10 Time-Saving Tips For Busy Startups [Infographic]

Update: This article was last updated on 8th June 2020 to reflect the accuracy and up-to-date information on the page.

As the challenges and opportunities are immense with startups, they are often swamped with work. Another reason time constraints are stiff is that the employee size is usually smaller with startups, and their responsibilities are more. Such a rigid working order leads to chaos unless some effective measures are taken to manage the time.

As technology has increased impatience among the customers, delivering quicker than the competitors is a crucial thing. Apart from the competition factor, the pressure from investors, limited resources, etc., add to the importance of saving time.

With all these challenges, startups have to maintain the quality of the products and services, putting owners in a tricky situation – especially first-time entrepreneurs. They lack the experience of balancing the team’s quality and efficiency and can break under this sort of pressure. And if the efficiency goes down, the startup is sure to fall.

In this infographic, we have mentioned ten crucial tips for executing various business processes to save time and remain productive:

Let’s see these points in detail.

1. Customize Business Structure 

Business structure is essential for startups to provide clarity on human resource issues and reporting relations, resulting in a productive workflow. A formal outline of the business structure makes it easier for startups to add a new position in the future, provide flexible means for growth, and gives a road map to internal promotions.

Senior members of startups should determine (in the initial stages) the type of organization structure they want to choose to ensure smooth and efficient working.

2. Enrich Business Communications 

Effective communication between the employer and the staff helps build a good relationship. On the other hand, poor communication can lead to problems like delayed projects, decreasing productivity, unsatisfied customers, and more.

The interaction among the employees can be done via personal meetings, emails, business messaging applications, video conferencing, and the like.

3. Fine-tune Accounting Applications 

Accounting is one of the most important sections of any small business as it helps managers, owners, and investors evaluate the company’s financial performance. Poor financial management can lead to business failure, especially in the initial years.

Using an accounting application can not only save time and efforts involved in data entry, calculations, making business reports but also improves accuracy. Additionally, hosting these accounting applications on the cloud allows everyone in the business to access the data simultaneously, without any security hassles from any place.

4. Have A Work-life Balance 

People involved in small businesses have various responsibilities, busy schedules, and a lot of important decisions to make. This hectic schedule can sometimes ruin personal life, and can eventually lead to burnout.

So, to be successful in the long run, there should be a proper balance between personal and professional life. If we look the other way round, having a proper work-life balance will also help keep the business life away from personal life distractions. To achieve work-life balance, it is important to set ground rules and boundaries for both parts of life.

5. Set A Deadline For the Employees 

Deadlines may seem to be a source of relentlessness and worrying pressure. However, deadlines are important to achieve small and large goals because as the deadline comes closer, it increases worker’s motivation.

Deadlines are more intimidating if someone else sets them. Deadlines ensure that team members complete work on time. It encourages employees to collaborate smoothly to achieve a shared goal, and make it clear to the employees what the company expects.

6. Stick To One Task At A Time 

For startups with so much work on the table, it’s easy to be continuously pulled in multiple directions. Endless-to-do lists, a sense that everything is important, and fractured attention is widespread for a modern workplace.

It may feel that doing multiple tasks at a time will finish the work earlier, but on the contrary, the power of multitasking is a myth. Completing one task at a time is a powerful way to become more productive. Single-tasking sustains focus, decreases stress level, and helps manage time efficiently.

7. Schedule Time For Emails 

Emails are a great way to connect with employees, investors, influencers, and board members of the company. A study by the International Association of Business Communications (IABC) found that 85% of the people accept that emails hurt their professional lives. Checking emails wastes a lot of time.

To avoid this, devise an email schedule, create a filling system to organize emails, and turn off the email notification.

8. Limit Meetings With Team Members 

Meetings can help startups keep up with the team members, reinforce company culture, and provide a board for employee ideas. However, sometimes meetings can be a waste of time when there is no agenda, goal, or purpose.

Make meetings productive, create a meeting’s agenda, set strict timing, put a cap on meetings’ size, and have an official note-taker who can note down the outcomes of the meetings.

9. Prioritize Work According To The Requirements 

One of the biggest problems with startups is prioritizing work on a daily basis. Having the best project management software will also not help because you are the one who will prioritize the task according to the demands of the business.

To manage this effectively, it is important to analyze your tasks. Identify all the tasks, assess the value of all the tasks, and then start your work.

10. Leave Room For Unexpected Tasks   

Emergencies and urgent work can arrive anytime. Having a jam-packed schedule will either have no time for such tasks or will delay the on-going work. So the best way to deal with such situations is to keep some extra time free. Being flexible, having a plan, and some spare time vacant to deal with these unexpected disruptions will help to complete all the tasks in time.

Do you have any other prodctivity tip in mind? Please mention them in the comments below. You can also share this infographic using this embedding code.