Our top productivity habits for entrepreneurs and small business owners

Written by: Daniel Groves.
Daniel is a UK-based business consultant who specializes in helping startups grow and scale.

When you’re an entrepreneur, the saying “time is money” becomes much more literal.

As a business leader, your ability to use your time efficiently is going to have a direct impact on your profits and how effectively you hit your long-term growth targets.

If you’re looking to make the most of your available hours as an entrepreneur, these six business productivity tips can help you achieve more in less time, plan for long-term success, and find more meaning in your work.

1. Prioritizing tasks effectively

Though you may feel like you’re already effectively prioritizing the items on your to-do list, many entrepreneurs struggle with pouring hours into work that feels important but really has a limited ROI. 

With effective prioritization, you can ensure your time and energy are being used as effectively as possible, and avoid the risk of your most important work falling by the wayside.

One of the best productivity hacks for entrepreneurs looking to improve their prioritization is “brain dumping” all the tasks you have to carry out in a main list, then sorting them into one of four categories:

• Urgent and important

• Important but not urgent

• Urgent but unimportant

• Not urgent and unimportant

Prioritizing your tasks in this way, and then tackling them in the same order, will save you from missed deadlines or burnout from low-ROI tasks.

It also ensures those less important tasks get ticked off and don’t spend weeks or months hanging over your head.

2. Embrace new technologies

Many entrepreneurs have a habit of putting off developing their tech stack, feeling that this takes precious time away from important work directly related to running their business.

However, applying the right tools to your unique challenges can help streamline and automate routine tasks, freeing up time for you to invest in developing your business. 

Some best practices for embracing new tech for efficiency include:

• Identifying the biggest drains on your time and targeting them with tech solutions. For example, if you’re spending a lot of time on manual administrative tasks, you may want to explore tools like automated invoicing, customer relationship management (CRM) systems, or card readers that integrate directly with your accounting software. 

• Testing tech through free demos and low-risk pilot projects to determine how useful they’ll be in real-world situations. This allows you the opportunity to experiment with different solutions before making an investment.

• Mapping out detailed integration plans for each new piece of tech by assessing how it will work with your existing toolkit, understanding the resources required for a smooth transition, identifying potential challenges, and prioritizing ongoing training and development to help your team make the most of their tools. Setting out clear milestones will help ensure proper implementation.

• AI tools help simplify processes like data migration, system integration, and automation, making it easier to implement new software or platforms across your organization. AI-driven analytics help by assessing patterns and inefficiencies and can identify which tools will provide the highest ROI. 

It’s important to periodically review the impact of new tech to ensure they align with your business goals and drive efficiency. 

3. Adopt a habit of continuous learning and development

If you’ve been an entrepreneur for even a few months, you’ve probably encountered a task that was a little beyond your existing skill set and took extra time and energy to complete.

By adopting a habit of constant learning and improvement, you’ll gain new skills that allow you to progress through your to-do list in less time, and streamline your decision-making for greater efficiency across all your work.

To embrace habitual learning and development, start by creating a “skill inventory.” You’ll list the skills you need to succeed in your capacity as a business owner and then rate your competence in each area on a scale of 1-5.

From here, you’ll be able to focus on the weakest areas of your skill set and prioritize these for regular upskilling through books, workshops and webinars, podcasts, and other learning materials.

Setting aside regular intervals in your calendar devoted to learning and development may feel daunting, especially if you’re already squeezed for time and struggling with business productivity. However, if you can make this commitment, you’ll enjoy a gradual improvement in your daily productivity and efficiency in multiple areas.

4. Focus on well-being

Being a successful entrepreneur means putting in hard work. However, it’s crucial to ensure that this hard work doesn’t lead to an unhealthy amount of stress, which can impact your overall well-being and ability to perform.

According to the American Institute of Stress, approximately a million workers are absent from work every day due to stress, and depression and anxiety are estimated to cost the global economy around $1 trillion in lost productivity.

Some of the most effective ways to prioritize your wellness as an entrepreneur and prevent stress from sapping your productivity include:

• Setting clear work-life boundaries, with non-negotiable days off and times of the day when you won’t be on call to clients or staff.

• Making sure you have a balanced diet, regular exercise, and adequate sleep.

• Having a social circle that includes supportive people who can offer you relevant advice.

• Having designated “me time” and fulfilling hobbies that help you de-stress during busy periods.

5. Adopt an agile mindset

One of the most popular productivity hacks for entrepreneurs is adopting an “agile mindset.” This is a way of looking at your work as an entrepreneur, which prioritizes flexibility and embraces the dynamic nature of running a business.

This leads to more natural innovation, calculated risk-taking, and learning from mistakes, which can help you achieve higher productivity.

Some habits you can adopt in order to get yourself into an agile mindset include:

Experimenting and embracing setbacks: Business productivity isn’t just about working more hours. With an agile mindset, you’ll be more open to experimenting with new approaches to old challenges. These experiments won’t always be successful, but treating each setback or failure as a learning experience will help you maintain a trajectory toward constant improvement.

Delegating efficiently: You’re an entrepreneur, but not a machine. Make a habit of identifying tasks in your to-do list that can be delegated to your team members or freelancers, and actively try to free up time you can invest in strategy.

Learn from your peers: Build a network of other entrepreneurs, particularly those who you know are adopting an agile mindset and are eager to share their experience with others. This will allow you to draw valuable insights and get inspired for the next stage in your business development.

6. Use data and analytics to your advantage

If you don’t have an objective measure of your productivity, any attempts to review and improve it are going to come purely from observations and intuition. 

However, if you’re able to measure your progress through clear, objective datasets, you’ll be able to remove the guesswork and base your productivity optimizations on real insights.

Productivity KPIs can vary considerably depending on your industry, the size of your business, and other factors. However, some of the popular metrics you might want to consider measuring include:

• Number of projects completed.
• Sales, sales growth, and conversion rate.
• Revenue per employee.
• Team effectiveness ratio.
• Operating cash flow.
• Client turnover rate.

By using these kinds of KPIs to objectively reflect the productivity of your business, you’ll start to base less of your strategy on estimates and make better-informed decisions to improve your business productivity over time.

Embracing daily productivity

Succeeding as an entrepreneur is never easy, but by proactively adopting habits for productivity, you’ll be able to extract more value from every hour of your time and develop your operations for a greater level of daily productivity.

For more support with reaching your potential as an entrepreneur, be sure to check out our being your own boss series. And if you’re just starting out, you can check one item off your to-do list today by grabbing the perfect domain and matching email from Hover.