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Let’s face it – there’s no such thing as a “bored entrepreneur”. When you run your own business, your to-do list is never-ending and your downtime almost non-existent. Balancing these competing demands isn’t for the faint of heart, but you can make things easier to handle by practicing good time management skills.

If you feel like your task list has got the better of you, check out the following tips on how to make the most of the limited time you have for running your business:

Tip #1 – Batch Process Tasks

As an entrepreneur, you wear plenty of different hats – from Chief Financial Officer to Marketing Manager, and even Office Janitor! And while most business owners find this diversity of challenges exhilarating, there’s no doubt that it can be difficult to shift between tasks efficiently. Managing business finances, for example, takes a different mindset than the creative work of marketing, and switching between the two can take time and energy away from getting actual work done.

For this reason, it’s a good idea to “batch process” sets of tasks – that is, to complete groups of similar tasks all at once in order to avoid losing focus when moving between different activities. For example, if you need to conduct background research on several different projects, set aside a block of time for research and leave taking action on your results until you’re able to fully shift out of the research mindset. Working on one type of activity at a time will lead to better results and more productivity in the long run.

Tip #2 – Make Organization a Priority

It should go without saying, but if you aren’t organized, you can’t be productive. If you have multiple clients or multiple projects, searching to find a lost login or missing document can eat away at the time you have available to actually get work done.

This is why smart entrepreneurs make organization a priority. Whether you follow a set system like David Allen’s “Getting Things Done” method or develop your own organizational program, you should – at a minimum – have a way to track incoming items, manage current projects and existing documentation, and schedule regular follow up once each of your projects is completed without losing any important information throughout the process.

Tip #3 – Outsource When Possible

As entrepreneurs, it’s easy to get stuck in the mindset of, “Nobody knows my business like I do.” And while there certainly are some tasks and responsibilities for which you’re uniquely suited, much of the “business” of running a business is consistent across companies – meaning that it can be easily and effectively outsourced to another worker.

The following are a few of the tasks you should consider outsourcing in order to free up time for more meaningful pursuits:

• Accounting and book keeping
• Customer service and support requests
• Market and background research
• Survey implementation and management
• Transcriptions and translations
• Content writing for your products or website

If you haven’t outsourced work before, start by farming out a simple administrative task with a defined deadline. This isn’t the time to take on a full-time virtual assistant or administrative employee – like everything else, outsourcing is a skill that needs to be grown and developed to be effective.

Instead, pick a single task like performing background research or compiling project expenses and outsource it using a service like Guru or eLance. As you become more experienced with outsourcing, you’ll see how helpful this process can be and jump at all the opportunities that exist to hire out projects that don’t require your immediate involvement.

Tip #4 – Set Aside Your Most Productive Time

We all have times when we’re most productive – that is, when we seem to effortlessly enter the “flow states” in which we’re more productive and better able to tackle complex projects. If you’re a morning person, these states likely occur between 6:00am and noon. Or, if you’re a night owl, your most productive times might occur after the sun has gone down at 9:00pm or later.

Whatever the case may be for you, take the time to identify your most productive times and block them off for focused work on your top projects. Don’t waste these precious hours on administrative work or other mindless tasks (which you should consider outsourcing anyways, per Tip #3). Instead, use these peak performance times to work on mission-critical projects or the tasks that require as much of your focus as possible.

Tip #5 – Automate, automate, automate!

While outsourcing tasks can be a good way to free up time to focus on your top priorities, automating some of them is an even better alternative in some cases. Setting up systems to automate repetitive tasks once can pay off big over time, and you’ll save money over hiring an outsourced worker for tasks that could be automated just as effectively.

For example, tools like TextExpander and ActiveWords enable you to create email responses composed of pre-written copy simply by typing a few keystrokes into your message. Using these programs – in addition to many of the other business automation tools out there – could help you manage the time you spend on repetitive business tasks, while saving you the cost of hiring an outsourced worker at the same time.

How else do you maintain productivity in the face of multiple, competing demands? Share the advice you’d give to other entrepreneurs in the comments below!