When starting up a home based business, time management is an aspect of business management that is usually overlooked or ignored.
Surely everybody knows some person in small business who races at it like a chicken with its head cut off all day, without enough hours in their day, all they do is rush and get overwhelmed – perhaps this person is you! To the end of the week, when the pace settles, what have you accomplished? Do you review the day and ponder “what happened to the hours, I didn’t get so much accomplished as I thought I could. If this feels familiar, then you might just have an organisational and time management problem.
Successful people never appear to rush, they are always composed and unflustered. The difference between them and the others is they achieve time management.
What is time management? It is simply scheduling minutes in your day in an organised and efficient process. Before we can really go ahead on how to time manage our day, we first must figure for ourselves what we are attempting to master today, this week, this year and even up to ten years from now. This is “Goal setting”.
The top process in my view to achieve goals is to write them down. You should go back to all your goals at points to know that they are relevant and achievable but not so achievable that you don’t have to make the effort to succeed at them otherwise what is the point of any goals in the first place?
From the start of every working year you could sit down and plan what you plan to complete this year. It might be that you hope to raise your profits by 20%, you perhaps hope to move into different premises, you perhaps wish to take away from your debt once and for all. By the start of each working week you should write down on a note pad or in your diary the important tasks that must to be finalised this week, and look back on them each day to be sure you’re making progress and hopefully wipe some of the tasks off the list.
You might hold your list on your desk or in a point where you will be persistently reminded of what needs to be undertaken this week. Your list can be in order of priority so that the most important work at the top of the list get finalised earlier. All the chores not finished this week must be brought forward next week on a higher ranking, this should require it gets ticked off.
The next thing you could be doing is having a daily list of tasks to do. This can help keep you organised in the day. Again, this list should be placed where you can continually refer to it and write off the jobs finished. Writing off the chores is a way to allow you a touch of achievement and let you know how you are going across the day. Always adhere to the list unless not possible and keep working from top priority to lower priority. I know wormholes will jump up through the day that might throw the whole day out, but you must either take on the crisis and then return to the list or if the sudden problem isn’t as urgent as some of the tasks on the list then list it at the bottom on your list and continue on doing what you were doing.
Every task you have to accomplish needs to be written down for a number of reasons. Firstly, so you don’t forget to do it and secondly, so you keep every day planned and you achieve your daily goals. Be careful of initiating chores and not finishing them. This will turn tomorrow in a disaster of not completed work and will cause “list blowout”.
You will end up with the list reading a mile long and you will back out in despair and go back to those habits of working in a fuss all day and finishing nothing.
Remember each day you set your goals and tick off all the items on your list, you get a step closer to accomplishing your weekly and finally your yearly and long term goals.
A few basics on Time Management:
Do it once and do it well, it’s fruitless returning to the job and having to redo it.
Learn to politely tell people when you’re busy and that you will get back to them at a later point.
Learn to give out items that truly don’t demand your involvement.
Don’t make off on wild goose chases.
Don’t waste time during phone calls that cannot do something.
Don’t procrastinate.
Refer to your list of items to do continually throughout the day.
“Map out your day” in the morning and write out your daily list the minute you begin work. Achieve what you list.
Prioritise all your chores, always begin jobs in their order of priority to you and the business.
Get away from time wasters, people that only like to chat all day, and if they work for you, set them straight, or get rid of them.
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