Small Business Time Management Strategies & Tools That Work

Ah, the *glamorous* life of a small business owner. Who wouldn’t want to deal with low-budget marketing, team check-ins across 5 time zones, endless client emails, payroll, and a can-everyone-hear-me-themed Zoom call  before 11 am? Managing time should be one of your most precious skills (next to chugging espressos and embracing masochism), so I recommend you get curious about small business time management strategies.

Why?

Because they’ll keep you semi-sane and your small biz running.‍

You see, you can’t afford to run out of time. You probably can’t even afford to be on time.

And that’s because time isn’t just money. It’s profit margins, billable hours, utilization rates, and the difference between overservicing and actually getting paid what your work is worth. Run out of time, and it’s not just your productivity that tanks; it’s your revenue.

Sure, you’ve heard the phrase “work smarter, not harder” a million times, but let’s be real, your  to-do list isn’t getting any shorter.

Don’t worry, though.

You don’t need time management cliché tips or guru-like promises. You need strategies that actually help your business grow, and we’ve got you covered.

In this article, we dive right into time management strategies for small businesses that won’t just make your days more productive, they’ll get you well-deserved profit. They might even leave you enough time to binge-watch that new Netflix series your team has been mumbling about. Or at least leave you some time to eat lunch without multitasking. Baby steps.

The importance of time management for small business owners

Before we go through the actual time management tips for entrepreneurs like yourself, let’s quickly talk about why these strategies are the spine of your small business.

First, you don’t run a big corporation that relies on endless budgets. Your staff can’t afford to brainstorm for hours or have 35-minute chit-chats by the water cooler to discuss where to put the next coffee machine.

Second, you and your team juggle priorities, endless and often unrealistic client requests, and a broken printer before corporate guys even finish their first morning latte.

Third, and most importantly, without proper time management strategies, your workdays and processes turn into chaos:

• Your meetings overlap.
• Project deadlines aren’t met.
• You don’t even remember what you are supposed to do.

And sure—you can wing being an entrepreneur for a while—but you can’t scale chaos. There’s no growth in such pandemonium. Productivity and efficiency are the foundation for scalability.

Implementing proper time management skills allows you to focus on what matters most: growing the company's revenue, keeping your clients satisfied and your team happy, and maybe even having a little downtime. There's a way to stay on top of your calendar, learn how to delegate tasks like a boss, and set boundaries with your inbox and email. Time management is your friend.

We at Memtime know this because we are in the same boat as you. We faced the challenges you currently have just a minute ago and survived to tell the story.

That’s why we’ve developed Memtime and time management strategies that actually work—not just in theory, but in the real world.

So, let's go through all the time management strategies you need to implement ASAP.

Time management tips for small business owners

Roll up your sleeves, and let’s get to the actual time management tips and tricks.

#1 Set goals, priorities, and deadlines

In that order!

Goals help you understand what truly matters.

Priorities allow you to break down goals into steps so you can focus on the ones that give the most fruitful results.

Deadlines一the realistic ones一help you manage stress and build a more streamlined workflow. Deadlines need to be aligned with your available time and other resources required for each task so you can avoid setting unrealistic expectations.

⚙️ Tools & frameworks to use

To set goals, use the SMART framework. We wrote all about SMART goals for time management so be sure to check out that article. Here’s the gist of it:

Use the SMART acronym whenever you’re defining goals.

• “S” stands for specific. You need to know what you want to achieve.
• “M” suggests the measurability of a goal. You need to quantify your goal.
• “A” is for achievable. Your goals should be realistic to accomplish.
• “R” suggests relevancy, reminding you to see the bigger picture when setting a goal.
• “T” stands for time-bound. Your goals need to have time-related parameters, like deadlines and milestones.

For prioritizing, combine the 1-3-5 rule with the Eat That Frog concept. The rule suggests choosing 1 big task, 3 medium tasks, and 5 small tasks to focus on each day.

