As a small business owner, it can be tempting to try to do everything yourself and to adopt every new tool and technology to optimize your remote business operations. However, this can lead to overwhelm, decreased productivity, and a cluttered digital landscape.

One key aspect of digital minimalism is identifying and prioritizing the tasks that are essential to keeping your business operation running smooth. This involves taking a step back and evaluating what is truly necessary and valuable, and letting go of anything that is not.

Identify Essential Tasks and Tools for your Remote Business Operations

Here are some key considerations for identifying needle moving tasks and tools for your remote business operations:

1. What are the core functions of your business? Focus on the tasks and tools that directly support these functions.
2. What tasks do you do on a daily or weekly basis? These are likely to be the most essential. Create a list of these under ‘Ongoing’
3. What tasks are non-essential or redundant? These may be things that you only use occasionally or that could be easily replaced with a tool or simple and re-occurring process.
4. What tasks have the highest return on investment? Consider the time and money that you invest in each task and how much value it brings to your business.

Once you have identified the essential tasks to your business operations, it’s important to prioritize them. This will help you to focus your time and attention on the most valuable tasks and tools, and to let go of anything that is not essential or moving projects for later to the backlog.

Use Digital Transparency to Prioritize Tasks For Your Team

There are a few key strategies for communicating the priority of tasks with a remote team. Working in a remote business operations environment can pose challenges when communicating to your team what they should do first, when they should do it by, and to whom they should collaborate with when working on tasks.

Here are a few to dos when considering improving your remote team’s business operations:

1. Use a project management software

Tools such as Asana, Trello, or Basecamp can help to organize tasks and priorities, and allow team members to see what needs to be done and when. These tools often allow tasks to be labeled with different levels of priority, such as high, medium, or low.

2. Set Clear Deadlines

Establishing clear deadlines for tasks can help to communicate their priority and ensure that they are completed on time. You can always change due dates later, but it is important to give your team some idea of the urgency of different tasks so that they can prioritize effectively. This helps the business operations saving time and reducing cognitive waste.

3. Use clear and specific language

When assigning tasks or communicating priorities, use clear and specific language to avoid confusion. For example, instead of saying “we need this done as soon as possible,” specify a specific deadline.

4. Check in with your team regularly

Regular check-ins with team members can help to ensure that everyone is on track and that tasks are being completed as expected. There are many ways this can be done. You can schedule through one-on-one meetings, group calls, or other communication channels. Its important to

Conclusion

By regularly revisiting and adjusting your list of essential tasks and communicating them in a highly visible location, you can ensure that you are using technology in a way that is efficient and effective. Try these strategies for prioritizing tasks for your remote business operations and see immediate results in your team’s efficiency and joy in accomplishing work.