Time Management When Working from Home

When you start up a home based business, time management is an element of business management that is often overlooked or left out of the equation.

Everybody knows a friend in small business who races around like a chicken with its head cut off all day, seldom enough hours in each day, all they do is hurry and get worked up - perhaps this person is you! Come the end of the day, when the dust settles, what have you done? Do you reflect on the day and realise “what happened to the hours, I didn’t get so much done as I intended. If this reads familiar, then you might have an organisational and time management problem.

Successful people never appear to rush, they are always composed and unflustered. The difference in them and the others is they command time management.

What is time management? It is merely allocating hours in your day in an organised and efficient method. Before we can actually take on how to time manage our day, we must figure for ourselves what we are trying to complete today, this week, this year and as far as ten years from now. This is “Goal setting”.

The top key in my opinion to achieve goals is to write them down. You could go back to the goals at times to make sure that they are relevant and possible but not so easy to do that you don’t need to try to accomplish them otherwise what is the meaning of those goals in the first place?

From the start of each working year you should pause and reflect on what you plan to accomplish this year. It can be that you desire to raise your profits by 20%, you perhaps would like to move into different premises, you might hope to take away from your debt in a significant way. By the beginning of each working week you can write down on a note pad or in your diary the signifcant jobs that must to be finalised this week, and check back them at every day to be sure that you’re making progress and hopefully check some of those tasks off the list.

You could have the list on your desk or on a point where you will be repeatedly reminded of what will be undertaken each week. Your list could be in order of importance so that the most important jobs at the top of the list get completed first up. All tasks not finished this week need to be brought up to next week on a higher urgency, this should require it gets accomplished.

The next thing you can be doing is writing a daily list of chores to accomplish. This might help keep you on schedule on each day. Again, this list might be displayed where you can continually refer to it and mark off the chores completed. Polishing off the projects could allow you a pride of achievement and let you know how you are progressing during the day. Always stick to this list unless not possible and keep working from higher priority to less priority. I know issues will appear over the day that might throw the whole day out of whack, but you must either take care of the situation and get back on to the list or if the sudden dilemma isn’t as serious as some of the issues on your list then place it after these on your list and continue on doing the job you were doing.

Every issue you plan to get done can be written down for a multitude of reasons. Firstly, so you don’t put off to do it and secondly, so you keep each day organised and you complete your daily goals. Be careful of beginning jobs and not finishing them. This can turn tomorrow in a mess of half baked tasks and will cause “list blowout”.

You will end up with a list reading a mile long and you will throw it out in despair and go back to bad habits of getting yourself in rush every day and accomplishing nothing.

Remember every day you write out your goals and polish off every chore on your list, you get a little closer to finalising your weekly and soon 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 project and having to redo it.
• Learn to politely communicate to people when you’re working and that you will speak to them at a later time.
• Learn to pass out chores that truly don’t require your direct involvement.
• Don’t make off on wild goose chases.
• Don’t waste time during phone calls that are not going to take care of something.
• Don’t procrastinate.
• Look back to your list of jobs to do frequently at points through the day.
• “Map out your day” in the shower and make out your daily list when you start work. Don’t stop what you initiate.
• Prioritise everything, always take care of issues in their order of priority to you and your business.

Get away from time wasters, people who will just choose to chat all day, and if they work for you, set them straight, or get rid of them.

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