When starting out in a home business, time management is an element of business management that is often overlooked or left out of the equation.
Sure enough, we all know a friend in small business who races about like a madman all day, seldom enough hours in every day, all they do is rush and get worked up – perhaps this person is you! Come the end of the day, when the rush settles, what have you accomplished? Do you review the day and ponder “what happened to the hours, I didn’t get as much accomplished as I thought I could. If this feels familiar, then you may have an organisational and time management problem.
Successful people never appear to rush, they stay composed and unflustered. The difference between them and everybody else is they command time management.
What is time management? It is merely planning time in your day in an organised and efficient way. Before we can fully get how to time manage our day, we must figure for ourselves what we are planning to complete today, this week, this year and perhaps ten years from now. This is “Goal setting”.
The easiest way in my view to take on goals is to write them down. You should review the goals sometimes to ensure that they are appropriate and workable but not so simple that you don’t have to put in the work to accomplish them otherwise what is the purpose of your goals in the first place?
At the beginning of each new working year you could sit and ponder what you desire to end up with this year. It can be that you wish to increase your profits by 20%, you can plan to move into bigger premises, you perhaps hope to get rid of your debt finally. By the beginning of every new working week you could write down on a note pad or in your diary the large projects that need to be accomplished this week, and review them on each day to ensure you’re making progress and hopefully check some of your chores from the list.
You could put this list on your desk or at a location where you should be constantly reminded of what will be undertaken throughout the week. The list could be in order of urgency so that the key chores at the top of this list get taken care of first. Anything not checked off this week must be brought onto next week at a higher importance, this should ensure it gets taken care of.
The next thing you could be doing is creating a daily list of projects to do. This can help keep you on track throughout each day. Again, this list should be put up where you are able to constantly refer to it and mark off the items finished. Wiping off the tasks helps to give you a feeling of success and remind you how you are going across the day. Always stick to the list unless not possible and try to continue working from high priority to lower priority. I know problems do appear during the day that might throw the whole day up, but you have to either take on the situation and then get back to the list or if the newly arisen work isn’t as time sensitive as some of the projects on the list then place it at the bottom on the list and continue on doing the project you were doing.
Each item you plan to accomplish must be written down for a couple of reasons. Firstly, so you don’t neglect to do it and secondly, so you have each day outlined and you get your daily goals. Be wary of beginning jobs and not finishing them. This might come back tomorrow in a plethora of half finished chores and can cause “list blowout”.
You will end up with the list at a mile long and you will back out in despair and change back to those habits of getting yourself in panic each day and accomplishing nothing.
Remember that each day you achieve your goals and polish off all the tasks on your list, you will get a day closer to realizing your weekly and finally your yearly and long term goals.
A few hints on Time Management:
Do it once and do it well, it’s wasteful reverting to the work and needing to redo it.
Learn to simply communicate to people when you’re busy with work and that you would get back to them at a later point.
Learn to pass out work that actually don’t require your involvement.
Don’t make off on wild goose chases.
Don’t waste time during phone calls that will not take care of something.
Don’t procrastinate.
Check back on your list of jobs to do continually throughout your day.
“Map out your day” in the car and plan out your daily list the second you start work. Accomplish what you list.
Prioritise in everything you do, always keep tasks in their order of urgency to you and your clients.
Be evasive with time wasters, people who would just choose to chat all day, and if they work for you, set them straight, or get rid of them.
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