When you’re running a business and you’re focused on the next steps to take to grow your business, working less is the last thing on your mind.

However, one of the main reasons you become an entrepreneur and decide to start your own business is to experience more freedom, and while entrepreneurs should be involved in every aspect of their business to make sure things are on track, there is a way to work smarter so that there’s no need to work 12 hour days.

For some entrepreneurs, working less makes them feel as if they aren’t putting in the right amount of effort but the reality is that if you are still accomplishing all of your goals every week, you’re still making the most out of your entrepreneurial journey.

Tips for working smarter, not harder

So what can you do to grow your business, accomplish your goals and still experience the freedom that comes with running your own business?

Planning is crucial

Planning out your priorities and tasks for the upcoming week makes a world of difference. By knowing what you need to accomplish you can plan out your time accordingly and then decide how you would like to spend the free hours in your week. There will be miscellaneous tasks that crop up so allocate an hour or two to those tasks every week and only use that time if it’s really necessary.

Learn how to relinquish control

When you first start a business, you want to make sure that everything is going according to plan and this includes monitoring your employees to make sure that they’re doing their jobs correctly. A good leader knows how to give his employees enough information and training to do their job right the first time and has faith that they don’t need to be micro-managed to achieve the desired results.

Mistakes will happen but those can be dealt with when they happen. Encourage your employees to ask for help when they need it or when they’re really not sure about the next steps to take, but other than that, let them get on with their jobs. Setup a bi-weekly meeting to check on progress if necessary.

Forget multitasking

Trying to do more than one thing at a time is when you make mistakes, and this leads to you spending extra time correcting those mistakes. Do one thing at a time so that you can do it properly, and then move onto the next task. Following the 80/20 rule is still really effective.

Discover your most productive hours

When you have more freedom to choose your working hours, it might be worthwhile to gauge when you’re most productive so that you can work on your most important tasks and projects during those times.

Outsource

More and more businesses are discovering the amazing benefits of outsourcing their staff. Not only does this eliminate the need to provide office space and pay out employee benefits but an outsourcing company will ensure that your employees are being monitored and managed on a daily basis so that you don’t have to find time to do that yourself. Once your outsourced employees have been trained and are ready to go, there isn’t much more you have to do except check up on results and provide feedback where necessary.

Make proper use of your resources

Growing a business is all about finding what works and what your customers want. If you want to start working smarter, make use of all of your available resources to find what works so that you can build on that. For example, if you’re running an eCommerce store, pay attention to your stats and customer feedback so that you can run your online store more efficiently sooner rather than later.