35+ Time Management Strategies for Startup Founder

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Founders often deal with tight schedules and hectic situations, the pressure is always there and it’s important to learn time management skills. 

Also, there are two plague founders, first can be an untraditional schedule and pressure to be available. Both have a huge impact on sanity and time. 

Since you can’t create more time, instead of falling into the trap of never stopping and overworking. 

You need to learn to analyze time, organize and be better at it to be more effective. Here are the important aspects to learn when you are a startup founder. 

How To Learn To Prioritize When Everything You Do Is Important? 

The first thing that you need to learn is prioritizing especially when you are a startup founder. 

At this stage, you need to focus on everything. You feel like everything is important and prioritizing gets more difficult. 

As you realize the necessity of prioritizing in a proper way, it can feel more complicated and stress-inducing than just creating a simple list for a task. Here are some of the quick tips that can help in effective prioritization : 

  • Write everything including personal and work in one place to know what you need to get it done.
  • Evaluate long-term goals, considering the larger long-term goals.
  • Break down the larger goals to understand how you need to complete them.
  • Create the 
  • deadlines, make it fully visible of the deadline and know when you need to get it done.
  • Employ the method of urgent versus important to know what to delegate or remove.
  • Avoid the distractions that make your work disturb. 

You must learn the priotizing , and here are some of the strategies that can help you : 

Have A List Of Things And Tasks In One 

Effective prioritizing comes from knowing what you need to get done, it includes most mundane tasks. You need to write it down in a list and consider everything that you have to do. 

Also, it’s a good idea that you add both personal and workday tasks in a single list. 

Identifying What Is Truly Important, Understand True Goals 

When you are a startup founder, millions of things seem important. but when you focus and truly understand if it’s really urgent or important, it can help in clarifying doubts. 

Prioritizing is also a key that can achieve long-term goals. So understanding what is you need to work towards, be it a promotion, finishing a project, etc. 

Highlight Is What Is Urgent 

Your to-do list should provide the visuality of your deadlines, it helps in identifying which tasks need to get completed and also plan ahead according to what deadlines you need to look for. 

Creating a deadline, even if you don’t have one, is still important. Otherwise, you will continue to push back on the tasks which are important simply because you don’t have the time sensitivity. 

It can help you in boosting productivity and reducing procrastination. 

Prioritizing Based on What Is Urgent And Importance

As Stephen Covey sugged in his book The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, published in 1989. He said that the tasks should be categorized and prioritized depending on the importance and urgency. 

  • Urgent and Important 
  • Important but it’s not urgent
  • Urgent but unimportant 
  • Neither urgent nor important 

Another strategy that can help is prioritizing important tasks even if it means pushing the stakeholder or urgent ad hoc requirements, it’s known as the most important tasks methodology or MIIT.

This strategy involves creating a list which should be separate, of just three tasks that must be done on that day. These tasks should be chosen based on their importance instead of urgency. 

You can ask the questions that are goal-oriented, including what the biggest impact it will have on your end results or if you get it done today, does it affect in progressing the goal further?

Don’t Compete Priorities

When you are a startup founder, you have a lot of tasks in hand. But when you are working on tasks that are not particularly different, instead of that easy to manage in tandem.  

According to research, people with higher power are likely to have a single goal, whereas people in low power tend to position multiple priorities. 

This is linked to the decline in overall performance which is why most important tasks do not get fulfilled to achieve the highest standard. 

Consider The Efforts 

When you have a long to-do list,  it’s easy to get overwhelmed by the work, also, this leads to feeling less productive and procrastinating. 

A strategy is to overcome involves evaluating tasks according to the effort which requires completing those tasks

If you have to do a list, this can become too burdensome, and prioritize the tasks that require the required menial time as well as forgetting and moving quickly through it. 

This helps in clearing the tasks that help you in getting a sense of accomplishment, also it frees up the space that helps you in a breath.

Review Constantly Your List And Be Realistic About It 

One of the steps that include five steps of GTD or Get Things Done methodology from David Allen who is a productivity consultant, that’s why you need critical reflection. 

And you need to frequently review the task list and prioritize it. With this, it can help you in regaining control as well as focus better. 

How To Deal With A Fast-Paced Working Environment? 

When you are a startup founder,  you need to work in a fast-paced environment, it can be exciting, opportunity, and motivating only if you enjoy the type of workplace. 

There are a lot of advantages that you get from such an environment, however, the first thing you need is to learn to handle the fast-paced working environment. 

To learn the right way, here is what you need to learn. You can also help in getting better control over managing time and getting things to work done, including. 

Educate About What Role You Are In 

Before you start, it is important that you know what you are getting into. It’s better to train, learn, and know-how as well as what roles you need to be in. 

To  those who are starting as a startup founder, there are different roles and responsibilities you might have to work, it includes : 

  • Managing the team 
  • Formulating the vision 
  • Knowing the market 
  • Leadership[ 
  • Ensuring operations are sharing the goal with vision 
  • Fundraising 
  • Business plan
  • Networking
  • Finance 
  • Customer service
  • Assessing risk and opportunities

Get To Know With You Are Working 

There are often other people you are going to work with,  not just they can help you in getting work done and build relationships to boost growth. 

So take time to know about them, learn to work with and make them comfortable. Not only can it help you in time management but also you can get more done. 

When you start the work, make sure that you are asked about who is in charge and keep everything in clear.

Pay Attention To Details Around You 

To deal with a fast-paced environment, you need to focus on understanding what the details are. 

This is helpful to make sure you are organized and capable of paying attention to detail, while these requirements can 

Focus On Building Communication Skills 

No matter what job you do, communication skills will always help. The more you are able to communicate well, it can help you to understand how to get things done. 

