Being a team of one comes with its own unique set of challenges, but it isn’t immune to a trial that impacts workforces of all sizes – time management.
Time management can be a large pain point for solopreneurs, as they take on many roles and responsibilities to stay on track and meet client expectations. Throw multiple projects and clients into the mix at once, and it can quickly result in a loss of focus from frequent context switching or falling behind.
If you’re having trouble staying on task due to a busy client load, there are tools and strategies that can help. This article dives into common productivity challenges solopreneurs face and five practical tips to overcome them.
Common Productivity Barriers for Solopreneurs
Solopreneurs tend to be extra dedicated to their work, which can be both a good and bad thing when it comes to their work quality. A few roadblocks you may need to balance as you navigate solopreneurship include:
- Having multiple clients: Fielding communications from different clients throughout the day who all have varying priorities can be difficult to balance and leave you feeling scatterbrained.
- Wearing many hats: As a solopreneur, you must fulfill the roles of all business functions, from marketing and sales to accounting and admin duties, which can take a significant amount of your time.
- Having conflicting priorities: It can be tough to prioritize projects with similar deadlines, especially if they’re similar in scope.
- Lacking boundaries: Since you work for yourself, it’s easy to let your tasks spill into the time you have allocated for rest and work-life balance, which could lead to burnout.
- Overcommitting: It’s exciting when a new client wants to work with you. But, if you don’t have a clear understanding of your current commitments, you may end up overcommitting and under-delivering. This can negatively impact your reputation.
5 Ways to Better Balance the Demands of Solopreneurship
While solopreneurship is a constant balancing act, it’s one that can be mastered by increasing your efficiency. This enables you to save time and handle more opportunities to grow your business, resulting in better financial stability. Here are a few strategies you can implement to set yourself up for success.
Stay Organized With a Single Source of Truth
If you’re using multiple systems to organize projects, store documents, track time, and bill clients, you’re likely wasting time toggling between software to find the information you need. You can solve this by setting up a centralized system or dashboard, like project management software, to track all your client information in one place. This can help you stay more organized and save time you normally would have spent digging for notes from a previous meeting. It can also help you better stay on top of deadlines.
Effectively Prioritize Your Workload
Prioritizing your projects can be tricky, but it helps to consider the importance of each project based on factors like:
- Its scope and due date
- The value it will bring to your business
- Its allocated budget
- Your current bandwidth
- Any project dependencies that can’t be started until a certain milestone is completed
The easiest way to do this is with the help of digital tools that can analyze your workload to help you effectively plan and prioritize.
Break Deliverables Into Smaller Tasks
Envisioning a completed project can feel overwhelming. To make large milestones feel more manageable, consider breaking them down into smaller tasks.
For example, if you’re helping a client design a new website, you could break the project down into tasks such as:
- Conducting audience research
- Creating a new sitemap
- Developing wireframes
- Creating an initial design
- Gathering feedback on the initial design
- Creating a second version of the design
- Getting final approval
- Launching the new site design
Each of these tasks would have its own due date. Having to-dos to check off on the way to your end goal will help you feel more accomplished and show your client the progress that’s being made.
Use Tools to Track Time and Progress
Having a visual of your progress makes it easier to understand how far you’ve come and how far you have yet to go on a project. Some project management solutions have built-in features that let you track your time per project, task, and client via progress bars so you can see exactly where your time is being spent.
This information enables you to more accurately predict how long future assignments will take so you can provide more accurate estimates. It also allows you to provide realistic timelines so you don’t overwhelm yourself with turnarounds that are too quick.
Automate Where Possible
It’s easy for solopreneurs to get weighed down with tedious managerial duties. On average, 36% of an entrepreneur’s work week is spent on administrative tasks.
Fortunately, you can shrink this number by using automation within project management software. Save time by automating invoices, time tracking, reporting, and other time-consuming manual tasks.
Improve Your Productivity and Efficiency With coAmplifi
Staying organized with the right tools can make or break your success as a solopreneur. These tools can help you effectively manage your time and increase your productivity, allowing you to take on additional work for more income – without overextending yourself.
coAmplifi is a workforce management software with project management tools designed to give you a clearer understanding of everything from task progress to your ability to commit to future projects, keeping your business operating smoothly and your clients happy.
Learn how you can take your business to the next level. Schedule your demo now!
