Time Management When Working from Home
When starting up a home business, time management is an area of business management that can be overlooked or neglected.
Surely everybody knows some person in small business who races about like a mad dog all day, seldom enough hours in the day, all they do is rush and get overtaken – perhaps this person is you! At the end of the day, when the panic settles, what have you accomplished? Do you reflect on the day and ponder “what happened to the hours, I didn’t get so much completed as I hoped to do. If this sounds familiar, then you might just have an organisational and time management problem.
Successful people don’t ever seem to rush, they always seem composed and unflustered. The difference between them and others is they possess time management.
What is time management? It is simply allocating time in your day in an organised and efficient method. Before we can fully take on how to time manage our day, we first must ask 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 process in my view to complete goals is to write them down. You could think about the goals from time to time to ensure that they are relevant and achievable but not so simple that you don’t need to make the effort to complete them otherwise what is the purpose of the goals in the first place?
At the start of every working year you could sit and reflect on what you desire to accomplish this year. It may be that you wish to increase your profits by 20%, you perhaps hope to move into different premises, you can desire to get rid of your debt finally. By the start of every working week you could write down on a note pad or in your diary the major jobs that have to be achieved this week, and check up them every day to be sure you’re making progress and hopefully tick some of those jobs from your list.
You should hold the list on your desk or on a location where you can be persistently reminded of what needs to be done throughout the week. This list could be in order of priority so that the impending work at the top of this list get accomplished first up. All the jobs not completed this week must be put onto next week at a higher importance, this should ensure it gets finalised.
The next thing you might not be doing is giving yourself a daily list of jobs to do. This may assist keep you focused on each day. Again, this list can be placed where you can persistently look back to it and mark off the items done. Ticking off the tasks should allow you a sense of success and let you know how you are progressing during the day. Always hold to this list when possible and continue working from the top priority to less priority. I know things sometimes jump up during the day that could throw the whole day in the air, but you have to either take on the dilemma and return to the list or if the unplanned task isn’t as serious as some of the items on your list then place it lower on your list and continue doing the chore you were doing.
Every aspect of work you plan to accomplish must be written down for a numerous reasons. Firstly, so you don’t neglect to do it and secondly, so you keep the day organised and you achieve your daily goals. Be sensitive to starting jobs and not completing them. This may become tomorrow in a mushroom cloud of incomplete chores and can cause “list blowout”.
You will end up with a list reading a mile long and you will give up in despair and revert back to old habits of running around in rush each day and achieving nothing.
Remember for each day you accomplish your goals and check off all the items on your list, you get a step closer to finalising 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 wasteful coming back to the project and needing to redo it.
Learn to simply say to people when you’re too busy and that you would get back to them some time later.
Learn to give out tasks that really don’t require your involvement.
Don’t embark on wild goose chases.
Don’t waste time during phone calls that can’t accomplish something.
Don’t procrastinate.
Refer to your list of chores to do often through your day.
“Map out your day” in the car and schedule out your daily list as soon as you start work. Complete what you initiate.
Prioritise habitually, always begin things in their order of importance to you and your customers.
Stay away from time wasters, people that simply choose to chat all day, and if they are employed by you, set them straight, or get rid of them.
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