When starting up a from-home business, time management is an area of business management that is overlooked or ignored.
We all know someone in small business who races around like a madman all day, seldom enough hours in the day, all they do is push and get overtaken – perhaps this person is you! At the end of the week, when the rush settles, what have you taken from it? Do you review the day and ponder “what happened to the hours, I didn’t get so much completed as I hoped I would. If this sounds familiar, then you may simply have an organisational and time management problem.
Successful people never appear to rush, they seem composed and unflustered. The difference between them and other people is they achieve time management.
What is time management? It is merely allocating minutes in your day in an organised and efficient way. Before we can really go ahead on how to time manage our day, we need to figure for ourselves what we are aiming to accomplish today, this week, this year and up to ten years from now. This is “Goal setting”.
The simplest method in my view to achieve goals is to write them down. You may think about the goals at times to feel that they are relevant and possible but not so simple to do that you don’t need to try hard to complete them otherwise what is the meaning of the goals in the first place?
From the start of a working year you can take time and think about what you want to complete this year. It can be that you desire to increase your profits by 20%, you might want to move into better premises, you can wish to get rid of your debt significantly. By the beginning of every new working week you should write down on a note pad or in your diary the signifcant chores that have to be accomplished this week, and check on them on every day to be sure that you’re making progress and hopefully tick some of the jobs from your list.
You could put the list on your desk or in a place where you should be constantly reminded of what needs to be accomplished each week. The list can be in order of necessity so that the key work at the top of your list get achieved earlier. Any of the projects not done this week should be carried up to next week at a higher importance, this will make sure it gets accomplished.
The next thing you might not be doing is creating a daily list of tasks to accomplish. This may assist keep you on track on each day. Again, this list could be put up where you are able to continually check on it and mark off the chores completed. Checking off the jobs is a way to allow you a pride of completion and let you review how you are moving during the day. Always adhere to this list when possible and try to keep working from the top priority to less priority. I know wormholes can appear over the day that sometimes throw the whole day in the air, but you have to either deal with the problem and get back to your list or if the unplanned situation isn’t as urgent as some of the projects on your list then put it later on the list and continue on doing what you were doing.
Every project you have to accomplish must be written down for a number of reasons. Firstly, so you don’t put off to do it and secondly, so you have the day organised and you get your daily goals. Be sensitive to starting jobs and not finishing them. This can show up tomorrow in a disaster of not completed tasks and can cause “list blowout”.
You will end up with the list at a mile long and you will back out in despair and reverse back to bad habits of working in a hurry every day and completing nothing.
Remember each day you accomplish your goals and tick off all the projects on your list, you get a day closer to completing your weekly and soon your yearly and long term goals.
A few pointers on Time Management:
- Do it once and do it well, it’s pointless reverting to the chore and needing to redo it.
- Learn to civilly inform people when you’re busy and that you will speak to them at a later point.
- Learn to give other people jobs that really don’t demand your direct involvement.
- Don’t make off on wild goose chases.
- Don’t use up time during phone calls that are not going to accomplish something.
- Don’t procrastinate.
- Review your list of work to do often through your day.
- “Map out your day” in the shower and write out your daily list the second you get to work. Accomplish what you initiate.
- Prioritise everything, always begin things in their order of urgency to you and the work.
Get away from time wasters, people who will just go off to chat all day, and if they are employed by you, set them straight, or get rid of them.
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