5 Strategies For Managing Your Time During Crisis

As an entrepreneur, one of the essential lessons you need to learn is time management. It ensures that whatever business operations you undertake will run smoothly. Time management is vital, but during a crisis, it seems almost impossible.

You might have planned something unique for your business but never expected a crisis like the situation to come suddenly. In this situation, you must handle the stress and avoid burnout. You can handle pressure and prevent burnout by increasing communication, bringing focus to activities, self-care, and reaching out to advisors to seek support. To manage your time effectively during the crisis, here are five strategies:

1. Plan your day. Another effective strategy of smoothly managing the time during a crisis is planning your day in advance. Planning is essential even during a crisis. Depending on the circumstances, you may find the need to modify your plan a bit, but having a plan for your day helps you reach closer to your goals. Without a plan, you will have no idea what exactly you want to do.
2. What’s First? The problem with many entrepreneurs is they keep delaying tasks that they need to be focusing on first. Instead of postponing different tasks and getting burnout due to so much work, prioritize the critical tasks. You can postpone tasks that are of less priority and focus on working on something important. You need to work by prioritizing short versus medium-term goals.
3. Manage your energy, not just your time. During tough times, what you can do is – instead of managing just time, you can manage your overall energy. You need to figure out ways how you can bring productivity to the organization and get the most. Here’s what Richard Steele (Partner McKinsey & Company) says, “You can’t add more hours to the day, but you can do things to maximize your energy and make it go farther.”
4. Delegate what you can. You don’t need to do every task of your business by yourself. Sometimes, it is best to delegate or outsource specific tasks. Especially during a crisis, when you want to get tasks done as quickly as possible, you can delegate whatever business functions you can. Delegating small tasks will save you time so that you can focus on what’s more important.
5. Use technology. In any stage, you think that the usage of technology can smoothen your business functions or add productivity to the organization, just do that. What type of technology or software you will be using will differ based on your business type. Let say Slack can be used for communication and collaboration, Buffer for automating social media management, Zapier to eliminate tedious manual tasks, and Calendar is the tool for saving time on scheduling.

The success or failure of any business is based mainly on how the time spent. If your business is affected due to the crisis, it’s time to make some changes.