By: Tina Martin
As a small business owner, you may have realized that managing your everyday tasks is not child’s play, especially when it's about balancing your personal and your professional life. Task management is a crucial skill that can help you boost your productivity and achieve goals on time. Mastering this process requires patience and endurance; here are some tips that can help you get started on the right foot.
How Can You Manage Your Tasks?
Most small business owners agree with the saying, "Failing to plan is planning to fail." Whether it’s your personal life decisions or your professional decisions, you must plan and perform your duties according to a schedule. Here’s how you can manage your tasks effectively and increase your productivity.
Classic To-Do Lists
The simplest effective method of managing your tasks is creating to-do lists using pen and paper. Write the tasks you need to complete daily in the order of importance and urgency. After completing each job, you can cross it from your list and move to the next one. Maintaining a to-do list helps you stay organized and effectively plan your daily activities. A recent study of more than 6,500 professionals concluded that 63 percent use lists to track their progress and manage their daily tasks.
You can also use digital solutions to segregate your business and personal tasks. Apps like GTasks can be used for managing your professional workload as they let you set reminders and due dates and prioritize your duties. For your personal chores, you can use basic apps such as Trello, which acts as a virtual whiteboard to manage all your tasks.
Using Kanban Boards
Developed in the 1940s by Taiichi Ohno, Kanban boards act as digitized note boards to increase your efficiency and help you better manage your tasks. Using a Kanban board, you can optimize your work and better plan the activities and duties you need to complete. Visualizing your work using the Kanban board helps you gain an overview of the responsibilities and pending workload. This method is ideal for managing your personal and organizational tasks by swiftly identifying challenging areas and improving them.
Delegation of Workload
It’s not easy for entrepreneurs to do every task themselves, so they need to divide their workload with their team members instead of being overburdened by an abundance of duties. Delegating work can help you better manage and complete these jobs in time. For example, if you want to create an LLC for your company, you can seek help from a formation service. Research LLC company information and make sure you follow the guidelines and regulations set forth by the state.
While delegating your workload, you should track employee performance in real time to avoid any unnecessary delays. Using a time tracking app like QuickBooks Time or Week Plan can help you stay updated with progress reports and simplify team management.
Using Task Management Software
A task management tool is an effective way of managing all your tasks in one place. Many digitized solutions are available nowadays, such as FreshBooks, which helps you prioritize, track, compare, record, and analyze the entire task completion process. Payroll apps like Zoho can help you manage accounting and payment systems. When selecting software solutions for your business, look for features such as real-time reporting, software integration, and compatibility with mobile devices for better accessibility.
Task management success depends on your level of commitment and time management skills. With effective task management, you can organize and track your personal and professional duties.
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About Author: Tina Martin stays busy as a life coach and works hard to help herself and her clients achieve a healthy work-life balance. She started Ideaspired as a side project to reach as many people as possible, and encourage them to put their dreams first.