April 12, 2022
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Startup businesses move fast, and there aren’t enough hours in a day to complete everything, which means every second counts. If you don’t learn fast, you will find yourself bombarded with relentless tasks without scope for improving your time management or problem-solving. Fortunately, you don’t need to let your startup push you to the point of burnout - we’ve got you covered below with plenty of time-saving tips.
Once upon a time, the key to being productive was multitasking. However, this has been proven a falsehood by Professor Clifford Nass, who shows that multitasking reduces focus. Therefore, you should focus on prioritisation by organising tasks and concentrating on one thing at a time.
We live in 2022, meaning technology has an answer for anything. There are many time-consuming jobs that can be automated using various online tools. However, you need to weigh up the time investment and act smart. For example, you can automate office blinds, but does it mean you should? When a person does this manually, they can check for signs of damage in the process. On the other hand, automated blinds mean just waiting for problems to take place. If automation won’t bring you a return on investment, don't bother with it.
You may feel like operating a startup means taking care of everything yourself, but this isn’t the case. For example, if you operate in the tech space, the chances are you’re not an expert in HR. Therefore, to get the work completed efficiently, you can outsource responsibility to a team of professionals, like those at Syndeo - click here to find out more.
Everyone will demand your time when running a startup, and it’s okay to say no from time to time. You don’t owe anything to anyone else, whether that be for networking, holding meetings, or taking on new opportunities. You need to do what’s right for running your business during the startup phase and that typically involves putting all energy into your business.
Whenever you release products in a startup, there will always be improvements to be made because you’ll never be satisfied. Therefore, instead of aiming to create a 100% perfect product, aim for around 80%. Without receiving feedback from users, you will always have an unfinished product. Set your product free and work on improvements as you evolve and grow - it’s the reason software receives patches.
Cathartic Documentation is a term invented by Stacy La, design director of Clover Health. During the startup phase of their company, they noticed too much knowledge was being held instead of shared. Therefore, they started documenting everything they could think of. Dumping the knowledge felt cathartic because it was no longer taking up room in their brains. By doing this, you can create a series of playbooks for your team, which means you won’t be answering pointless questions.
Startup businesses move fast and squeezing all tasks in can be challenging. The information outlined above will help put you in the right direction.
No, research suggests that multitasking actually harms productivity by reducing your focus. A more effective approach is to prioritise your tasks and give your full attention to one thing at a time.
You should be selective with automation. While it can save significant time on repetitive jobs, you must weigh the cost and time investment. Only automate a process if it offers a clear return and doesn't eliminate an important manual check.
Outsourcing allows you to delegate tasks that fall outside your area of expertise, such as human resources or bookkeeping. This not only ensures the job is done efficiently by professionals but also frees up your mental energy and time to focus on core business activities.
Documenting your processes creates a central source of knowledge, or a playbook, for your team. This saves you countless hours by preventing you from having to answer the same questions repeatedly and helps new team members get up to speed much faster.
No, it's actually a smart strategy. Waiting for perfection means you might never launch. Releasing a product that is about 80% complete allows you to gather essential customer feedback, which you can then use to make meaningful improvements and updates.
