Automating your recurring tasks will save you massive amounts of time down the line.
Getting more done in less time is the goal of every online business owner and one way to get there is to automate parts of your business. I highly recommend you to get started by automating your admin work as time spent on small repeatable tasks really adds up, and the longer you do it the more likely you are to trip up either by it becoming normal to overlook it, or just human error.
Why?
Currently your task management might look like the following: You go to your project management tool, create a new task, assign a team member and add a due date. That’s 4 jobs you complete every time a new task comes up. This might not sound like a big amount of work but taking into consideration that you likely have up to or even more than 20 repeatable tasks to complete each month, these 4 jobs add up to 80 individual steps that you can easily avoid but setting up a recurring task management system.
Setting tasks to repeat is a first step to automate the backend of your business. When you’ve got tasks automatically triggering off of due dates, you’re taking a step away from relying on memory, or notes in your calendar.
In this blog post, I’m going to explain how you can set up recurring tasks in 5 easy steps.
STEP 1: PERFORM A TASK BRAIN DUMP
Start by performing a brain dump on all the recurring tasks currently going on in your business.
What is a recurring task? A recurring task is a task that you complete more than once. They can repeat daily, weekly, monthly, or even annually and can be found in any area of your business. For example, a recurring task might be paying your taxes by the end of the year or scheduling team meetings at the beginning of each month.
Make a list of all those activities, no matter if they are just quick things to check off or bigger tasks.
STEP 2: CATEGORIZE TASKS ACCORDING TO HOW OFTEN THEY OCCUR
Once you identified the tasks that you do regularly within your business, put them into the correct category based on how often they recur. I suggest the following categories:
- Yearly
- Quarterly
- Monthly
- Weekly
- Daily
STEP 3: CREATE A RECURRING TASK LIST IN YOUR PM TOOL
After you have a complete list of your recurring tasks, split into different categories, add them to your project management tool. Personally, I use Asana but you can create this list in any tool of your choice. Other popular project management tools are Trello, Clickup, Monday.com or Teamwork. (See a full list of different tools I recommend to my clients here).
I use the list view in Asana to display the tasks and create sections for each category.
This is an example of how this could look like:
STEP 4: ADD CHECKLISTS, INSTRUCTIONS AND TEMPLATES TO EACH TASK
Now that you have all of the tasks on your list plugged into your project management tool as recurring tasks, you can start adding details to each task so anyone who has to complete that specific task knows exactly what to do. This can be done in the form of checklists or detailed step-by-step instructions. You can include additional information in the description section of the task, as attachments or linked SOPs or templates.
Some of your tasks might have more detailed instructions so you’ll have to break those down into multiple steps (such as writing and scheduling your blog post) whereas others might just be a quick reminder (such as engage on social media channels). Don’t overthink this step, not every task in your business will have a detailed out system.
STEP 5: ASSIGN TEAM MEMBERS, DUE DATE AND SET TO REPEAT
The last step is to assign each task to yourself or a team member, a due date and when the task should repeat. In Asana, you can choose whether the task should recur periodically or in intervals within a certain time after completion. When you complete an occurrence of your task (or if it becomes overdue), the next occurrence will automatically populate in your task.
THE RESULT
Congratulations, you just automated one part of your business that’s gonna save you crazy amounts of times down the line! Plus, your recurring task management system helps you stay organized and on top of things which will improve your efficiency and quality of work.
BUT WAIT, WHAT ABOUT THE REST OF MY BUSINESS?
Ready to get your backend fully automated so you can work less and make more? Then I might be your girl! I help my clients win back precious time by making sure their systems are on lock so they can focus on stepping into their CEO shoes and grow the business by heaps and bounds. And what I help them achieve, I can do for you too! Leave me a message here or let’s hop directly on a call to identify how we can make your biz run smoother!
