When you start up a home based business, time management is an area of business management that is overlooked or neglected.
Surely we all know a person in small business who races about like a chicken with its head cut off all day, without enough hours in every day, all they do is panic and get overwhelmed – maybe this person is you! By the end of the week, when the panic settles, what have you taken from it? Do you review the day and think “what happened to the time, I didn’t get as much completed as I hoped. If this is familiar, then you may simply have an organisational and time management problem.
Successful people don’t appear to rush, they remain composed and unflustered. The difference in them and the other people is they command time management.
What is time management? It is merely scheduling the clock in your day in an organised and efficient way. Before we can truly go ahead on how to time manage our day, we first need to question ourselves what we are hoping to accomplish today, this week, this year and perhaps ten years from now. This is “Goal setting”.
The simplest process in my opinion to take on goals is to write them down. You could go back to these goals from time to time to ensure that they are relevant and possible but not so simple that you don’t need to work hard to succeed at them otherwise what is the purpose of the goals in the first place?
From the beginning of a new working year you should sit down and ponder what you plan to achieve this year. It may be that you need to increase your profits by 20%, you may desire to move into better premises, you could wish to get rid of your debt as much as possible. From the first day of a new working week you might write down on a note pad or in your diary the large tasks that have to be finalised this week, and look back on them on every day to make sure you’re making progress and hopefully wipe some of the tasks from the list.
You can put the list on your desk or in a location where you will be persistently reminded of what will be accomplished this week. This list should be in order of priority so that the major tasks at the top of this list get taken care of first up. Any jobs not completed this week will be taken up to next week on a higher importance, this should make sure it gets accomplished.
The next thing you could be doing is having a daily list of tasks to do. This can assist keep you on track throughout each day. Again, this list might be displayed where you can persistently check on it and wipe off the items accomplished. Checking off the chores should allow you a feeling of success and let you check on how you are going over the day. Always stay to the list when possible and try to continue working from higher priority to the lowest priority. I know issues sometimes appear through the day that could throw the whole day out, but you have to either take care of the crisis and get back on to the list or if the new project isn’t as time sensitive as some of the work on your list then put it after these on the list and continue on with the item you were doing.
Every aspect of work you need to complete needs to be written down for a number of reasons. Firstly, so you don’t neglect to do it and secondly, so you have the day organised and you achieve your daily goals. Be wary of starting chores and not completing them. This will show up tomorrow in a mushroom cloud of incomplete chores and could cause “list blowout”.
You will end up with the list reading a mile long and you will give up in despair and go back to those habits of being in a hurry all day and completing nothing.
Remember that each day you write out your goals and check off all the chores on your list, you get a little closer to completing your weekly and finally your yearly and long term goals.
A few essentials on Time Management:
- Do it once and do it well, it’s fruitless coming back to the issue and needing to redo it.
- Learn to politely inform people when you’re busy with work and that you can speak to them later.
- Learn to delegate chores that truly don’t need your direct participation.
- Don’t go on wild goose chases.
- Don’t fizzle away time on phone calls that can’t do something.
- Don’t procrastinate.
- Look back on your list of things to do often at times through your day.
- “Map out your day” in the shower and list out your daily list right when you start work. Don’t stop what you start.
- Prioritise all your chores, always begin jobs in their order of importance to you and the business.
Avoid time wasters, people who only decide to chat all day, and if they are your workers, set them straight, or get rid of them.
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