Wondering how to organise your life more efficiently while running a small business? Life can get super busy super quickly, and even those smaller neglected tasks add up! In your business alone, there’s so much to do all the time: designing/making your products; marketing and social media efforts; financial admin and tracking; researching wholesale stockists; managing online stores; applying for and selling at markets… It can get pretty overwhelming.
When figuring out how to organise your days as a small business owner, it’s not a one-size-fits-all approach. What works for someone else won’t necessarily work for you. We each have our strengths and setbacks! Even our own life commitments – family, pets, full time jobs – greatly affect the time we have left to spend on our business/dream. You might feel stuck between juggling all of the balls solo, or hiring a helper – and that no matter what you clear off, there is never enough time in the day.
1. How to organise your daily tasks: Decide on the priorities
This is the best thing you can do before you begin. We know from experience – it’s so easy to get caught up in the things that take ages, but don’t necessarily pay off. Especially with tasks like social media, which can feel like a total drain if you’re still not seeing results. And let’s be honest, we’re all guilty of losing an hour to a good scrolling session, or looking for new social media strategies that promise to bring traffic, but often disappoint.
Where to begin:
Not being clear about which tasks take priority at the start of each day is a huge roadblock in operating efficiently. Be intentional about your goals for the day, you can always stay flexible and adjust later.
Firstly, make a list on paper, and use different coloured highlighters to colour code. Or you could use a digital app, such as Asana, which allows you to be as simple or detailed as you like. Create projects, add deadlines, drag your tasks around and reorder as you need. Then tick them off as you complete – this bit is always more satisfying than you think it’ll be!
- Order tasks by urgency, before anything else, but take into consideration any blocks of your time in the day that are immovable (errands and appointments). Then ask yourself, “Which of these would lift the biggest weight off my shoulders if it was completed today?”
- Aim to have at least one urgent job done by the end of the day… even if it’s tedious! Celebrate any large tasks you started, even if you couldn’t finish in one day. That’s still progress!
- Reward yourself for completing a big task with a smaller, more enjoyable small business task. Make sure there’s at least one part of your small business you have to look forward to doing in the day!
Prioritising doesn’t just help you within your small business operations. If you have household chores, post office runs, a dog to walk, care for younger/elderly dependents, cooking and washing up to do, setting everything out helps you be much more realistic with your time. Often we can be hindered by the more ‘mundane’ tasks, or distracted by them – so it’s time to make a plan, get organised, and work more efficiently.
Not a fan of a basic to-do list? If you need to switch it up, or see your days/hours blocked out, try an alternative tool that helps you visualise your workday – read on to find out more.
2. How to organise your time: Try a planner!
Click here to download this simple 7-day planner. We’ve created a customisable timetable of tasks which you can use again and again to set out your week. It’s a double-sided sheet, with a loose guide to help you target your time in a way that works best for you.
Page One: Weekly Planner
This leaves plenty of room to add your own personal tasks. We suggest:
- Time blocking: start with the absolute musts. Daily commitments, deadlines, and the priorities you’ve set for each day. If you can set your whole week out, even better!
- Dedicated time for working on your visibility – both online and in-person. For example:
– Finding and contacting a new wholesale stockist
– Applying to markets (use Pedddle to search)
– Researching PR opportunities, especially before Christmas (click here for the basics on PR!).
Listing your business on Pedddle is a great tool for improving your online visibility. Our Pedddle stall pages (business listings) bridge the gap between online and in-person selling, allowing your small business to be found much more easily by customers, and even discovered by market organisers using Pedddle to find stalls. Click here to find out more about joining as a stallholder - Review your finances regularly. Lots of us hate doing this bit, but if you break it down, and tackle just a bit each week, it will make tax season feel like much less of a nightmare!
- Respond to emails – daily if you can! It’s easy to get caught up in this or overwhelmed, so set aside specific time to do it. Timely responses build trust, especially when it comes to customer queries.
Page Two: Social Media Planner
This is the social media side of the sheet, where you can easily lay our a social media plan for the week. There is no pressure to post everyday. You can fit posting into your day without overwhelmed.
Our top tip is to have a few ideas for repeatable content for each day of the week, so that you always have some guidance on what to post. You can try to mix up a few posts each week and post them on alternative days/times. Here are a few ideas:
- Post 1 – A recap of the things you’ve done over the weekend/recently. Perhaps post a stall pic from a market day, a behind-the-scenes glimpse of your crafting process, or something exciting you’ve been up to, to allow your audience to connect with you on a more personal level.
- Post 2 – Drive engagement. Host a poll on Facebook or Insta, or use the ‘Ask me a question’ function on Instagram stories. It’s time to get your audience involved and engaging with you! We love a quick ‘Chooseday’ poll: giving our audience two things to choose between really drives engagement.
- Post 3 – Share any forthcoming markets and events that you have coming up. If not, share one of your stockists or point to your online shop with a CTA.
3. How to organise your ideas: Social media and other content
Most social media apps allow you to save posts, which is really handy for keeping content inspiration saved and in the long-run, saves you time on trying to think new and engaging posts up from scratch.
Our recommendation: keep a folder, note, or private Pinterest board with any ideas you might want to refer back to later. At Pedddle, we have our own Pinterest boards with inspiration specifically for small businesses on our own, including stall set-up and other useful business tips – find them here.
We know content ideas don’t come as naturally to some as they do to others. Having something you can glance at to make planning easier is a must for saving time.
We love to see this campaign (left) from Joanne Hawker each time it rolls around – March Meet The Maker has been running for years, with prompts to help small business owners create a month of content, centred around their businesses. Why not keep this list as some quick inspo for your own posts when you’re short on ideas?
You don’t have to stick to March, or posting daily – though we recommend taking part in the next #MMTM campaign! Spread over the course of 2 months, that’s lots of great ideas for content! There’s room to interpret them how you like and make it authentic to your business.
4. A few more tips on how to organise your days:
Let’s recap on our top tips for getting organised and feeling ready to work:
- Use a morning routine to get you prepped for each day and feeling refreshed. Developing a routine where possible is great for keeping your head above water, especially as running a business can make life feel chaotic. Start small, by making your bed first thing. We also love a short walk around the local area – almost like a ‘morning commute’ to get us in the right headspace. We like ‘The Miracle Morning’ – it’s an amazing routine to get into.
- Plan ahead when you can! This could be on a Sunday evening before the week begins, or even at the start of the month to feel even more on top of your organisation. Our weekly planner might help you map out key focuses for the week.
- Use a timer, so there’s less chance of running over on a task. Give yourself a deadline to complete a written task or emails and even scrolling through social media – don’t get lost in one task.
- Block time specifically for social media. Whether weekly or monthly, this is much preferable to posting whenever you can grab a minute, and also helps you plan your marketing better. As many small business owners know, social media can be extremely time consuming, and often frustrating if not resulting in interactions or traffic to your online site or shop. At Pedddle, we use the Preview app to visually plan our Instagram grid. Meta Business Suite is great for scheduling content for both Instagram and Facebook.
- Allow yourself some room for falling short! Occasionally, we all fall off the planning wagon. But it’s important we don’t beat ourselves up when this happens… none of us are perfect!