You can give it a little twist by:

• Listing 5 top priorities, i.e., adding 5 tasks to your list you must complete.
• Adding 3 secondary priorities, such as tasks that are important but can be postponed if necessary.
• Adding 1 bonus task to your list, like extra work you’d love to complete if the time allows.

The Eat That Frog concept created by Brian Tracy is based on the Mark Twain quote.

Twain said that if the first thing you do each morning is eat a live frog, you can go through the day knowing that it is probably the worst thing that will happen to you all day long. Basically, this concept suggests you should tackle the biggest, most demanding task first thing in the morning.

For setting deadlines, you can use the backward planning method. This method suggests starting with the end goal or ultimate deadline and working backward to break the project into smaller, manageable tasks (or larger tasks into smaller ones), each with its own mini-deadline. Organizing tasks in reverse order ensures that nothing crucial is overlooked and that all steps are completed in time for the final deadline.

#2 Learn to manage your time to boost productivity.

Obviously!

But that’s when things start to get exponentially more difficult.

How are you supposed to learn to manage your time when you don’t even have time to do the things you need to do? It's like trying to fix a car while you're driving at 100 mph down the freeway.

That’s where Memtime comes in to save the day. And trust me, once you give it a shot, you will wonder how you ever lived without it.

Simply put, Memtime is your personal assistant who never does small talk or requests more vacation days.

It helps you track your work hours, manage your tasks, and even gives you a visual breakdown of how you’re spending your days. With our app, you can take back control of your time, without the panic sweats. The clock’s ticking, but with Memtime, at least you’ll know where the time is going. 🤷

Here’s what our tool can do for you:

• It captures ALL your desktop activity automatically, no matter if you work on Windows, macOS, or Linux.
• It tracks your time in browsers and offline programs.
• It remembers everything you did and for how long, displaying your days in 1-60 minute intervals within your Memory Aid.
• Looking at your captured activities, you can create time entries and export them to project management software. Alternatively, you can log them under Memtime Projects if you don’t use such software.
• Your time data is stored securely offline, and visible only to you.

Here’s what creating time entries looks like. Please don’t mind that my potential time entry is time spent on Rosoo Nursery Rhymes on YT; this is just an example.

But Memtime isn’t just for you; it’s for your whole team and company, as well.

You can try it by signing up for a two-week free trial, to see just how it works. However, the greatest results can be seen if you implement it company-wide. You learn more about this in the third strategy on this list, down below.

⚙️ Tools & frameworks to use

Memtime is an awesome start. When you combine it with popular time management techniques, your small business starts to work like a Swiss watch.

I suggest you try these 3 time management methods:

1. Time blocking. Allocate specific blocks of time for tasks or projects. The goal is to work uninterrupted within the time limits you've set so you can ensure a more focused, productive time.
2. The Pomodoro technique. You work within 25-minute focused intervals followed by short breaks. Here's how it works: you set a 25-minute timer to focus on a specific task, after those 25 minutes you take a 5-minute break and repeat. After four Pomodoros, you take a longer break (15-30 minutes).
3. The 2-minute rule. This method suggests you should immediately attend to tasks that take less than two minutes, like replying to short emails, filing documents, or updating your calendar.

#3 Learn to manage your team’s time to increase company’s profit

Things are starting to get serious, ha?

First off, let me just say that if you want to learn how to increase net profit with time tracking, watch our latest course, The 30% method, for free. In the course, our CMO, Niclas Preisner, explained which KPIs you should target to grow net profit to 30% for any service business.

I won’t spoil the course too much, but I’d like you to remember two things:

1. No matter which industry you’re in, you can only take as many clients as your employees have capacity for. This means that you buy employee time and sell it at a profit.
2. Your Utilization rate and Delivery margin directly affect your profit.

For the purposes of this article, let’s focus on Delivery margin and Utilization rate.

Here’s the first formula you need to keep in mind.

