New business owners sometimes feel surprised that managing productivity is more challenging now that they work for themselves than it ever was as an employee. Even when you know that your own effort makes or breaks the business, staying focused, and achieving success isn’t always easy without someone else to motivate you. The good news is that you can heed the advice of some successful entrepreneurs to avoid common mistakes and shorten the learning curve.

Focus on the Urgent or Important

With new tasks vying for your time and attention all day long, it’s important to step back and determine how much it will matter if you do something now or prioritize it for another time. If the task is urgent to the future success of your company, you should drop everything else and complete it right away. You will need to prioritize the remaining tasks to decide what to do next and what can wait a while.

Don’t Be Afraid to Delegate

Burnout is a common and serious issue for new business owners, especially when they try to do everything themselves. Rather than increasing productivity, working non-stop without a break makes it much more likely that you will produce sub-standard work. Even if you don’t have employees yet, you can outsource time-consuming tasks like data entry that don’t do anything for your bottom line. If you do have staff, remember why you hired them and start delegating some of your own work.

Limit Distractions

Everyone needs to look away from work for a few minutes to get a break, and this often means spending time browsing social media sites. The problem is that social media can become addicting while allowing you to procrastinate on your work at the same time. We recommend setting a timer for no more than five minutes during the workday to help resist the urge to get completely off-track.

Do you need more business productivity tips? We invite you to schedule an appointment with GP Solutions today.