Effective Time Management Strategy for Women in Small Business
Hello & welcome back to Sales & Business Growth for BUSY Women. I am your resident sales and business nerd Lindsay Fletcher, and this podcast is the place for small business owners to learn how to make more sales, have more time, and grow your business.
I recently found an article that intrigued me on Forbes’ website. It was about effective time management strategies, and they suggested the following: Time is infinite but energy is renewable,and they suggested that managing your energy will improve your time management.
This article talked about a couple of studies. One study where data was collected between 2009-2016 showed that female-run businesses are 11% less productive than male-run businesses. I’ll let you read the article if you’d like - I’ve linked this study in the show notes. But basically, women-run businesses performed poorer than men-owned in 5 categories when controlling for a variety of firm characteristics. One factor called out in this study is high household work allocation when compared to men and other cultural norms that make women less available for business matters than men.
Another Study in the Harvard Business Review done in 2006 took 106 employees at 12 regional banks in southern New Jersey through a curriculum of four modules, each of which focused on specific strategies for strengthening one of the four main dimensions of energy. These four dimensions of energy are body, emotions, mind, and spirit. Before diving into increasing these four areas of energy, they took an “energy audit” of sorts. They were given 4 questions on each area, and most of the participants answered 8-10 out of 16 questions that they were doing things that were counterproductive to creating and having positive energy.
So how do we use this information to better manage our time? Based on this information, we start with managing our energy. Speaking in simple terms, let’s ask ourselves what tasks give us energy and what ones take energy away. We can take a week and log our tasks and energy. You can probably categorize some of your tasks right now into energy-giving and energy-taking. Then schedule your tasks by pairing a -giving with a -taking one, and give yourself short breaks in between.
Start the week by making your to-do list, and instead of just checking the items off as you go, you’ll want to categorize them into these two categories and then pair them together on your schedule.
I think this is a really interesting way to think about your day and the tasks that you need to complete, and I am interested in applying this to my time management or rather energy management skills.
I’d like to continue this conversation about gender gaps in the next episode, so be sure to hit the follow button where you are listening to this episode so that you don’t miss it!
I'm praying for you and your business!
My best, Lindsay
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13 min