Time management is at the core of organization.
Inner time management: your biological clock
The sensation has been there before: "FOMO" sets in, followed by a slight discomfort within one's body. Slowly, random thoughts come to mind as they progressively become clearer. The control of body regains momentum...You open your eyes, glimpse sideways and you see the luminous red digits displaying 05:59 in the dark; They turn 06:00; The alarm goes off! Now, this is a description of what some people might or still experience from the capabilities of our biological clock. The imminent feeling of having missed something is actually your mind telling you "hey, time management is one of the basis of organization skills". And it all adds up to how one manages priorities toward a set project goal. But does an accurate biological clock also signal your perception of time within a business is equally effective?
Time as an investment
The amount of literature covering time management topics is not exactly scarce, some even going as far as "how you should manage your time management". Research on how people deal with their daily time slots dates back to the sixth century AD with the St. Benedictine Monks. The paradox of time and its availability is that while we live in the world of automation, where processes are handled less and less by a human hand, employees new types of stress in the digital era are said to be on the rise. And not least by poor time management. So with such disparity between the contribution of technological advances and its purported drawbacks, perhaps looking elsewhere for a different grasp on the relationship between time within an enterprise could place a decision-maker at an advantage position; a relationship that takes into account the rapid growth of startups nowadays. It is fair to say, for instance, that the basic accounting principle of going concern is primarily assumed for larger businesses but equally valuable for SMB's. If we assume a business will continue its activities for a continuous period, including growth in that period curve would also sound realistic. What if for each unit of your time in the business, you placed a value? Supposing a business revenue increased by 50% through the course of one year, we could attach a symbolic 50% increase to your unit of time. Now, let's take a step back and hold that thought for a while.
"...What if for each unit of your time in the business, you placed a value...?"
Airfocus behind your time management
Take NPV, for instance, a calculation that will precisely compare present and future values of cash inflow and outflow when investment returns are the focus. Now, with time being such an ethereal "capital" within your enterprise it is easy not to attach some numerical value to it or even to dismiss it as an investment. If you start from the principle that your unity of time will come at a higher price along time, it would make sense to prioritize present tasks looking at which ones will save you more time in future tasks. For example, product development and getting business traction can sometimes walk hand in hand and in this case, making sure processes improvement is up and running efficiently would be of the essence. One would think that delaying training for current employees or even recruiting new staff so to free up time in such a crucial time for operational improvement would be the best decision to make. But if we are to think within the NVP frame of mind, we could argue that if growth is the ultimate goal, then recruiting more personnel or training at a point in future when you could be negotiating terms with a potential partner would prove to be a significant opportunity cost compromise. Prioritize and create achievable daily goals. And with the support of a powerful Roadmapping tool such as Airfocus, visualizing it on a timeline can be just what u need to turn the ethereal into tangible daily goals that can be achieved