Entrepreneurship in 2018: 5 Tips to Manage Long Working Hours at the Office Smart working is any day the icing on the cake, over hard work.
By Rahul R
Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own.
You're reading Entrepreneur India, an international franchise of Entrepreneur Media.
Turning entrepreneur this year is no mean task, the transition requires unwavering dedication and herculean efforts. If you are amongst those first-time entrepreneurs preferring to set up an office, or even work out of shared office spaces, then there are vital aspects that you need to manage and one important amongst these is managing long working hours at the office.
The sixty four-thousand dollar question at this point in time is How to efficiently manage workload throughout the day such that even you (as a first-time business owner) get to enjoy a fair work-life balance. With management of work, and long working hours being the criteria, check out five simple steps following which it should become potentially easy to complete work in a hassle-free manner:
Eliminate long working hours : If you are amongst those (first-time entrepreneurs) with the belief that essential work could be done through all predicaments without time being a factor, then the concept of long working hours does not arise at all. With this approach, you could work from office, at home, and even when on the move; thereby ensuring that you are connected with clients and colleagues at all times. Here, do remember to have an application/tool to manage your workload by prioritising the time-bound tasks.
"Difficult tasks" should be the numero-uno priority: Most importantly, corporate experts believe that first-time entrepreneurs must master the art of gauging workload. This means that you would be required to prioritise those tasks requiring a great amount of effort and your time, over those that require comparatively lesser of these.
These "demanding jobs" must be catered to during your most productive part of the work day. With this, you ensure greater probability of completing the most demanding jobs efficiently, and thereby allocate the rest of the day to the other tasks requiring comparatively lesser amount of your effort and time. This approach should ensure that you have plenty of time left for a life outside of office as well.
Create a motivational work atmosphere: If you are a business owner, managing a team of people, then motivating your team members is a mandate. The motivation should be done such that employees eliminate, by themselves, any possibilities of facing a work burnout-like situation; and thereby strive to put their best foot forward with respect to creatively working and completing tasks.
Always remember that a motivated team gets the best work results. Hence, having a creatively-motivated team should let you enjoy working even at odd hours without having to feel burdened.Listen to motivational talks: Working at office does not mean that you should stick to your computer and colleagues all day, spare a few minutes to listen to motivational tasks, especially from quality entrepreneurs, to derive positive attitude to help you take you through long hours at the office.
Listening to inspirational music, while working, also goes a long way to motivate you to efficiently put in effort while you clock those extra hours at your desk (or at meetings).
Time allocation is the cake, more than its icing: Intelligently deciding when to do tasks is always the key to managing long working hours, and in eliminating this as well. For instance, you need not choose the end of the day to organize conference calls with your board members and management. Con-calls can be held during the most productive work hours of the day such that the creative ideas spring up intuitively rather than being forced to do so.
Knowing when to do what matters the most for first-time entrepreneurs. Remember that long working hours are not a choice, but require managing smartly (smart work) when these are upon.
