New Year, Less Busywork: A Small Business Owner's Guide to Working Smarter in 2026

Happy New Year.

If you're reading this on January 1st (or close to it), you're probably in that headspace where everything feels possible. New year, clean slate, fresh energy. Maybe you've already jotted down a few resolutions. Hit revenue targets. Hire that new team member. Finally get organized.

But here's the thing I've noticed after working with small businesses for years: the resolutions that stick aren't the big, dramatic ones. They're the quiet changes that remove friction from your day-to-day operations. The ones that give you your time back.

So this year, I want to propose a different kind of resolution. Instead of "work harder" or "hustle more," what if 2026 was the year you finally stopped doing work that a computer could do for you?

Not in some far-off, sci-fi, "let AI run your whole company" way. I'm talking about practical, achievable wins. The kind that free up an hour here, thirty minutes there—time that adds up to entire days by the end of the year.

Let's talk about how to make that happen.

The Busywork Problem (And Why It's Eating Your Business Alive)

Let me paint a picture. See if any of this sounds familiar.

It's Tuesday morning. You get to the office—or open your laptop at the kitchen table—and immediately start putting out fires. There's an invoice that didn't go out last week, so you manually pull the client info, open your billing software, type everything in, and send it. Twenty minutes gone.

Then you check email. Three people have asked variations of the same question, so you copy-paste a response you've sent a dozen times before, tweaking it slightly for each person. Another fifteen minutes.

Your sales guy closes a deal, which is great, but now you need to manually enter that client into your CRM, your project management tool, and your accounting system. They don't talk to each other, so you're the middleman. Thirty minutes, easy.

By lunch, you've been "busy" for four hours, but you haven't done any actual high-value work. No strategy. No client relationships. No growth initiatives. Just... maintenance. Data entry. Copy-paste. The same tasks you did yesterday and will do again tomorrow.

This is the busywork problem, and it's more expensive than you think.

Here's some quick math. Let's say you value your time at $100 an hour (and if you're a business owner, it's probably worth more than that when you account for opportunity cost). If you spend just two hours a day on tasks that could be automated, that's $200 a day. $1,000 a week. Over $50,000 a year.

Fifty thousand dollars worth of your time, spent doing things a computer could do in seconds.

And that's just the direct cost. There's also the mental load—the cognitive drain of constantly switching between tasks, the low-grade frustration of doing repetitive work, the nagging feeling that you should be focused on bigger things. That stuff compounds. It leads to burnout, missed opportunities, and a business that feels harder than it should.

So here's my challenge to you: think about your last week. What did you do that a computer could have done instead?

I'm not asking to make you feel bad. I'm asking because most business owners have never actually stopped to take inventory. Once you see it, you can't unsee it. And that's when things start to change.

The Three Types of Time-Savers (And When to Use Each)

Alright, so you've identified the busywork. Now what?

In my experience, there are three main ways to get repetitive tasks off your plate. Each has its place, and understanding the differences will help you pick the right solution for each problem.

1. Automations: Things That Happen Without You

An automation is exactly what it sounds like: something that runs on its own, triggered by an event, without you lifting a finger.

Think about invoice follow-ups. Right now, you might have a spreadsheet of outstanding invoices, and every few days you manually check who's overdue and send a reminder email. That's busywork.

With automation, here's what happens instead: an invoice becomes 7 days overdue, and a polite reminder email goes out automatically. If it hits 14 days, a slightly firmer email. At 30 days, maybe you get a notification to call them personally. You didn't have to remember anything, check anything, or send anything. It just happened.

Other examples of automation in action:

New lead comes in through your website → automatically added to your CRM, assigned to a salesperson, and a welcome email goes out
Employee submits a time-off request → manager gets notified, calendar gets blocked, HR system gets updated
Customer makes a purchase → receipt sent, inventory updated, shipping label generated
Contract is signed → project automatically created in your PM tool with default tasks and deadlines

The key with automation is the trigger. Something happens, which causes something else to happen, without you in the middle.

2. Integrations: Making Your Tools Talk to Each Other

Here's a scenario I see constantly: a business has five or six software tools, and none of them know the others exist.

You've got your CRM over here, your accounting software over there, your email marketing platform in another tab, your project management tool somewhere else, and a handful of spreadsheets trying to tie it all together. When a client's information changes, you update it in four places. When you want a report that combines sales and project data, you export CSVs and manually merge them.

This is an integration problem.

Integrations connect your tools so data flows between them automatically. When you update a client's address in your CRM, it updates in your accounting system too. When a deal closes, the project kicks off in your PM tool without anyone creating it manually. When someone unsubscribes from your email list, your CRM reflects that immediately.

The simplest integrations use tools like Zapier or Make (formerly Integromat). These are "no-code" platforms that let you connect apps with simple if-this-then-that logic. They're great for straightforward connections and can handle a surprising amount.

For more complex scenarios—or when you want everything to work exactly the way your business operates—custom integrations are the way to go. These are built specifically for your workflow, connecting your specific tools in your specific way. More upfront investment, but they fit like a glove.

3. Custom Tools: When Off-the-Shelf Doesn't Fit

Sometimes the problem isn't connecting existing tools. Sometimes the tool you need just doesn't exist.

Every business has something unique about how they operate. Maybe it's a specific way you calculate quotes. A particular workflow for quality control. A dashboard that shows exactly the metrics your team needs, no more, no less. A client portal that reflects your process, not some generic template.

