8 Productivity Hacks for Busy Small Business Owners

Handling a small business is like managing multiple projects and the owner usually wears all the hats.

The goal of every business is to grow and thrive, but with this constant pressure to be successful, it can be difficult to find time for yourself. The key to success is building a system that works for you, not the other way around.

As the owner of a small business unit, you will have to juggle between endless tasks and therefore it is very essential that you increase your and your team’s productivity to get better results and to get more done.

Nowadays ecommerce merchants are increasing rapidly and most of them utilize logistics software or store management software for their routine work. For getting better productivity in their business they integrate many things which provide more conversions in their business.

We have gathered 8 productivity hacks for busy small business owners that will help you achieve new heights of productivity so that you can accomplish all the tasks in very less time.

8 Productivity Hacks for Busy Small Business Owners:

1. Use the SMART Methodology to set process-based goals:

The goals that you set for your business should not be outcome-based, but they should be process-based. The thing is, if you set goals based on the outcome, within a few days, you will feel that the goal is too far away and this will decrease your motivation and dedication.

However, if you set process-based goals, you will be meeting your goals daily and therefore you will get the satisfaction that you are working as per your plan.

When it comes to increasing productivity, the simple way to increase productivity is to decrease the time that is wasted while working and a perfect way to do so is by adopting the SMART methodology.

Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Realistic and Time Frame-based is a widely accepted and effective methodology to set goals. It helps to avoid setting unrealistic goals. By creating goals and by ensuring that your goals comprise all these characteristics, you will be able to set realistic goals and will be able to achieve them on time.

Moreover, make sure that you write down your goals or you make an entry in whichever software that you use as  76 percent of people who wrote their goals achieved their goals, while only 43 percent succeeded in achieving their unwritten goals.

Lesson: Use the SMART Methodology to set realistic and achievable goals for your business.

2. Automate all the tasks that you can:

Small business or small scale industries means limited man-power but the same does not go with the work. You will have to work 24 hours a day to finish your work, however, that is not possible. Rest is an important factor that highly influences your productivity.

However, if you will be doing all the tasks by yourself, if you are a one-man army, then you will have no time to rest. If you have a team to work with, wasting the human talent on tasks that can be done by the computer is just a waste of man-power and your money.

Automation will allow you to leave repetitive and simple tasks to the computer and therefore you and your team and invest their time in tasks that require human interaction. You can also use the tool called SmartTask which is a good clickup alternative for assigning and automating the tasks in a single dashboard.

Automation is not an additional expense, but an investment that will free you and your team from the unnecessary tasks that you perform.

Lesson: Automate all the tasks that you can to buy yourself and your team time to focus on tasks that do require human interaction or skills.

3. Work on 90-minute blocks:

We have all now worked from home due to the COVID-19 and one thing that most of us felt was increased productivity. What was the reason for that? Was it the environment of our home or something else?

The simple answer is that we were working as our own boss. There was no one to see when we were working and how many breaks we were taking, however, we were working as per our own schedule and we were able to complete the same work that we used to do in a full day at the office with just one break, at our home, taking many breaks. At many instances, we were able to complete the work even before the end of the day.

What caused this?

Taking a break after 90 minutes of working is as important as having holidays on weekends. Our mind needs some rest every now and then to work at full efficiency. Without breaks, we are just decreasing our productivity.

Therefore, set up 90-minute blocks and then take a 10-15 minute break to give yourself the much-needed rest to maintain your productivity.

Lesson: Rearrange your work as per the 90-minute blocks to ensure full productivity throughout the day.

4. Have a standing meeting and group work:

To get more work done, you can do two things, one is you can increase your productivity and the second one is to avoid doing non-productive things. The latter one is also very important as every person has its own limit of doing a certain amount of work, and various productivity hacks will also not work on them if they have reached their limit.

This point works on decreasing your non-productive traits and in-turn helps you in increasing your productivity.

