Time management is the art of designing and implementing a system for productivity that leaves you with great results, and a wealth of free time at your disposal. Unlike the traditional goal of getting everything right, time management is concerned with getting everything right, in the right way.
Time management matters because it promotes an efficiency mindset, which in turn spells the difference between running a tradie business and shackling yourself to one. Your success isn’t linked only to your wealth, but to the priorities that you’re able to juggle while building that wealth.
For these reasons, we’ve put together an article explaining the importance of time management, and how it can protect your happiness, health, and wealth as you operate your business.
The problems with poor time management
1. Effects on Your Happiness
The first major problem with poor time management is how it’ll inevitably drain your happiness over time. This is ill-advised for anyone looking to run a tradie business and unacceptable for anyone who wants to come out the other end as a sane and balanced person.
For one thing, poor time management keeps you from enjoying a healthy set of passions and hobbies. Recreational time is a critical part of staying human: it keeps you interesting, raises your spirits, and provides a necessary break from work-related matters. Losing touch with the things you enjoy is a surefire way to demotivate yourself, and hinder your own attempts to lead a team of positive employees.
Poor time management as a tradie is also a surefire way to alienate yourself from friends and family. No matter how big or small your circle of personal contacts may be, they’re a vital anchor to happiness that you should never risk neglecting. Keeping yourself immersed in your business limits your ability to attend to their needs, or to simply enjoy their company. If you have children, then you know how important it is to address this immediately.
So there’s the great irony of poor time management for you: you can spend every minute of the daily tradie grind working to provide for yourself and your family, only to lose more than you gain.
2. Effects on Your Health
You aren’t building a business from the ground up so you can shuffle off the mortal coil before it becomes self-sustaining. You owe it to yourself and to your dependents to keep yourself in top shape, and managing that is next to impossible when your time management skills are underdeveloped.
First off, it’s a given that fact that stress kills. In light of this, you’d do well to note how poor time management can lead to a number of stress-related issues. The constant rushing, missed deadlines, and pressure to keep up with an unsustainable lifestyle make poor time management physically taxing.
But worse yet is the fact that healthy habits become much harder to keep when you’re always in a rush. For those who are struggling to keep their schedules in order, going for a run or hitting the gym might not be an option. Likewise, you’re likely to develop eating, or perhaps smoking habits to help you relax in the face of your workload.
What you’re hearing is the hope of sustaining a beach body as it fizzles away. Don’t wait until you hear the monotone ring of a flatline.
3. Effects on Your Wealth
By this point, we know what you’re thinking: “I’ll get the job done anyway, so what’s the problem with some short-term suffering?”
Eventual success might be a tempting excuse for bad habits, but the truth of the matter is that you probably won’t see as many returns as you think. Poor time management has a clear effect on your productivity, which means it’s guaranteed to slow down your profit.
First, the various problems we’ve listed so far make it harder to achieve the most basic goal of running an enterprise: earning money. Studies show that happiness is linked to productivity, and that happy people are better at their jobs than those who feel like their 9 to 5 is a curse. This means your soul-crushing routine isn’t a chance to persevere –it’s an anchor weighing you down.
The rest is obvious, though difficult to admit: rushed work leads to poor quality output, and you make poorer decisions than if you’d had more time to think things through. If you want your business running in the most capable hands, then free yours up by ironing out a more efficient time management plan.
What Good Time Management Does for a Business
1. More Positive Numbers
We consulted a study on time management statistics, and the numbers show that better time management has a number of corresponding benefits.
Proper planning is the first notable effect, since tasks take twice as long to complete than we estimate on our own. Positive time management habits provide ample time to handle contingencies and emergency deadlines, without making them the norm.
One finding that surprised us was how 10 to 12 minutes of planning a day can save up to 2 hours of wasted time. Taking time to prepare well ahead of time, as well as strategy breaks in between major bursts of activity can save your business a lot of wasted energy and resources.
While we’re on the subject of wasted time, it turns out that only 20% of time is spent on urgent tasks on average, with 80% allocated to non-essentials. This means the next time you find yourself wondering if you can manage to scrape together enough to spend on non-work priorities, the answer is that you definitely can.
2. More Independent Staff
The efficiency mindset that guides proper time management is more likely to lead to staff members who are up to handling challenges around the office. The positive habits you develop along the way will have you training your employees to handle challenges and situations around the workplace without having to drag you into the mix.
It’s a natural conclusion to what should be a series of attempts on your part to free up more of your time. The first thing many do away with (and rightfully so) is the hassle of having to take work calls while enjoying downtime alone, with friends, or with family.
3. More Quality Time
Ultimately, the core goal of any time management effort is a more fulfilling life. Whether your tradie business runs with minimal interference on your part or on complete autopilot, you’ll enjoy much greater agency to decide how you want to spend your time.
Whether you’re looking to watch your children grow, celebrate moments with your spouse, or simply explore life beyond the walls of your shop, time management will leave you happier and richer in spirit –while keeping you rich in the literal sense, if you play your cards right.
Conclusion
To say that time management is important for a tradie would be a major understatement. There’s no end to the number of things that depend on your ability to make each moment count –either towards your business’ success or to a fulfilling personal life.
Recognizing the need for a time management overhaul today can save you months of wasted effort down the line. Take a good look at what’s going wrong, and move forward from there.
