Owning an online business means juggling countless tasks each day. Many business owners sometimes struggle to keep up with everything that’s on their plate.
Fortunately, you can do things to regain control of your daily activities, and it involves setting up a successful routine.
Having a routine gives stability and clarity to your business efforts, both of which are highly needed for a successful owner to stand on their own feet. You could easily spend hours just thinking about how to organize your day.
Fortunately, we’ve made this guide to help you set up a routine to get the most out of each working day as an online business owner and get more things done.
If you want to learn more about how to set up a routine as a business owner, follow the steps below that will help you create a healthy morning and daily routine and stay focused, organized, but also well-rested.
1. Start a Morning Routine
As an online business owner, you need to get your mindset right to be able to take on the day. Instead of jumping right into work in the morning after hitting that alarm off, introduce a morning routine. This can be anything you find fulfilling. Morning routine books can provide valuable insights and structured plans that enhance your early activities. Do you like to meditate? Early morning meditation time can do wonders when it comes to raising your productivity levels for that day.
For example, if you set the alarm for 6 a.m., spend at least half an hour to an hour on your morning routine before starting work. Some beneficial activities are:
Exercise
Other than physical benefits, regular exercise also brings cognitive benefits such as better memory and thinking. It also reduces stress. That’s why a 20-minute workout followed by yoga or meditation is highly recommended for everyone who has a day packed with work-related activities.
Eat a Healthy Breakfast
If you’re an early bird go-getter, breakfast is without a doubt your most important meal of the day. Eat a breakfast packed with nutrients to help jump-start your metabolism and provide enough energy for the upcoming activities. If you find eating a big breakfast in the morning hard, consider buying NuMedica supplements online, for instance, to improve your lifestyle and feel energized and focused all day long.
Meditation
This is one of the best activities to help reduce stress and anxiety. Spend 10 to 15 minutes simply focusing on your breath, listening to relaxing music, or saying a prayer. One way to help with your meditation is to download a meditation app, like Insight Timer, Calm, or Headspace.
Take a Shower
This is a great way to freshen up before a new workday. You can plan your day in the shower or simply relax for a minute and envision yourself completing all tasks successfully.
Make Your Own Routine
These are just some examples that might work for you, but there could be tons of other things that can fulfill you and give your day a jump-start. Writing in a journal, reading a book, painting, drawing, birdwatching, you name it.
2. Get More Things Done in the Morning
There’s a reason that we were taught that the early bird catches the worm. Morning is probably one of the most underestimated periods, and there are plenty of people who like to sleep right through it.
And more and more people show tendencies towards the night owl circadian rhythm. If you’re a night owl, don’t worry. This only means you can do specific tasks at night and others in the morning.
As an online business owner, the main idea is to get things done intelligently. Try to think about which tasks you are more productive doing in the morning.
We understand these things are highly individual traits, but one thing is for sure – the first thing you tackle on your schedule is your core production time. It’s where your willpower, focus, and motivation are at their highest levels.
The more tasks you introduce during the day, the more these levels go down until they drop entirely. And this is something we all tend to do as online business owners – completely draining our batteries until they are nearly empty by the end of the workday.
3. Set Priorities
When running an online business, you can easily get overwhelmed by the number of tasks on your to-do lists. You might be surprised by how much more you can do if you prioritize your work.
First things should always go first, but what exactly does that mean? There’s a helpful method you can try to achieve this. It’s called the Eisenhower Decision Matrix, and it helps you intelligently prioritize your tasks.
You can use this method to plan on a micro or macro level. Plan your day, week, or even monthly activities by setting priorities. We suggest making your own template inside your task management tool or simply write it down on a piece of paper.
For starters, you want to draw four quadrants. The quadrants on the left are part of a “do” column and should be done ASAP, while the quadrants on the right make up the “decide” column where you can decide when you want to do these tasks.
The upper left quadrant should be reserved for urgent and vital tasks, and these are the tasks of the highest priority. This could be something like finishing a project when the deadline is close or other essential things for which you have an approaching deadline.
The upper right quadrant is for necessary but not urgent tasks. You can usually decide when you want to do these tasks, such as planning the following year’s budget or brainstorming a new product idea.
The lower left is not important but urgent, meaning you can either delegate, automate, or simply do the task right after finishing the ones from the important and urgent list.
The lower right is for not important and not urgent tasks. These you can simply forget about for now or leave them for the time when your schedule is more flexible.
The chart looks like this:
| Important, urgent | Important, not urgent |
| Not important, urgent | Not important, not urgent |
Give this method a try for a day or two, and you’ll be surprised with how much more organized and productive your typical workday will be.
You can combine this method with the previous one, get more things done in the morning, and do the tasks from the “Important, urgent” quadrant first thing after your morning routine.
