How to Get More Out of Your Day as a Retailer

It is an old saying that “time is money”. Most people don’t really understand why it seems true and honestly, what it actually refers to is the skills of better time management.

Mastering the delicate art of selling will hep bring in money but you need to create sustainable streams of revenue.

As an independent pharmacist, if you don’t manage your business time properly, it will result in lesser productivity and this will definitely reduce your profits. We only have 24 hours each day so it means we need to manage our time well and also make every precious minute count. It is a common misconception that time management mainly depends on how many hours are available in each day. In truth, what really matters is how productive one can be in those limited hours.

If you think you can be more productive with the 24 hours you get each day, here are some tips for you to help you better manage your time.

• Harmonize your personal and business life

It is a myth that there is a perfect way to balance work and life. As an independent pharmacist, it can be hard to not be at your pharmacy to oversee things. When you’re also not at work, being actively present in your personal life could also be difficult.

In order to balance the two parts of your life a little, you’ll need to arrange everything in a manner that’s orderly. To seek harmony between your professional and personal life, you’ll need to prioritize your schedule and time regardless of how much energy it requires.

You can approach this by creating a good to-do list of professional and personal priorities. After that, make a schedule and then block out some time for life and work accordingly. Drop other things that doesn’t tally with these priorities or squeeze them around existing responsibilities.

• Delegate tasks and responsibilities: A good way to easily wear yourself down is by trying to do everything all by yourself. If you’re used to this, delegating duties to staffs in your pharmacy can be difficult but it is necessary if you want to run a retail business that’s efficient.

Doing everything all by yourself will burn you out fast as well as kill productivity.

When delegating responsibilities to your workers, try to be a manager and maximize their productivity.

• Control your attention: When trying to have more quality time, you should try to focus on carrying only a single task or duty at a time. This means you need to effectively manage your distractions like smoke breaks, checking emails and gossips, in order to produce results that are of higher quality, faster. This should also apply to your employees. Eliminate their distractions by establishing expectations and rules, although you should try not to create a work environment that’s too oppressive.

• Include unstructured time in your schedule i.e. take breaks: As an independent pharmacist, taking breaks doesn’t really mean you are unproductive or lazy. This notion is also supported by science. The human brain is not built for the intensive amount of focus that we require it to do nowadays.

When you focus on a particular task for long time, it may end up being counterproductive. In order to effectively manage time, one needs to schedule brief interruptions, like a 10-minute break so as to better retain information.