormous psychological benefit of having an empty Inbox. To help achieve having an empty Inbox.

• Be careful what you are subscribing yourself to.
• Unsubscribe from everything which is unnecessary.
• Get yourself off being CC’d and BB’d on emails that are unnecessary for you.
• Set up rules for reoccurring emails to put them in a folder to read at an appropriate time.

Check your email at set times during the day and don’t fall into the trap of constantly checking your email. To help break the habit remove email notifications and other popup distractions on your phone and computer

Aim to read each email once and then either act on it, file it in a folder or delete it.

Work With Your Energy

Work out when during your day your energy level is typically at it’s highest. For some it will be in the morning, others the afternoon and for a small number of people it will be in the evenings.

For me, it’s in the morning so I aim to do those things which require the most amount of mental energy in the morning and as the day progresses do those things which require less mental energy and focus.

Are you interested in transforming your business and are not quite sure where to start?

Then please contact me for a free discovery call.