Are you working to a schedule?

Is your time structured, or is it a case of when you have had enough, what’s not done just doesn’t get done, priority or not?

Client work, social media, phone calls, emails, text messages, the school run, going to the gym, taking the dog for a walk, these are just some of the many things that fill our daily lives. With so many things to juggle each day it’s not too surprising that we sometimes feel overwhelmed, so manage our time poorly and, as a result, fail to meet deadlines, whether they are personal or work.

So what can you do to overcome the overwhelm? The solution is to schedule your time effectively.

Using a schedule allows you to manage your time effectively, maximise productivity and meet deadlines. Whether you’re just starting out in business, or an established SME, scheduling is an important tool to have, as it will help you achieve your goals.

So let’s get started. What might you use scheduling for?

Improve Time Management – scheduling helps you to manage your time more effectively by allowing you to plan your day, week, or month in advance. Using a schedule helps you to prioritise tasks, allocate time for important activities and avoid overstretching yourself on projects. If you’re planning time out in your diary to do a specific task, ask your colleagues not to disturb you. You are now clear to concentrate on the task.
Increased Productivity – By scheduling tasks and setting deadlines, you can increase your productivity and focus on the most important tasks. I’ve talked in the past about eating an elephant one chunk at a time, because it is very, very big. The message is the same here, breaking the project you’re working on down into tasks with deadlines means that you are more likely to work through them systematically, using your valuable time more efficiently.
Better Planning and Forecasting – Scheduling can also help you plan and forecast your future business activities and projects. This means you’re allocating resources effectively, making sure deadlines are met.
Enhance Communication – Those businesses who work to a schedule often have better communication within their teams. Why is good communication important? Because it helps everyone to understand their responsibilities and deadlines, helping to avoid scheduling conflicts and improving collaboration between team members, everyone is aware of what needs to be done, when and by whom.
Reduced Stress – Believe it or not scheduling your tasks really can help you to reduce your stress levels. Planning your day, allows you to manage your time effectively and focus on the important tasks for that day, avoiding the last minute rushes and panic of an imminent deadline. We all aim to have a good work life balance and scheduling your time at work effectively is one of the best ways of achieving it.

In the points above I’ve outlined the benefits of scheduling for your business, I’d now like to share with you some of the tasks with in your business that you can schedule.

Meetings – Obvious maybe, but it’s important to make sure that they’re scheduled at mutually convenient times and not when people are in the middle of tasks or rushing out of the door to other appointments.

Scheduling meetings helps encourage people to do their planning beforehand, so that they come to the meeting prepared, making it more productive for everyone. To help with your meeting scheduling, it can be useful to have an office diary for everyone to put their appointments in, could be in Outlook or Google, I am sure there are others, you might choose Calendly to help.
Project milestones and deadlines – Plan out project timelines, set deadlines, and track progress to ensure everything is delivered on time, important when it comes to achieving the goals you set yourself, if you don’t set deadlines for achieving certain things you’ll fail to do them. So the scheduling will be for the activities leading to the milestones, to be reviewed regularly to keep the project on track.

Tom’s Planner can help as you can set out all the steps and deadlines of the project, other examples might be Microsoft Project, PRINCE2 and I am sure there are others.

Depending on the complexity of the project you may also need a project planning tool such as Trello to help you stay on track. An interesting story is about how one of the F1 teams who used Trello and how by doing so they were able to identify that they had extra capacity within the team enabling them to deliver a front wing upgrade two weeks ahead of schedule. They won the race that weekend and that year’s F1 championship.
Marketing and Sales activities – Whether it’s catch up calls with existing clients, or prospective new ones, preparing regular email newsletters, or brochures, your sales and marketing activities need to be scheduled. If you do not schedule, everything, including the tasks you don’t like, the chances are the tasks won’t get done.
Social media – Posting to your social media channels daily is not a good use of your time, as it’s so easy to get side tracked. You need to be in the right frame of mind to create your content, and depending on what you’re creating; video, blogs etc you need thinking time to be able to do this well.

With so many social media scheduling tools, Hootsuite and Planable for example, it is really easy to create content in advance. Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn now all have scheduling options within their platforms which means you can create content and schedule it in advance.

Similar functionality is also available on blogging and website platforms to allow you to create content in advance.
Financial planning and budgeting – This is where your numbers come in to play. Plan out and schedule budget reviews, forecasting, and financial reporting to ensure your business stays on track. This is a vital part of being successful.

As you’ll have realised there are a variety of activities within your business that you can schedule, so that you are less frazzled and more structured and organised. There are also a wide range of scheduling tools that you can use, some free and some paid.

In conclusion, scheduling is an essential tool for any successful business. By improving time management, you can increase productivity, be able to make more timely operational and financial decisions, enhance communication and reduce stress.

Scheduling can help businesses of all sizes achieve their goals and succeed in today’s fast-paced business environment.

Want to maximise your output? Click here to Book a Free 1 Hour Session and let’s get you on the right track.

Are you working to a schedule?