If you are an aspiring entrepreneur, you are already familiar with the tug-of-war between mastering the fundamentals of business and getting your innovative venture off the ground. Read on as we examine entrepreneur time management and the importance of work-life balance for entrepreneurs. 

How Do Entrepreneurs Manage Their Time?

Given the tremendous demands of today’s highly competitive business market and the diverse challenges of establishing and running a business, entrepreneurs need to pay close attention to time management. This may entail anything from using digital calendars and time-tracking apps for monitoring and managing daily schedules to leveraging automation tools to streamline repetitive tasks and make more time for high-level strategic thinking. 

Why Time Management Is Crucial for Success 

There are only so many hours in the day — each of which is valuable time — and entrepreneurs’ daily to-do lists can become overwhelming. Failing to use that time wisely can inevitably cause you to fall behind competitors who do. After all, as the classic saying goes, “Time is money,” and this plays out quite literally in the realm of entrepreneurship.  

How to Manage Your Time as an Entrepreneur

Experts tend to agree that prioritization is one of the most essential entrepreneur time management skills. Key among these include:  

  • Setting boundaries (like specific work hours). 
  • The delegation of responsibilities (to free up time). 
  • Scheduling breaks (to remain energized). 
  • Practicing self-care (by protecting your physical and mental well-being). 

The following are additional tips for managing your time as an entrepreneur:  

Balancing Business and Academic Priorities 

Beyond carving out time for personal and family matters, budding entrepreneurs should consider the value of educating themselves. Depending on the exact nature and full extent of your entrepreneurial dreams, there exist numerous general business and industry-specific degrees at the undergraduate and graduate levels that you might want to pursue. 

Avoiding Stress and Burnout 

While a certain amount of stress is unavoidable and may even be beneficial, too much can have detrimental impacts on your physical and mental health, which in turn can negatively affect your business. Extreme cases of work-related stress commonly end in burnout: a state of complete physical and mental exhaustion that makes work and daily life activities difficult, if not impossible, to complete. 

Deadlines and Client Expectations 

Setting competitive yet appropriate and realistic deadlines is critical if you want to meet and manage client expectations. This begins with prioritizing the most important tasks to further stated goals and accomplishing those tasks according to a predetermined schedule. In addition, it is crucial to continually monitor and review progress. 

The Pomodoro Technique 

The Pomodoro Technique promises to boost productivity through a schedule that repeats a series of work and breaks. Specifically, it asks adherents to work diligently on a given task for 25 minutes without distractions or interruptions. At the end of this 25-minute period, take a relatively short break of five to 10 minutes. Named after the tomato-shaped kitchen timer that technique creator Francesco Cirillo used while in school, this roughly half-hour segment of work and rest is called a Pomodoro. After every cycle of four Pomodoros, you should take a longer break of 20 to 25 minutes. 

The Power of Saying No 

Often optimistic by nature, entrepreneurs frequently make a name for themselves by saying “yes” to the right kind of opportunities. However, the ability to say “no” can make all the difference between failure and success. Entrepreneur magazine published the thoughts of inventor and business leader Stephen Key, who identifies “turning opportunities down that aren’t a good fit” as a central component of his strategic management approach: “For me, it has been far more beneficial than I could have possibly imagined,” Key says. “It takes courage to be true to yourself — to admit when you’re not willing, uninterested or simply want better.” 

Achieving Work-Life Balance as a Student Entrepreneur

Work-life balance is vital for both students and professionals. It is particularly challenging for students pursuing entrepreneurial ventures to weigh the importance of their studies against their pressing business aspirations. To achieve this sense of work-life balance for entrepreneurs, consider the following principles of time management for student entrepreneurs. 

Setting Boundaries Between Work, Studies, and Personal Life 

Although it may be challenging, you must give yourself the life structure and schedule required to devote sufficient time to your professional, academic and personal life. This begins by establishing firm boundaries of separation. For example, you mustn’t be distracted by personal matters when you are studying, stop studying to handle work responsibilities or let work responsibilities encroach on your personal time and obligations. 

Recognizing and Preventing Burnout 

We have already discussed the dangers of burnout — but how can you avoid it if you can’t identify it? The Mayo Clinic suggests taking immediate action to prevent burnout if you begin to question the value of what you are doing or having extreme difficulty addressing even simple tasks. Other symptoms of burnout include exhaustion, impatience, dissatisfaction and a lack of confidence and/or focus. Changes in sleep and eating patterns can also signal impending burnout, as can coping with the use of alcohol or drugs. 

