Entrepreneurship

10 Tips For Entrepreneurs To Help Stay Organized


As an entrepreneur, you’re pulled in many directions. Staying organized, planning well, and executing plans becomes increasingly different as the size of the business grows. To help you get better organized, here are 10 tips that should help.

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via pexels

1. Conceptual Planning to Visualize Better

The idea with concept mapping is to use visualization similar to mind maps, to get a better handle on a project. Through mapping initial business concepts and ideas, through to who’s responsible for them, the sharing of information between colleagues, managers, and suppliers becomes easier. Communication can also be facilitated through such tools as video chat or by collaborating on a concept in real-time.

By getting things out of your head and onto a digital canvas, it becomes easier to think more clearly on complicated topics. Reaching the correct conclusion is more likely too.

2. Use Time Blocks

Time blocks are set amounts of time allocated to specific tasks. These are best set up in a mobile calendar such as Google Calendar or a similar alternative. Similar to how appointments restrict part of your day to prevent being double-booked, time blocks keep your day organized by giving you chunks of dedicated time to work on specific projects or activities.

Furthermore, by allocating blocks earlier in the day when energy levels are higher, it’s possible to get impressive work achieved before hitting the mid-afternoon lull. After that, smaller less important tasks can complete the rest of your day such as replying to emails, reviewing documents, or dealing with personnel issues.

3. Avoid Shiny Object Syndrome

Many entrepreneurs are naturally creative thinkers. If you believe this applies to you, you’ll want to avoid the tendency to abandon what you’re doing to jump into a new thing. This is known as shiny object syndrome and creates problems with either never completing a business idea successfully or abandoning it shortly after it’s launched for something new and more interesting. There is also an element of “grass always being greener” going on here too.

Keep yourself on track with your existing projects. Don’t distract yourself with new things because you’ll get into a muddle with what’s already on your plate.

4. Clean and Clutter-free Work Environment

Running an efficient operation starts with the small things and expands out from there. Having a clean, clutter-free work desk involves utilizing minimalism for simplicity. From there, an organized filing system for digital and physical files comes next. Being organized in one area but disorganized elsewhere won’t serve you well. Maintain this as a standard.

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5. Get Used to Saying No

To control your schedule, get the necessary work done, and stay on top of everything. This requires a strong command of your time. The opposite involves taking on too much, getting overloaded, and becoming disorganized as a result.

Get used to saying “No” more often than “Yes.” Don’t let a nice gal or nice guy syndrome lead to being swamped. That won’t help anyone in the long run.

Lastly, be sure to delegate as much as possible. You cannot do everything, so don’t even try. It’ll be easier to remain consistent when entrusting tasks to others.

6. Keep Track of Customer Support

Without your loyal customers, your business would not get very far. While customer service and support can take up a lot of your time and resources, any time that you spend on this is time well-spent to keep your customers happy and satisfied with your brand. To make sure that you are reaching and engaging with your customers effectively, consider using a CRM program and other customer support organization tools that allow you to manage your customer tickets more effectively. Keeping track of customer support using technology allows you to spend less time managing customers, freeing up time for you to get on with improving the core areas of your business.

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7. Plan Social Media Campaigns in Advance

Social media has become a key element in marketing any small business. If you are running social media marketing campaigns on a budget, it’s important to reduce the time that you are spending creating posts and being online. Instead of wasting your time by publishing a new post every few hours, it’s a good idea to set aside time to create content and schedule the posts in advance. It’s a simple technique with several different tools that you can use to make it happen, and will save you lots of hours throughout the week while helping to improve your productivity and efficiency.

8. Go Paperless

Running your own business often comes with a lot of paperwork which can make it easier than ever to end up disorganized. If you want to reduce all the management and the clutter that comes with all the papers you need to keep up with, it’s worth thinking about taking your business paperless. Not only is this an eco-friendlier approach for your business, but it also means that rather than keeping track of tons of folders, files and pages all of the time, everything can be stored digitally where it is much easier for you to organize and find everything. To do this, you will need a way to quickly scan your documents and turn them into digital copies immediately.

9. Organize Your Passwords

Chances are that as a small business owner, you have a lot of logins for various different things. You’re probably going to either use the same password for different websites, which can have security risks, or you are always forgetting the passwords that you use for each site. Instead of doing either, it’s worth considering having an app manage your passwords for you. A dedicated password manager is safer compared to Google Chrome’s autofill feature.

10. Use the Cloud for Note Tracking

If you’re the type of person who tends to write down your ideas, notes, and contact information for other people on whatever scrap of paper is closest to you, it’s probably time to start thinking about a more organized solution to keeping track of this information. Cloud-based note-taking tools like Evernote are an ideal way to do this, or you could use Google Docs as a simple and effective way to jot information down and store it in the cloud immediately.

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Staying organized as an entrepreneur can be made simple by combining just a few of these tips.


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