Tip: Always leave extra time in your schedule for unforeseen issues or unplanned urgent activities. If nothing happens, you can always use this spare time for a coffee break or get a few more things done off tomorrow’s schedule.
4. Stay Focused
As an online business owner, you will be pulled in different directions, so we have a limited amount of focus each day. Even some effortless tasks such as checking your phone for a new notification or deleting a spam email drain your focus levels slightly.
We can only handle so many online meetings, message responses, and scrolling until we completely drain our concentration resources. That’s why it’s essential to avoid distractions in every possible way.
Too many notifications on your phone? Set it to work mode or simply turn it off completely. Too many emails? Unsubscribe from those that don’t add value. Become a digital minimalist – only check for relevant and valuable content and get rid of everything distracting.
5. Batch Tasks in Chunks of Time
If you find it hard to stay focused for an extended period, that’s fine. As a business owner, no one expects you to work for eight hours straight and perform with the same focus and motivation level.
Things just don’t work that way. Also, many business owners multitask, believing it will help get more things done faster. Although this method might be efficient for some people, the truth is multitasking can only slow your working pace.
A much better solution is batching. Batching refers to getting similar tasks done in one go to streamline their completion.
For example, set a chunk of time (say, 25 minutes) for doing similar tasks such as responding to emails and social media messages. After 25 minutes are over, take a five-minute break and move on to the next batch.
6. Set a Bedtime Routine
How you use the time before bed can have a significant impact on your sleep quality. This one can then directly influence your productivity and motivation levels in your business. That’s why you should set a bedtime routine that will make you feel relaxed.
Avoid using your phone for impulsive social media scrolling. Go for a walk with your partner, spend time with family, or read a book. You can even take time to do some work at night, but it shouldn’t be anything too challenging.
FAQ
How Do You Schedule Your Day for Maximum Productivity When You Run Your Own Online Business?
- Wake up to a soothing alarm, eat a nutrient-packed breakfast, and do your morning routine
- Start the day by doing the most important and urgent tasks and do them in chunks of time
- Make short breaks to freshen up and recharge your focus levels. When you feel your focus going down, make a quick trip to the kitchen, do another activity for a minute, and then go back to what you were doing
- Organize similar tasks in one batch and do them at the same time. For example, dedicate 25 minutes to delegate tasks to your team or answering texts and emails somewhere in the second half of the day
- Take some time off work and use it to socialize, exercise, spend time with family or simply relax
How Long Should My Morning Routine Take?
This depends on your schedule for a specific day, but you should spend at least 15 minutes, up to an hour, on your morning routine. You’ll be able to manipulate with time better once you get used to having a morning routine.
Some days it might take you longer to get in that working mood, and it’s okay to spend a few extra minutes meditating or walking.
What Daily Tasks Can You Do?
Communicate With Clients
Try to communicate with your customers daily, whether it’s answering emails or exchanging social media messages. This will show you care about them and will significantly promote your online business.
Check Your Cash
Don’t lose track of your money flow and monitor your finances daily.
Plan the Next Day
List all tasks waiting for you the next day and put them in specific time frames.
What Weekly Tasks Can You Do?
- Set weekly goals for you or your team and set a deadline to complete them
- Post news on social media, such as introducing new products, showing images of your current projects, and so on
- Record all transactions for the past week, such as invoices, payments, and other purchases
What Monthly Tasks Can You Do?
- Update your business plan. Set a specific day – for example, the last Friday of the month – to review and update your business plan
- Review your performance and check for any weaknesses
- Double-check on any unpaid or overdue payments
- Make sure everything is by the books. Go over monthly transactions and record whether you’ve been at profit or loss each month
Recommendations – Our Top Choices
Insight Timer
Insight Timer is a comprehensive meditation app. It features the world’s largest library of free meditations that are instantly available. We also like that they offer over 400 personal growth courses which can help you grow mentally in your online business.
Calm
Calm is best known for their meditations, and this is without a doubt, the most popular feature of the app. The meditations are structured into categories, including stress, anxiety, focus, emotions, relationships, and more.
If you’re looking to strike a balance between your family and online business, then exploring all the categories they offer can help.
Headspace
Headspace offers a broad library of meditations users can choose from, ranging from work stress to anxiety. They even offer sessions geared towards coping with certain emotions, like loneliness and resentment.
Set Up A Routine As A Business Owner
There’s nothing more challenging for an online business owner than organizing your day to maximize productivity.
Fortunately, there are plenty of tricks to help you do just that, and we’ve presented them in this article. The two most important things to remember are starting your day with a morning routine and prioritizing your tasks.
Don’t forget to do urgent and important things first and leave the non-important ones for later. Also, take short breaks between tasks and try to complete similar ones in one go.
These suggestions will help you regain control over your time and become more productive as an online business owner.