(You get Gross income when you subtract Revenue and Pass-through expenses. Delivery costs are the costs for project workers, like their salaries, or tools used.)

Now, Gross income can increase if you increase Utilization rate.

Utilization rate is a metric that asks how much time bought from your employees was worked on paid client projects.

So, the formula for Utilization rate is:

Utilization rate (%) = Delivery hours (h) / Capacity (h)

Let’s break this down.

• Delivery hours are the hours your team actually spends working on project-related tasks. They are not equal to Billable hours, which are tied to client invoices. They reflect the real effort put into delivering results.
• Capacity is the total number of hours your team is available to work, based on their contracted hours.

Now, here’s the catch: a high Utilization rate isn’t always a sign of success. If your team has a high Utilization rate but you're operating with low Delivery margins (the profitability of your work), it’s a warning sign that you might be overservicing.

Overservicing happens when you spend more time and effort on a project than the client is paying for. It’s unsustainable for your business because you’re burning through resources (time and money) without proper returns.

Tracking and improving Utilization rate requires precise data, and that’s where Memtime comes in. Memtime automatically tracks your team’s Delivery hours in real time. With Memtime, you and your team can:

⚙️ Tools & frameworks to use

Memtime. *drops the mic*

#4 Delegate

Delegating tasks allows you to focus on your own responsibilities.

Not every task deserves your attention, especially the ones that are not aligned with your goals and core skills. Delegating less important tasks  will improve your own and your team’s efficiency while preventing burnout.

When in doubt, always delegate:

• Routine tasks, like admin activities.
• Tasks that require special skill sets, like leaving bookkeeping to accounting experts or freelancers.
• Tasks that match your employees’ skills and capabilities.

⚙️ Tools & frameworks to use

You can use the Eisenhower matrix to help you decide which tasks to handle and which can be delegated to others. It's a simple grid:

• Task urgency is on one axis
• Task importance on the other

High-urgency and high-importance tasks go to you, but anything lower can be delegated. This matrix should help you streamline your workload by letting go of tasks that others could handle.

#5 Avoid multitasking

Multitasking is one of the biggest lies of the corporate world.

It gives you an illusion that you are getting things done when you are just ping-ponging between tasks without proper focus or concentration.

Multitasking decreases productivity, drains mental energy, causes mistakes, and affects creativity. Your brain is constantly busy but not productive, leaving you with half-finished tasks, not enough time, and high cortisol levels.

Instead of juggling multiple tasks, learn to singletask. When you fully immerse yourself in a single task, you work more efficiently and deliver quality results.

Here are some benefits of singletasking:

• You’ll say goodbye to errors. By concentrating on one task at a time, you’ll minimize errors and improve task accuracy.
• You’ll improve your concentration over time. Singletasking helps sharpen your focus, allowing you to complete tasks with better results. Your brain will love the dopamine boost it gets from being more efficient, and, over time, you’ll be able to concentrate on tasks without being distracted every five minutes or so.
• You’ll feel more relaxed. Shifting between tasks creates fatigue, making you overwhelmed and constantly tired. Singletasking allows you to work with ease.

⚙️ Tools & frameworks to use

For this strategy, I don’t have a particular tool or framework to recommend. However, I would highlight the importance of breaking down large tasks.

Large tasks can often be overwhelming, making you more susceptible to distractions. So, be sure to break them into bite-sized pieces so each small task feels more manageable and easier to stick to.

Wrapping up

Being a small business owner can feel like riding a unicycle… exciting but also insane. 

That’s why time management isn’t just a random skill for you; it’s THE skill that keeps your business alive.

We have listed some practical strategies that can help you take control of your business and reclaim your sanity. Hopefully, with the right tools (like Memtime) and frameworks, you will be able to create a more agile, efficient, and profitable business.

At the very end, I want to remind you that you’re not just working for today; you’re building a legacy for tomorrow. With a little planning and a bit of focus, you can build a business you’ve always envisioned. And every minute counts, especially with Memtime. 😉