The time between Christmas and New Year is traditionally a time for chilling out with family and munching your way through a box of Quality Street! Suddenly it’s time to turn your attention to the new year, I’m sure you’ve set personal new year resolutions, but have you set resolutions for your business? Whatever you are planning, likely as not you are going to need some time to get those resolutions on track, so here are some time savers for the new year…

Prioritise your to-do list

A to-do list is an essential tool for anyone with a list of tasks to do. If you are relying on memorising all the tasks that need doing, it’s likely that you may well be missing deadlines, feeling stressed and probably struggling to get it all done- which could result in burn out!

By writing down your tasks it allows you to see exactly want needs doing and allows you to prioritise. Start by organising your tasks by deadline, what needs doing today, this week and this month. That’ll give you a head start with prioritising. I love to use Trello for my to-do lists, it’s free and simple to use. 

Screen Shot reminders

How often are you scrolling online and don’t have the time to take action there and then? Why not screenshot those interesting articles, or things that give you ideas. When you have time you can go back go through your screenshots and action them. 

Manage your diary effectively

You need to put EVERYTHING in your diary, in order to have a clear view of what your commitments are and how much time you have left over. Even doctors’ appointments, travel time etc.  Any other approach may mean you get double booked or, worse, you miss an appointment. And nobody wants that to happen!

You should adopt a colour scheme for your diary. Most electronic diaries also have the option to change the colours on each entry, so this means you can colour code your appointment based on importance or category. For example, when I manage a client’s diary, I may put all conference calls in yellow, all meetings which involve travel time as red, then travel time as green.

Check you are using your time effectively

Often, I hear people say that there are not enough hours in the day, but are they using their time effectively? Do you get sucked into a task because you enjoy it? Or does a task that takes 45 mins actually take you 3 hours because you get easily distracted? 

So why not track your time? It might actually shock you when you see how long tasks are taking you. You can then start to look at your processes and consider how efficient you really are. Toggl is the app that I use, it’s free and really simple. You can use it in your web browser, so why not give it a try? 

Get yourself a Virtual Assistant 

All business owners know that their time is limited and expensive. Working with a VA to complete necessary but time-consuming tasks that definitely need to be done, just not by you, makes good business sense. Let’s say your VA provides just five hours of support every week, that’s an afternoon you could spend on sales, or even better, spending time with your family! 

If you’d like your business to grow and flourish in 2019 without doing everything yourself, you are going to need a dependable support team. A VA will often pick up all those tasks you don’t have time to do, or don’t want to do! You can find out about the services I offer here.

If this sounds familiar, then why not book a complimentary consultation with me to see how I can support you and your business! I’d love to hear from you meg@weareauxilia.com