Boosting Productivity as a Student Entrepreneur

Student entrepreneurs often grapple with burnout due to the demands of work and study. Fortunately, you can increase your productivity by: 

Prioritizing Tasks: The Eisenhower Matrix 

The Eisenhower Matrix aids in task prioritization by placing each impending task in one of four different quadrants:  

  • The “Do First” quadrant is reserved for highly important tasks that must be done immediately.  
  • The “Schedule” quadrant contains less urgent tasks that demand personal attention soon.  
  • The “Delegate” quadrant contains important tasks that can be readily given to others. 
  • The “Don’t Do” quadrant is reserved for unimportant tasks that you can ignore entirely. 

Time Blocking Techniques for Focused Work 

Time blocking is an essential part of establishing firm boundaries that separate your professional, academic and personal concerns. Set aside specific periods of time to focus on each of these areas, and don’t allow yourself to fall prey to distractions. 

Learning How to Manage Client Expectations

It is difficult to manage your time wisely if clients or other stakeholders in your entrepreneurial venture expect too much out of you. With that in mind, here are just a couple of methods to effectively manage client expectations: 

Clear and Effective Communication with Clients 

Managing client expectations is virtually impossible if you don’t have a clear, mutual understanding of what those expectations entail. By communicating openly with clients and stressing full transparency, you can set agreed-upon goals and chart progress toward them. 

Under-Promising and Over-Delivering 

As you set goals and the client expectations that accompany them, consider the value of under-promising and over-delivering. This means setting expectations slightly below your true potential to ensure that you can reach them (and then likely go beyond them). This reduces the chances of disappointing your clients while helping you deliver extra value on projects. 

Setting Goals and Deadlines

Managing client expectations is only one aspect of setting reasonable and achievable goals and realistic deadlines. Several more goal-setting best practices include: 

The Importance of Setting SMART Goals 

SMART goals are specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time-bound. No matter what you want to accomplish, you must:  

  • Define that accomplishment precisely.  
  • Ensure that it is possible to reach.  
  • Relate it to the situation at hand.  
  • Complete it on a reasonable schedule. 

Aligning Business Goals with Academic Milestones 

Whether you are already a working entrepreneur or simply an entrepreneurial student, coordinating work and study is bound to be a hurdle. You could help facilitate this by matching your business goals with your academic milestones as a way to practice time management for student entrepreneurs. For instance, you might want to launch an advertising campaign for your business venture after completing MBA coursework in marketing. 

Using Milestones and Micro-Deadlines 

Any good team leader can tell you that you must recognize progress. If you wait until the completion of a project to mark, assess or celebrate it, that project may fall flat. To keep your team energized and on track, establish a series of project milestones and micro-deadlines. Breaking a project into smaller sections can also make it easier to conceptualize and handle. 

Managing Tasks Effectively: Strategies for Success

The average entrepreneur juggles so many daily tasks that success can seem far-fetched. Aside from the personal time management strategies outlined above, entrepreneurs can secure support from a variety of sources. 

Task Management Tools for Entrepreneurs 

From general project organization (e.g., Trello) to team collaboration (e.g., Asana), there is virtually no end to the ways that digital task and time management tools can help a new business venture get off the ground. For inspiration and tips on how to choose the ideal tools for you, explore this list of the best task management software as of 2024 from Forbes.  

Outsourcing for Entrepreneurs 

A popular business strategy since the early 1990s, outsourcing involves hiring external, third-party contractors to perform duties that were traditionally performed by internal employees. It is a wonderful way for entrepreneurs to cut costs, particularly during the early stages of venture development. 

Identifying What Can Be Outsourced 

Outsourcing should give your business more time, money and other resources to do what it does best. Therefore, you should never outsource your core competencies or any value-added operations that make your business unique. According to the U.S. Small Business Administration (SBA), popular areas of outsourcing across industries include:  

  • Accounting 
  • Marketing 
  • IT management 
  • Shipping/logistics 
  • Human resources (HR) 
  • Customer service 

Enhance Your Knowledge of Entrepreneurial Management at Keiser University

Few things can jumpstart an entrepreneurial career more effectively than the right graduate degree program. At Keiser University, we offer a range of graduate school programs that can both spark and drive a career in entrepreneurialism. Beyond multiple targeted Master of Business Administration (MBA) specializations, we offer various master’s-level degrees that can make you a better leader in your industry of choice. To learn more about Keiser Graduate School programs for professionals and entrepreneurs, contact an admissions counselor today.