Time Management When Working from Home

When you start a home business, time management is an area of business management often overlooked or ignored.

Surely everybody knows someone in small business who races at it like a chicken with its head cut off all day, rarely enough hours in each day, all they do is panic and get worked up – maybe this person is you! Come the week’s end, when the dust settles, what have you completed? Do you review the day and ponder “what happened to the day, I didn’t get as much finished as I thought I would. If this feels familiar, then you may have an organisational and time management problem.

Successful people don’t seem to rush, they are composed and unflustered. The difference in them and the others is they achieve time management.

What is time management? It is just planning hours in your day in an organised and efficient method. Before we can truly get how to time manage our day, we first need to figure for ourselves what we are hoping to accomplish today, this week, this year and perhaps even ten years from now. This is “Goal setting”.

The simplest way in my perspective to complete goals is to write them down. You might reflect on all your goals sometimes to feel that they are appropriate and achievable but not so easy to do that you don’t need to work hard to accomplish them otherwise what is the point of any goals in the first place?

From the start of every new working year you can sit and ponder what you want to complete this year. It could be that you wish to increase your profits by 20%, you perhaps plan to move into better premises, you may want to take down your debt in a significant way. By the beginning of every working week you might write down on a note pad or in your diary the major chores that need to be completed this week, and look back on them each day to ensure that you’re making progress and hopefully wipe some of the tasks off your list.

You might place this list on your desk or on a place where you could be repeatedly reminded of what must be finished each week. The list should be in order of importance so that the major tasks at the top of the list get finished first. All tasks not done this week should be put forward next week at a higher importance, this should demand it gets done.

The next thing you may not be doing is creating a daily list of tasks to get done. This will assist keep you on track throughout the day. Again, this list should be put up where you can continually look at it and mark off the chores completed. Writing off the items is a way to allow you a feeling of a job well done and let you know how you are working through the day. Always adhere to this list where possible and continue working from high priority to less priority. I know issues do jump up during the day that might throw the whole day in the air, but you need to either deal with the problem and get back on to the list or if the sudden work isn’t as important as some of the jobs on your list then place it after these on the list and continue on with what you were doing.

Each job you plan to finish could be written down for a number of reasons. Firstly, so you don’t put off to do it and secondly, so you keep each day planned and you get your daily goals. Be wary of initiating chores and not finishing them. This can come back tomorrow in a mess of half finished projects and can cause “list blowout”.

You will end up with the list at a mile long and you will throw it out in despair and reverse back to old habits of running around in panic every day and completing nothing.

Remember for each day you set your goals and polish off everything on your list, you get a little closer to completing your weekly and finally your yearly and long term goals.

A few tips on Time Management:

• Do it once and do it well, it’s pointless returning to the chore and needing to redo it.
• Learn to civilly tell people when you’re busy and that you would return to them at a later point.
• Learn to give other people tasks that really don’t demand your involvement.
• Don’t take on wild goose chases.
• Don’t use up time by phone calls that will not accomplish something.
• Don’t procrastinate.
• Check back to your list of work to do repeatedly at times through your day.
• “Map out your day” in the car and schedule out your daily list when you arrive at work. Achieve what you list.
• Prioritise every day, always take care of tasks in their order of priority to you and your business.

Don’t get in with time wasters, people who would simply start to chat all day, and if they work for you, set them straight, or get rid of them.

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