 Refrain your team from getting too comfortable. Research shows that if the meeting is conducted while standing, the participants were more engaged.

A simple change in the position of people makes them more engaged. Moreover, no one wants to stand for hours and therefore the meeting will be fast and productive.

Just make sure that when you plan on doing the first standing meeting, you provide your team with a formal notice and also state the reason why you are doing so.

Lesson: Shift your comfortable meetings into standing meetings to have quick and effective meetings.

5. Mute your gadgets:

Many times we focus on the fact that personal and professional life should be set apart. As an employer, you should not disturb the personal life of your employees and therefore you should not call them for work on weekends.

Likewise, you have the right to ask all your employees to at least mute their gadgets at work. You should not ask them to submit their phones when they enter the office, however, just ask them politely and make sure that they keep their phones and other gadgets silent when they are at the office.

This goes for you too. Mute your gadgets and do not pick up all the calls or respond to all the notifications. Just pick up the calls of your clients or work-related calls and avoid having phone conversations with your friends.

Do not surf social media as you will open it up thinking that you will use it for just 2-5 minutes and you will end up scrolling through the posts and videos for hours.

Also, set a separate time to browse through your emails as you will receive every now and then, and if you look at all the emails as soon as you receive them, you will be just distracting yourself from the task in hand and this will affect your productivity.

Lesson: Answer only priority calls and messages and mute your gadgets to avoid being distracted.

6. Understand that Multitasking is a false concept:

If you think you can multitask and thus you can save time, you are very wrong my friend.

Multitasking is nothing but a false concept. Believing in multitasking is like believing that Santa Claus is real.

Multitasking means you can do two or more tasks at the same time. However, this also means that you will be concentrating on two tasks at a time, this simply means that you won’t be performing the task with full focus and therefore you may be able to complete two tasks, however, the quality will be sacrificed.

If you don’t believe it. Try emailing a client along with doing any other work. Notice the time that it takes to email a client as a single task, and then notice the time it takes to email while multitasking. There will be a difference in the time and also in the quality of the work that you do.

In multitasking, rather than spending time on doing the task, you will be spending more time switching between the tasks.

Lesson: Multitasking is just a lie and therefore you should avoid it at any cost.

7. Stock your break room with healthy snacks and coffee:

What we eat has a significant effect on our daily work.

The healthiest food that we eat, will have a positive effect on productivity. Nuts, blueberries, raw carrots, Red Bull, and coffee are some of the snack items that you can stack in your office for the employees.

The employee won’t be able to work with an empty stomach and therefore you should provide them with some snacks so that they are not working on an empty stomach. The coffee will help them ease their minds and therefore they will be able to work with more focus and energy.

Moreover, in the snack room, make sure that you hang a whiteboard in which you should mention the benefits of eating healthy snacks. You should also mention the items that should eat.

Lesson: Encourage your employees and yourself to eat healthy snacks.

8. Use Apps to manage your work:

When you have too much work to do, it can very easily become cumbersome and in no time. You may not remember all the tasks that you should perform or there may be delays in the tasks and work. This will hinder your business’s growth.

To ensure that you effectively manage your work and you perform all the tasks on time, you can take help of various apps that are designed for the same.

This is the step where you understand the importance of project management in your business.

With a project management app, you can enter all the tasks that you have to perform and then the rest lies with the app. The app will notify you for all the delays and updates. It will work as a personal reminder for you. You will also be able to see who is doing what and by when in your business.

Every process of your business will be crystal clear and therefore client management becomes easy for your business..  

Lesson: Use Project Management app to manage all the processes of your business with ease.

Conclusion:

These hacks will help you in creating a defined work process and therefore you will have a clear idea of all the tasks that you need to perform and the end result that you will get. Follow the above-mentioned to boost your productivity. All the hacks can be immediately applied and therefore you will not have to go through the extra mile to implement these hacks. 

8 Productivity Hacks for Busy Small Business Owners