12 tips to add time to your business day
By Jenny C. McCune • Bankrate.com

In the competitive small-business world, wasted time can lead to lost profits. But smart owners know a few tricks to squeeze more minutes into the workday, and that can lead to a healthier bottom line.

In fact, time-management experts say it's easy to get more done with less work if you follow these dozen time-efficiency tips:

1. Don't procrastinate. The longer you put off a task, the more time you're wasting that could be used to do that task or something else. "My top tip is to 'Do it now,'" says personal efficiency expert Kerry Gleeson, president of IBT International Inc. in Boca Raton, Fla. "Respond to the customer complaint; call back someone who's called you; don't put it off."

2. Put a dollar value on your time. "People treat their time as if it was completely valueless, and consequently they don't know whether to say 'yes' or 'no' to a project or what to take on and what to pass," says Robert W. Bly, author of 101 Ways to Make Every Second Count: Time Management Tips and Techniques for more Success with Less Stress. Figure out how much your time is worth and the rest will fall into place, Bly says. For example, a friend was pushing Bly to shop at a warehouse club that was quite a drive from his house. In deciding whether it was worth it, Bly asked himself, "Do I want to save a $1 on toilet paper and spend 40 minutes, or $200 worth of my time, getting that toilet paper?"

3. Do the right work at the right time. If you're a morning person, you should be busily writing the client memo at 9 a.m., not standing in line at the post office, says Lisa Kanarek, founder of HomeOfficeLife.com. In other words, do intellectual tasks when you're the most alert and save the scut work for your low-energy moments.

4. Judiciously automate. Find ways to do things faster by automating. Kanarek has saved numerous hours by switching over to a financial program instead of keeping books manually. The key is to use technology to decrease the time it takes to get something done. Sometimes automation will seem like a time saver, but practical experience will show that it's not. For example, if Kanarek kept a manual checkbook and stored the same information on Quicken, she might find inputting transactions into Quicken didn't save her time since she's doing it twice, once in the checkbook and again on the computer.

5. Screen calls. When Kanarek discovered how much time she was wasting fielding phone calls at her home office from "high-maintenance" friends, she got caller ID so she knows when to take a call or when to let the machine answer it.

6. Change locations. If you have work you need to do and it's not getting done because of constant interruptions, consider spending a day or part of a day doing the job at home. Or, if you work out of the home, consider turning off the phone ringer or screening calls for a couple of hours to get the important project done.

7. Employ a comfortable organizational system. It doesn't matter whether you use a Franklin Day Planner, a Palm Pilot or a legal pad and a pen, Kanarek says. Find a system that works for you. Some people like the feeling of crossing items off a paper to-do list, while others prefer to keep things on the computer and use the computer alarms to remind them when to make a call or do a task.

8. Arrange to-do lists. Once you have a to-do list, organize it. How you do that is up to you. Bly uses three different kinds lists to help keep him organized:

•  What needs to be done today
•  Long-term deadlines
•  Future items

9. Reshuffle the list as needed. It's important to re-evaluate tasks and priorities as your day proceeds, Bly says. Depending on what transpires, he'll move items up and down on one of his three lists or shuffle a task from "long-term" to "today."

10. Leave time for the unexpected. When planning your work week, allocate 25 to 30 hours for tasks you need to get done. Use the remaining unscheduled time for the unexpected. Not scheduling every minute will give you time to catch up in case an emergency occurs or you misgauge how long a project will take, Gleeson says.

11. Clean up as you work. Gleeson, author of The Personal Efficiency Program: How to Get Organized To Do More Work in Less Time, likens time-efficient work to preparing a meal. Cleaning up as you go along in manageable cleanup "bites" is a lot easier to swallow than waiting until the meal is cooked and eaten, leaving a monumental cleanup on your hands. So put a file away immediately after you're done with it, not at the end of the day, week or month.

12. Forget useless filing. Instead of spending time filing items you'll never need or forget how to find, Gleeson recommends deciding from the get-go whether you even need that piece of paper. You might be able to find the information faster and more time efficiently elsewhere, she says. For example, if you read an interesting article online, and know you can always go back to the Web site for a copy, don't bother printing it out and filing it.

Follow these tips, and you'll find you have more -- and more productive -- hours each workday.

Jenny C. McCune is a contributing editor based in Montana.

-- Posted: Sept. 7, 2001