7 tips to Avoid Overwhelm & Maximize Efficiency in Your Business

As an entrepreneur you probably find yourself juggling all sorts of tasks, often with shifting priorities. You may get to the end of your working day and question whether you’ve made any progress, or achieved anything! This can feel frustrating and sometimes overwhelming, to say the least. 

Here are some tips to help beat overwhelm and achieve efficiency…

#1 Know How You Spend Your Time

Wasted time is the core of inefficiency, and this often occurs due to procrastination, giving in to distractions or inefficient working practices. The first step to becoming more efficient is to understand how you spend your time. This can be analyzed quite easily, by tracking the time you spend on tasks and between tasks, either by hand or with a time-tracking app such as Toggl or RescueTime.

This simple exercise can also be performed by your team and will help you discover where time is wasted in your business and where improvements need to be made.

#2 Processes

Documented processes across many areas of your business will help increase efficiency, as this saves you and your team ‘re-inventing the wheel’ each time you complete a task.

For example, ensuring customer-facing processes are in place, such as customer on-boarding and off-boarding, will vastly improve efficiency as you’re able to follow procedure, and use defined templates rather than spend time thinking through and implementing your actions and responses each time, so all that’s necessary is to quickly customize, where necessary. 

#3 Tools

Readily available online software will massively improve the day-to-day operational efficiency of key areas of your business. There are tools that streamline many business areas, for example customer support, project management, accounts, payments and team communication.

I personally use and love Dubsado for my CRM, ClickUp for my project management and MemberVault for my courses!

#4 Prioritize Your To-Dos

Focus is in, and multitasking is out! Trying to do too much will just cause you to get stressed out and feel overwhelmed and in an overall sense, lead you to achieve very little. You need to work with your priorities and focus on the most important tasks. Take a look at your to-do list and pick three main tasks to achieve each day. You’re likely to get more done in this manner, as it’s less overwhelming and it’s then a bonus if you manage to complete more. 

Another very simple yet effective habit is to plan your to-do’s for the next day, as the last task you do each working day. This means you set your intention and awake with a firm plan for the day ahead.

#5 Break It Down

People often reach overwhelm and become inefficient when faced with a large task. However, breaking the task down into smaller achievable steps makes everything more manageable and helps you strategize and see your direction clearly, which can increase your motivation in a big way 🙂

#6 Embrace Change

If the method chosen to complete a task continues to achieve the required outcome, oftentimes people resist changing it. However, if the same outcome can be achieved with considerably less effort, in a fraction of the time, therefore making you much more efficient… change should be encouraged! 

#7 Delegate to professionals

Many entrepreneurs find delegation challenging, because at some point, they’ve carried out all the roles. But you need to let go – for the sake of your business, to allow you and your business to grow! 

Hiring someone is having a proactive resource dedicated to supporting your business with the exact level of service you require, you should be ultra-confident that whoever you hire will take on individual tasks, projects or entire roles as necessary to improve your business operations, increase efficiency and help you grow your business.

Now, my question to you is…

Who can you hire today to help eliminate the overwhelm and improve the efficiency in your business? A web designer? A VA? 

Let me know in the comments what you would absolutely LOVE to outsource.