Small Business Efficiency

For small businesses, especially those sole proprietor operations where it is up to you to do everything, being efficient in your use of time is critical, particularly when it involves tasks that you know you have to do. Those types of tasks, which are beyond those that you want to do, often consume inordinate amounts of time because they are frequently difficult due to being outside your realm of expertise, but more importantly, they create the temptation to give in to distractions which further impair efficiency. Here are a few of those distractions and some simple ways to minimise them.

1. Answering telephone calls.
Do you sprint for the phone the moment it rings? Unless your business depends on customers calling you with the desire to spend their money with you, let some calls go to voice mail. Use your caller ID function. If you do not recognize a number, ignore the call. This will give you time to focus on one thing at a time.

2. Reading and replying to email.
Develop a system for attending to emails where every new one that comes in does not create a brand new distraction. If your business necessitates that you have a constant train of thought, paying too much attention to email is a concentration killer.

3. Allowing the desire to get an onerous task out of the way to prevent you from concentrating on core responsibilities.
We all have our strengths and weaknesses. If you are a bad bookkeeper, you might tend to procrastinate on this part of your business, which can make the thought of taking it on negative, creating a vicious circle. The stress also has a negative impact on your key functions.

4. Failing to multi-task effectively.
This does not mean you should go off in every direction at once with the outcome being that nothing ever gets finished. After you have been at it a while, you know which tasks can be completed immediately and which may be spread out over the course of several hours or days. Start those longer term tasks, and then focus on the immediate, and then return to the longer term items as the required pieces needed to complete them become available.