If you’re a successful or aspiring business professional or entrepreneur, we do not have to tell you that the most important asset you have is your time. For that reason, we’re going to cut straight to the chase today. We’re going to cover some time management strategies to help you with dating and online dating as a business professional. The fact that you’re here shows that finding love and a companion is important to you, but you may be struggling to find the time to commit to the process.

Let’s dive right into things. Meeting to order…

Understand the Importance of Your Investment

Before we give you actionable steps you can take to better manage your time dating, we need to make sure you understand the importance of your time investment in dating. By having a firm grasp on the end goal and its importance, you can better plan and better stick to your plan.

In our intro, we weren’t completely correct. We said that time was your biggest asset and while that is close to true, the actual truth is that YOU are your biggest asset. If you are in good working order, things are getting done, widgets are getting sold, and everything in the business side of your life is great. But, when you aren’t operating at 100%, things start to falter, productivity drops, and the successful steam engine that you are starts to run off the tracks.

One of the most important parts of your life that you’ve probably been neglecting is your emotional health. Having a companion brings you joy, eases stress, and can help you to be more productive and driven at work. Also, a good companion can actually help to lighten the load of some of your other responsibilities which frees up more time to do what you do best.

But, like anything, you’re not going to get what you want in dating if you aren’t willing to make an investment. The investment here isn’t money, but it’s time. You have to be willing to carve out some time in your days to commit to this process. You’ve already proven through your success that you are capable of making plans and sticking to them. Now, you just need to do the same for your dating life. Understanding how important it is should help drive you to want to get focused on this.

Schedule Time for Online Dating

What do you do with things that are important to your business that you can’t put off? You schedule them. You lock down a particular time in your calendar where that one specific thing will be handled and take priority over everything outside of emergencies. So, why not do this with your online dating? Why not carve out actual scheduled time to devote to the process?

If you’re hesitant to do this, you might not be as dedicated to the process as you think you are and should revisit the previous section.

Here’s what we recommend. Try and carve out 20 minutes a day twice a week to start with. Use this time to create an account, build a profile, and start sending messages. If you find additional time during the week to respond or look for matches, great. But if not, this is plenty to get the process starting. What’s that cliché phrase? Half of the battle is starting?

Then, once you start getting some matches you are interested in, try and carve out an hour around lunch or in the evenings once every two weeks that you can use to go on a date. If you have more time, awesome! If not, this is completely fine. All you’re looking to do is get the process started and start meeting people. If you’re worried about people wanting too much of your time, we will cover this in the next section.

The point here is that you should be able to carve out this amount of time if you’re serious about finding someone special. Online dating can take up a ton of time only if you let it. But, if you are efficient about things, set boundaries for your time, and stick to a plan, then you’re not going to have any troubles. Dates don’t have to be every single night for hours on end. A date every week or two is just fine for an early relationship especially if you or both of you are busy working professionals.

As for the messaging, you don’t have to live on the dating app or site chatting back and forth all day. You can if you want to, but that’s not productive or efficient and is distracting. We actually recommend that dating business professionals don’t put the app on their phone and only respond to messages during their designated scheduled time from their desktop. That way, you aren’t tempted to get distracted or let the notifications get in the way of your work.

The goal here is to find a balance and get you everything you want. This starts with realizing the importance of finding a mate and scheduling the time to do that.

Make Your Matches Aware of Your Available Time

Under promise and over deliver, right? Well, this is kind of what we’re looking for you to do here. You need to let the matches you’re talking to know that you are a busy person. If they’re aware that time is going to be tight for you, they are going to be much more understanding, patient, and respectful of the limits and boundaries that you set.

Now, you don’t have to be an authoritative jerk about it. This is not a hostile takeover. But, you should be firm and let them know what’s going on. Make sure that you let them know you do have time for dating, but it’s just limited. If you tell them you have no time and you’re going to try and squeeze them in, that’s not going to make them feel so great. So, be gentle about it, and let them know getting to know them is important to you, and you will make time for them, it will just be limited.

If you fail to do this, you’re setting yourself up for failure. Are some people going to be turned off by the fact you are busy? Maybe. But, wouldn’t it be better to figure that out up front instead of constantly having them be mad at you for not having enough time for them. Realistically, most people are going to respect the fact that you take your job seriously as long as you aren’t a complete workaholic. If that’s the case, well, that’s another discussion. But, they should respect the fact that you stick to things that you are committed to.

Utilize Technologically Advanced Dating Sites

Online dating is the golden ticket when it comes to dating as a business professional or entrepreneur. It allows you to utilize technology to find matches quicker, sift through the crap and deal breakers faster, and ultimately find that special someone easier. You are eventually going to have to move the date from online to live, but we’re taking this one step at a time. And, if you followed our planning advice earlier, you’ve already carved out this time anyway so it’s really not a big deal.

To get you started, here are the top online dating sites that we recommend for busy business professionals. These sites have the features that you need to get things done efficiently. They also have the quality of singles that we’re going to go ahead and assume you’re looking for.