Off-the-shelf software is built for the average case. That's fine for common problems, but it falls apart when your needs are specific. You end up with workarounds, manual steps, and that familiar feeling of fighting your software instead of using it.

Custom tools are built for exactly how you work. No extra features you'll never use. No missing features you desperately need. No bending your process to fit the software.

I've built custom tools for clients that:

Generate complex quotes in seconds (a process that used to take an hour of manual calculations)
Track job progress through every stage with automated notifications when something needs attention
Create a client dashboard where customers can see their project status, documents, and invoices without calling to ask
Automate compliance reporting that used to require a full day of manual data gathering each month

The common thread? Each one solved a specific problem that no existing software addressed—at least not without paying for features they didn't need or hacking together multiple tools.

Where to Start (Without Overwhelming Yourself)

At this point, you might be thinking: "This all sounds great, but I don't even know where to begin."

Fair. The worst thing you can do is try to automate everything at once. That's a recipe for half-finished projects, wasted money, and giving up entirely.

Here's my advice: start with one thing. Just one.

The "5-Minute Test"

Look at your daily tasks and ask yourself: what do I do every day (or almost every day) that takes more than 5 minutes?

If something takes 5 minutes daily, that's 25 minutes a week. Over two hours a month. Almost 25 hours a year—on a single task.

Pick the one that annoys you most. The one that makes you think, "Ugh, I have to do this again?" every time it comes up. That's your starting point.

Small Wins Build Momentum

There's something psychological that happens when you automate your first task. You save a few minutes, sure. But more than that, you start seeing your business differently. You start noticing other opportunities. "Wait, we could automate that too. And that. And why are we doing this manually?"

But you have to get that first win to trigger the cascade. So don't start with your most complex process. Start with something simple enough that you can get it done quickly, see the results, and build momentum from there.

You Don't Have to Figure It Out Alone

Maybe you're tech-savvy and can set up a few Zapier automations yourself. Great—go for it.

But if you're looking at your processes and thinking, "I don't even know what's possible," that's where bringing in help makes sense. Not to hand everything off, but to get a second set of eyes. Someone who's seen dozens of businesses and knows what works.

Often, the best opportunities are things you've never even considered because you've always done them a certain way. Fresh perspective is valuable.

What This Looks Like in Real Life

Let me give you a concrete example.

I worked with a service company last year—about 20 employees, doing project-based work for commercial clients. Good business, growing steadily, but the owner was drowning.

Here's what her week looked like before we talked:

Monday: Review all project statuses by checking in with each project manager individually. Update the master tracking spreadsheet. Send status update emails to clients who'd asked for them.
Tuesday-Thursday: Constant interruptions. Clients calling to ask about project status (because they had no other way to check). Chasing down team members for timesheet submissions. Manually creating invoices from project data.
Friday: Compile weekly report for leadership by exporting data from three different systems and building it in Excel.

The work itself was going fine. But the overhead—the management, the reporting, the keeping-everyone-informed—was a full-time job on top of running the actual business.

Here's what we changed:

Built a simple project dashboard that pulled real-time status from their existing PM tool. Clients could log in and see exactly where their project stood, what was completed, what was coming up. The "where's my project?" phone calls dropped by about 80%.

Automated timesheet reminders. If a team member hadn't submitted by Thursday at 5pm, they got an automatic reminder. If still missing Friday morning, their manager got notified. No more chasing.

Created automatic invoice generation. When a project milestone was marked complete, the system pulled the relevant data and generated a draft invoice for review. What used to take 30 minutes per invoice now took 2 minutes of review and approval.

Built an automated weekly report. Every Friday at 6am, the system compiled data from all sources and delivered a formatted report to her inbox. The manual Friday reporting ritual? Gone.

Total time saved? Roughly 10-12 hours per week. For a business owner, that's not just time—that's sanity. That's being able to leave at 5pm occasionally. That's bandwidth for strategic thinking instead of administrative survival.

And here's the part that surprised her: the team was happier too. Less "hey, where's that thing?" interruptions. Clearer visibility into what was expected. The whole operation just ran smoother.

Your 2026 Challenge

Alright, let's bring this home.

I'm not going to tell you to overhaul your entire business this month. That's not realistic, and honestly, it's not necessary. The businesses that work smarter aren't the ones that did everything at once. They're the ones that kept making small improvements, consistently, over time.

So here's my challenge for you in 2026:

This week, pick one task. Just one. Something you do regularly, something that takes more than 5 minutes, something that doesn't require human judgment.

Ask yourself: "Does this actually have to be manual?"

If the answer is no—or even "maybe not"—dig in. See if there's a Zapier template that solves it. Google whether your existing tools have automation features you haven't explored. Or reach out to someone who can assess the opportunity.

One task. One improvement. That's all I'm asking.

Because here's what I've learned: the businesses that thrive aren't necessarily the ones with the best product or the most funding. They're the ones that ruthlessly protect their time for high-value work. They're the ones that refuse to accept "this is just how we've always done it" as a reason to keep doing something inefficiently.

2026 can be the year you finally get ahead of the busywork. Not by working more hours, but by working smarter.

And if you're not sure where to start—or you want someone to take a look at your operations and identify the biggest opportunities—that's literally what I do. Let's talk. No pitch, no pressure. Just a conversation about what's possible.

Here's to a more efficient, less frustrating, genuinely better year.