Tradies need to be available to work at odd times. Unless you’re an employee or owner of a large tradie business with regular work, workflow can also keep changing. All this means that it’s difficult to create a strict schedule regarding your work as a tradie.
While this can dissuade some tradies from improving their time management, time and efficiency go hand in hand. To ensure that you’re meeting all your deadlines in a timely manner, you’ll need to build a schedule around your life. As a tradie, you can create a schedule that is flexible and adaptable to changes.
Here is how you can improve your time management as a tradie:
- Create a Rough Weekly Routine
You should have an idea of what you normally do in a week if you’ve worked as tradie. While you can be called for emergency work, those scenarios are more rare. Typically, you’re more likely to be focused on finishing your projects, meeting clients, etc.
Having a rough weekly routine ready ahead of time gives you an idea of what you can expect that week. If you want to, you can create new weekly routines for each week.
Once you’ve created your routines, you can jot down the most important tasks you need to complete. This can include buying supplies, invoicing etc. You can also include daily tasks in your weekly schedule, to ensure that they don’t get skipped.
- Organize Your Priorities
Understanding how you’ve spent your time at work so far can help you navigate the path ahead. To do this, you can think about isolating those areas of work that led to time wastage. Do you not clean your tools regularly? Have you neglected to talk to customers that haven’t paid you? Do you need to order supplies?
Which of these tasks do you have to do yourself? And which can you assign to an employee? By doing those tasks that you need to do and delegating others to your employees, all tasks can get done. You also get left with timeon your hands to spend with your loved ones, or just resting.
- Monitor Problems And Potential Risks
Time can be wasted if your tools or equipment don’t work. If your transportation vehicles break down, then your work may get delayed as well. Aside from wear and tear, you should also think about theft and vandalism. Losing your toolkit can be an expensive loss.
By keeping an eye out for potential problems and being cautious, you can protect your tradie work. If you find that an equipment is breaking down, rusty or brittle, then addressing these issues ahead of time can save time and money.
- Find Solutions to Problems
If you base your approach around problem solving, them you can handle your tasks in a more efficient manner. Problems will inevitably arise. In the tradie business, this can come in the form of unexpected bad weather, issues with supplies, client requests for changes, and more.
Anytime a problem appears, you can think about the solution before you think about anything else. Often, a lot of time is wasted in worrying about problems instead of addressing them directly. An effective way to manage your time is to mitigate minor problems before they become larger issues that take up your time.
- Be Flexible
While your time management routine is designed to bring structure to your life, you also need to be flexible. This is as it’s not always possible to predict what events you’ll encounter. Even with the use of forecasting and predictive analytics, staying adaptable can help you succeed over the long term.
Expect changes to appear, and create your routine in a way where you can modify how you use your time, depending on the scenarios.
Conclusion
Better time management is closely linked to how you schedule your day, and as a result, your career. By prioritising your tasks and being aware of important work ahead, you can also mentally prepare yourself to be more productive.
However, you also need to be flexible, as unexpected events can appear in your life at any time. Your time management strategy should help you focus on different tasks, and address them in an efficient manner. You can also consider public liability insurance as a way to protect your business. If you want to learn more, you can click here.
Sources:
- Rastogi, AR, ’10 Essential Time Management Strategies’, viewed April 9th 2021, https://www.greycampus.com/blog/project-management/ten-essential-time-management-strategies
- Roos, AR, November 7th 2018, ‘7 Useful Tips to Improve Tradie Productivity’, viewed April 9th 2021,https://workbuddy.com/blog/tips-improve-tradie-productivity/
- Staff, ‘Time Management Tips, Techniques, Strategies for Tradies’, viewed April 9th 2021, https://www.tradiematepro.com.au/time-management-for-tradies/
- Staff, ‘3 Must-Have Time Management Skills for Tradie Success’, viewed April 9th 2021, https://www.tradiematepro.com.au/3-must-have-time-management-skills/
