Solo professionals are some of the most driven, hard-working people in the workforce – but that can be a double-edged sword. While you’re likely doing work you’re passionate about and have more schedule flexibility, it’s also easy for the line between work and personal life to become blurred. And when you’re wearing every hat in your solo business, managing clients, deadlines, and operations can quickly become overwhelming.
A survey from New York Enterprise Report found that a third of small business owners work more than 50 hours per week, and a quarter work more than 60 hours. Without support tools, even routine project management tasks can eat into your personal time.
If you’re struggling to keep your work-life balance in check, this article covers some of the challenges you might be facing and how business management software can help you regain balance.
Common Time Management Problems for Solo Professionals
To operate a business without having a run-in with burnout, you must have time management skills. If you can’t manage your time properly, it can quickly lead to stress and falling short of expectations.
A few common barriers to effective time management for solopreneurs include:
- Competing priorities: Solo professionals often juggle multiple clients and projects at a time. It can be tough to focus completely on one task when other things on your to-do list feel equally important.
- Difficulty saying no: You’ve worked hard to earn your clients and their business, so it might not even cross your mind to turn down work – especially if you’re a people pleaser. Instead, you graciously accept the challenge, only to find yourself working late nights and regretting it.
- Lack of organization: As your business grows and evolves, you may find the post-it notes stuck to your laptop no longer suffice. Many solo professionals lack a dedicated system for keeping information organized, from client feedback to task deadlines and project outlines.
- Packing your schedule: You may feel a sense of accomplishment when viewing your packed calendar or to-do list. But aside from potentially overcommitting, some professionals confuse being busy with being productive, which can actually harm productivity.
3 Ways Business Management Software Can Keep You From Overworking
If you want to be more efficient and organized with your work, business management software can help. Here are three ways it can make time management challenges a thing of the past.
1. Track Your Time as You Work
Time-tracking tools are the easiest way to keep tabs on your work-life balance. Business management software often comes with time-tracking features that let you record the date, time window, the client or project the work was related to, and a description of the work.
This not only helps you see how many hours you’re working per day or week – it also enables you to:
- Find trends in which clients or projects are taking up most of your time
- How much time you’re spending on admin or non-billable work
- Predict how long a future project might take so you can price it accordingly
- Use data to model costs and profitability
If you work flexible hours that vary, it can also help you see which days and times you tend to work the most and least to help you come up with a more consistent schedule.
2. Quantify Your Productivity and Work-Life Balance
Business management systems come with analytics tools that use your data to help you better understand how productive you’re being during your working hours and whether you have a healthy work-life balance.
For example, coAmplifi, a business management solution, can assign a numerical value to your productivity based on the time you spend on individual tasks. Similarly, you can measure your work-life balance as a percentage based on the amount of time you spend working. Full-time employees spend around 21.8% of their year working.
3. Avoid Burnout with Increased Awareness
It can seem harmless to put in extra hours to meet fast-approaching deadlines or take on additional projects to make some extra cash. It becomes a problem when overworking yourself turns into a pattern, risking burnout.
Business management solutions offer unique tools that can help you achieve better boundaries:
- Overtime management: If you’re about to work outside your normal hours, you’ll receive an alert to let you know. Alerts are also sent to remind you to start and end on time and to take a meal break.
- Accurate project estimates: By tracking your time for different projects, you’ll be able to better estimate how long a new project will take you. This helps ensure you don’t underestimate, which can lead to an unrealistic timeline that requires after-hours work.
- Better organization: See all your upcoming deadlines and tasks in one place to help you avoid overcommitting.
Achieve Better Balance with Workforce Management Tools Like coAmplifi
Time management can be a struggle for even the most disciplined solo professionals. Business management software exists to help make your work hours more efficient so you can accomplish what you need without bleeding into your personal time.
coAmplifi is an all-in-one solution that empowers you with detailed tracking for every project, data for more informed decision-making, and tools that help you stay off the clock when it’s time.
Take back control of your time. Schedule your demo now!
