When starting up a from-home business, time management is an area of business management often overlooked or ignored.
Surely everybody knows someone 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 overtaken – is it that this person is you! At the day’s end, when the dust settles, what have you gotten out of it? Do you replay the day and realise “what happened to the day, I didn’t get as much finished as I intended to. If this seems familiar, then you may simply have an organisational and time management problem.
Successful people don’t appear to rush, they always seem composed and unflustered. The difference from them and the other people is they have exceptional time management.
What is time management? It is just allocating minutes in your day in an organised and efficient way. Before we can fully go ahead on how to time manage our day, we first must ask ourselves what we are hoping to do today, this week, this year and even up to ten years from now. This is “Goal setting”.
The easiest method in my perspective to accomplish goals is to write them down. You should go back to your goals from time to time to know that they are meaningful and possible but not so achievable that you don’t need to work to accomplish them otherwise what is the reason of the goals in the first place?
From the start of each new working year you could sit and reflect on what you desire to complete this year. It can be that you plan to enlarge your profits by 20%, you can desire to move into different premises, you may want to take down your debt in a significant way. By the start of each new working week you may write down on a note pad or in your diary the signifcant projects that must to be accomplished this week, and reflect them at the end of every day to ensure you’re making progress and hopefully wipe some of the tasks from your list.
You could keep the list on your desk or in a point where you will be constantly reminded of what will be completed throughout the week. This list could be in order of urgency so that the most important jobs at the top of the list get done early. Any projects not finished this week need to be brought up to next week at a higher urgency, this will require it gets ticked off.
The next thing you could be doing is writing a daily list of projects to accomplish. This may assist keep you on track throughout each day. Again, this list could be placed where you can continually see it and tick off the items finished. Writing off the items can allow you a feeling of a job well done and let you know how you are progressing across the day. Always stay to your list if possible and try to keep working from higher priority to the lowest priority. I know wormholes sometimes appear over the day that might throw the whole day in the air, but you must either deal with the situation and then get back to the list or if the sudden chore isn’t as urgent as some of the items on your list then list it after these on the list and continue on with the chore you were doing.
Each aspect of work you need to complete can be written down for a multiplicity of reasons. Firstly, so you don’t neglect to do it and secondly, so you keep each day scheduled and you achieve your daily goals. Be alert to beginning items and not finishing them. This will become tomorrow in a mushroom cloud of incomplete projects and could cause “list blowout”.
You will end up with your list a mile long and you will give it up in despair and reverse back to those habits of getting in confusion every day and accomplishing nothing.
Remember each day you accomplish your goals and tick off every job on your list, you will get a step closer to realizing your weekly and soon your yearly and long term goals.
A few essentials on Time Management:
Do it once and do it well, it’s pointless coming back to the issue and needing to redo it.
Learn to civilly communicate to people when you’re too busy and that you can return to them some time later.
Learn to pass out jobs that actually don’t require your involvement.
Don’t embark on wild goose chases.
Don’t use up time on phone calls that won’t accomplish something.
Don’t procrastinate.
Look back to your list of items to do often during the day.
“Map out your day” in the morning and make out your daily list right when you start work. Achieve what you initiate.
Prioritise everything, always take care of things in their order of importance to you and your customers.
Get away from time wasters, people that would only decide to chat all day, and if they are employed by you, set them straight, or get rid of them.
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