Chanakya Kyatham — March 13, 2020 Time is in short supply for most people, especially business owners. Work piles up every day and we find there are not enough hours to accomplish our tasks. Therefore, the need of the hour is to get rid of unproductive strategies and focus on efficiency. In this article, we provide 10 useful time-saving strategies that businesses can try:
Use a Visitor Management System
Your business should start by installing a quality visitor check-in system to simplify and streamline guest management. The meeting management system can help to save valuable time for your front-office and security staff besides making the visiting experience more convenient for your company’s guests. It can also help to enhance security and create a good impression of your brand in the minds of visitors and customers.
Understand How Many Work Hours You Actually Need
Track the time you require to perform your various tasks for about a week. This will give you a good idea about the number of hours you need to work every day to meet your timelines and complete your to-do list. If you allot less time for a vital task, you could end up spending more hours on it later.
Create a Viable Schedule
Be realistic about your schedule and keep it manageable to avoid feeling overwhelmed. This will help you avert rushing through appointments and your tasks, and you’ll be able to focus on them more efficiently. It’ll also eliminate the need to reschedule work and can help to relieve stress. Schedule appointments and accept invites that you can handle. This can assist to boost your productivity and you can evade wasting time rearranging and rescheduling your timetable.
Utilize Your Down Time
You’re bound to have some free time during the day that you can use wisely. Use the downtime to make a fast phone call, pay a bill, peruse your calendar, think about viable business ideas, etc. In this way, you can smartly leverage the small chunks of minutes to perform miscellaneous tasks.
Anticipate the Unexpected
Business owners often have to deal with unexpected events so they need to be prepared. Leave adequate cushions between scheduled tasks and meetings to allow for unanticipated delays and extra work. This will keep you prepared for any unforeseen occurrences and you’d only need to make minor shifts and not cancel and reschedule entire meetings and events.
Use Templates
You don’t have to re-create materials like marketing collateral, forms, emails, and others from scratch every time. Save time by using templates for this kind of repetitive work. It will speed up and streamline the process, and you can also provide a consistent look to these materials.
Automate
Automation can help to save a lot of time. You can automate your bill payments and marketing to save time each month and also get protection from delayed payments so you can avoid penalties. Automate guest management by investing in a visitor management system than can register guests as they arrive and instantly notify the host. This visitor check-in system can thus help to save valuable time for your staff and the guests.
Name and Manage Files Meticulously
You may be using your computer’s filing system to store marketing material, invoices, documents, photos, and other business content. However, as you create new materials during the day it is important to save these files in the correct folder.
In a hurry, don’t save them with a name like “New Document 2” as you’ll find it difficult to retrieve the file quickly when you need it later to produce a social post or send content to a prospect. Further, you’ll not be able to search for it as the document is not named properly costing you a lot of time.
Create Backups Regularly
Apart from naming and properly organizing your documents, it’s also necessary to create regular backups in an online storage service or external hard drive. This will save you the time in recreating lost files and you can also rely on the backups in case you lose the original documents due to an unforeseen event like a computer crash or natural disaster. In addition, you can also archive vital but infrequently used files to prevent cluttering of your most utilized folders and ensure functionality is not slowed.
Maintain Notes
Adopt the habit of keeping a digital or physical notebook to jot down important details in your business conversations. A digital notebook is best as it comes with a search tool that you can use to quickly find your notes later. This can help you save precious time attempting to recall the vital details and points later if you forget them.
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