Are you feeling pulled in a million directions at once? As a business owner, many tasks are competing for your time and leaving you feeling frazzled. This frazzled feeling can creep into your business from time to time and needs to be addressed so that it doesn’t increase in frequency. When chaos comes knocking, here are five simple steps to overcome business overwhelm.
5 Simple Steps to Conquer Chaos
1. Make a List of Everything on Your Plate
This simple brain dump will allow you to see all of your responsibilities in one place so that you can best allocate your resources. Compare this list to your job description or start a job description for yourself now. Having a clear job description will help you to stay focused on what is most important in your role and prevent you from taking on distracting tasks. Review your job description and the associated standard operating procedures frequently so that you can shuffle responsibilities as needed.
2. Look for What You Can Cut
As you review your list of responsibilities, look for tasks that are not tied to producing results and consider cutting them. Holding on to these responsibilities will slow the progress toward your goal. Permit yourself to cut them without feeling guilty about it. Not sure if the task is leading to your goal? I recommend cutting it short-term to see what impact it has. David Allen says, “You can do anything but not everything.”
3. Delegate Successfully
Many business owners fail to delegate because they feel it would take just as long to delegate to someone else. Not delegating leads to a trapped cycle of handling menial tasks instead of working towards your biggest goals. Standard operating procedures are the key to delegating success. You will prevent future overwhelm by creating standard operating procedures now. To start an SOP, record yourself doing the task and talking through the steps on a screen capture software such as Loom. Next, share the video with the person you will be delegating the task to in the future and have them write the SOP for that task from your video. The next time that task comes up, it won’t be on your plate.
4. Automate
There is so much technology out there; use it to make your life easier! You don’t have to be a tech guru to automate pieces of your business. Many different softwares can help to take things off your plate. Here are a few of my favorites that I customize for clients:
- Insightly CRM (sales, and project automation)
- Gusto (payroll automation)
- PieSync (sync your contacts across software platforms)
- Trainual (onboarding and SOP management)
- Zapier (general automation and connection between software systems)
5. Build and Maintain a Strong Standard Operating Procedure
Building an SOP will provide your business operations with the flexibility to shift responsibilities when overwhelm rears its head. Do not let the development of an SOP become overwhelming. You can develop one job description and one SOP at a time and your team can help and so can consultants like us. We offer full-service SOP creation and a DIY course and I would love to speak with you if you are looking for more support.
You can get in front of overwhelm by taking simple steps now. I wish I could promise that chaos will never come knocking. However, the truth is it will. Use the strategies above and instead of feeling frazzled, you’ll be prepared to conquer business overwhelm head-on.