A Barber’s Guide to Perfecting Time Management Skills
Elevating your career, working with clients, juggling tasks, and trying to live a well-balanced life—it isn’t always easy when you’re in the barbering business. And hey, we get it. It’s totally possible to love your job and want to put your whole self into it—but it’s also possible to want to balance it all a little better at the same time.
And that’s exactly what we’re here to talk about today—time.
More specifically, time management—and how you can make small changes in your daily life to help balance everything out a little better.
The more skilled you get at time management in the barbering world, the more benefits you’ll see pop up in all aspects of your life.
Don’t be surprised if these time management tips bring about advantages like:
- Better focus
- Improved planning
- Boosted productivity
- Punctuality
- Less stress
- Morale boost
- Increased revenue
- A better work-life balance
That all sounds pretty good to us—what do you think? If you’re ready to take small—but crucial—steps toward managing your time just a little bit better, then this blog is for you. Read on to learn more about barbering balance in the time management department.
Automate Client Bookings
Do us a favor before you blow this advice off—spend the next week tracking how much time you spend manually booking, scheduling, and chatting with clients. You’d be surprised how much time that can eat up. Don’t get us wrong—connecting with your clients and adding a personal touch to your barbering career is important, but you can do that in all other aspects.
There’s no shame in the automated booking game. Look into booking options that you can insert directly on your website that will feed into your schedule.
This can cut a ton of time out that you’d normally be spending on the phone. That being said, you don’t want to ignore your clients, either— someone calls in to book with you, do the damn thing and be personable AF.
But also encourage them to explore the online booking tool you’ve implemented on your site.
Set Daily, Weekly, and Monthly Goals
Take a little time—schedule it!—each morning, every Monday, and the beginning of every month to sit down and write out your daily, weekly, and monthly goals. This type of zeroed-in focus can help you ensure that you’re dedicated the right amount of time to the tasks at hand, making it easier than ever to get things done.
Oftentimes, planning gets a bad rep—sure, it can be tedious and it’s not always fun, but with just a few minutes set aside each day, you can set yourself up to be on the right track.
That kind of dedication and focus is invaluable when it comes to your time because with some strategic planning you can stop wasting the precious time you have.
Schedule Breaks, Vacations, & Holidays
Scheduling is at the very heart of time management—even for the things that you think shouldn’t be on your schedule. Yep, we’re talkin’ about lunch breaks, vacations, holidays, and off-days—schedule all of that and more. Why? Because time management can’t happen if you’re constantly burnt out.
You need to stave off the 100% hustle—even the most successful barbers take breaks, and you should, too. Make sure you’re making a point to take care of yourself, take a break, and relax a little bit. Otherwise, your brain and business will be all over the place.
Start Batching Your Tasks
Need to clean the entire barbershop? Have to make time for your marketing strategy? Haven’t figured out when in the day you can carve time to post on Instagram? You guys, this business hack is about to change your world forever—start batching.
When we spend a little time every day pulling our focus in thousands of different directions, it’s easy for things to take way more time than necessary and for us to leave tasks hanging. When you batch your tasks, you get to focus on one thing at a time and knock out a ton of stuff in that department.
For example, if posting on Instagram is a part of your digital marketing strategy but you can’t figure out when during your day you can choose photos, edit them, write captions, search hashtags, etc.—then you should consider batching.
Take a few days at the beginning of the month where all you focus on is the Instagram posts and engagement you have planned for the next month—then, make it happen! You won’t have to spend a ton of time everyday planning and posting if you have everything already prepared.
This type of time management hack can be applied to so many other things, too. Inventory? Batch it. Employee meetings? Batch them. Research on the latest barbering trends? Batch that, too.
Are you loving our time management advice? We sure hope so. Do us a big favor—drop a comment below and let us know your favorite trick for time management in your own barbering career. As much as we want to help you guys, it’s always so critical for the community to hear from the barbers who are in it—and that’s you!
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