It includes listening, verbal, physical, and written communication. You need to have the skills to give better directions and understand better about the situations. 

With this, the company can run smoother and help in boosting relationships better. 

Tips For The Startup Founders For Managing Time 

Well, how you can manage the time well. It’s a common question that every startup founder has to ask at some point. 

Well you can’t get more hours, so it’s smart to know how to manage the time, and here are some of the best tips that can help you: 

Wake Up Early To Have A Consistent Morning Routine 

Startup founders such as Jeff Bezos, Mark Zuckerberg, and Richard Branson all have a common belief that they should wake up early and follow a consistent routine every morning.

Although everyone has their routines depending on their requirements, it’s important that you have a morning routine that can set the tone for your day and make sense. 

Do Your First Important Thing 

For starters, a lot of people are productive in the morning, and morning productivity has an important role in circadian rhythms, so it can depend on individuals. 

Your focus is like a gas tank, and you have to fill it up every night. To do all the things in life, you use focus fuel and as days begin to end, it gets difficult to be productive. 

Also as your day proceeds, disorder and chaos also start to increase. Not just that, it starts to drain willpower too. 

As a result, you have fewer chances of making a good decision at the end of your day as compared to the beginning. 

According to research,  it has been found that 2: 55 pm is the least productive time of day because you hit the post-lunch lull. 

So when you wake up early, make sure you get the important work done. 

Focus On What You Like To Do 

Richard Branson is a big advocate as he believes that entrepreneurs require to focus on activities that they like to do and want to excel. As for everything else, you need to delegate, outsource and make sure to automate. 

Also when you hand off tasks to someone else, it’s important that you actually do it. 

The art of delegation is a crucial part and even though you need to be good at helping in running the business but also have the will to step back. 

So focus on setting up your company, so it can run without you even. 

Get New Strategies And Habits For You 

Even though there are a lot of tips and advice, use the latest apps and tools, to make things happen, and control the time, you need to create the change within yourself. 

You need to consider different approaches as improving time management is not easy to do. 

Here are some of the techniques and approaches you can consider : 

Mind Mapping 

As an entrepreneur, there are millions of thoughts that you might be thinking. But with the help of mind mapping, you can take your thoughts and convert them into visual aids. 

With this, it’s an easy to comprehend, visual view of your conceptual goals and important steps that you need to take in order to achieve it. 

The Pomodoro Techniques 

The technique is famous when it comes to time management, it’s named after the tomato-shaped timer which is used by the system founder. 

With this, you need to take micro-breaks, and start the sprint with 25 minutes and rest for 5 minutes. 

You are required to repeat the cycles four times and take a long-timer break for 15 or 30 minutes. 

Be Aware Of Doing Completion Bias 

According to Lifehacker,  this is when the brain specifically seeks the pleasure of tasks competing and it brings. 

Well-completion bias can trick the brain, and it focuses on doing small tasks that bring the feeling of positivity, and you spend time on doing those tasks, such as answering emails. 

In order to prevent such situations, you must mix up the to-do, not just the tasks which are small and easy but hold no importance. But add what you need to get it done. 

Use Just In Time Learning 

Well, there are a lot of things you need to do, however, if you are into reading, this can benefit you, but consuming content which is not related to your work can be an issue. 

The reason is it diverts the attention that you have in your task at hand. 

Well to solve this, you can take advantage of just-in-time learning.  So you can consume content that is related to a task you need to work on and how it can help. It includes blogs, videos, podcasts, etc. 

Take Your Airplane Days 

Airplane days is inspired by Bryan Hassin, as he suggested taking international flights helps in getting the best work done since he has no distraction, internet access, and has time to get priority to-do items.

However you can’t take frequent international flights, but you can consider the airplane days. 

Well for this, you need to start with taking one or two half days to get your airplane time each week. Block out this time and pretend you are traveling. Shut down all of your network connections, and focus on what you need to get done. 

Distractions Have Million Of Forms, Not One 

One of the important points that you should remember is that distraction is not restricted to one form, in fact, it comes in a million forms. So if it’s not adding anything that can help in growth, it’s a distraction for you. 

So be aware of the tasks that you might feel important or activities that you think it’s crucial but there is no well thought out plan, such busy activities mostly include the seeking press, coffee with people who are not the core customer, micromanaging, fundraising, conferences, etc, 

Make A Good Use Of The Social Time 

The next thing you need to do is to remember that even though you are not working, it doesn’t mean you can’t be productive. 

So use the work events as well as lunch breaks wisely, you can use this time for knowing about the coworkers and also invest in discussing about the broader perspective. 

Since office workers spend only 45% of their time on tasks that are related to primary duties, on average 16% of the time is spent on meetings. 

With this, you can use social time on building a relationship and creating culture. Not just you, but also encourage the team for it. 

Plan Your Procrastination 

Procrastination is not something you want to do, but it still happens, so why not plan it? 

To handle such situations where you might end up procrastinating, it’s better to schedule it into the day such as wasting the web, checking social media, etc. 

Also, it helps you in not disrupt the day, and with this, you can schedule the non-work tasks, which might tempt you in the workday. 

When you procrastinate without planning, it brings bad and depressing feelings which affect your overall productivity. 

So plan it, you have guilt-free breaks for recharging yourself. 

 Study On How Your Mentors Do The Time Management 

One of the ways that you can upgrade your time management is by learning from mentors. 

Maybe you are inspired by Jeff Bezos and think of him as your mentor; maybe it’s fansite you how he made Amazon into something so huge. 

If not Bezos,  then you might have some mentors you look up to, so get their ways of doing time management and how they practice it. 

Also make sure you do not copy-paste it , since your situations are different than them, however it will you an idea that you can consider, 

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