Time Management When Working from Home
Posted on May 18, 2010, under Uncategorized.
When you start a from-home business, time management is an aspect of business management usually overlooked or left out of the equation.
Surely everybody knows some person in small business who races about like a bull all day, without enough hours in a day, all they do is rush and get overwhelmed - is it that this person is you! At the week’s end, when the dust settles, what have you gotten out of it? Do you replay the day and think “what happened to the time, I didn’t get so much done as I planned I would. If this feels familiar, then you may just have an organisational and time management problem.
Successful people never appear to rush, they remain composed and unflustered. The difference between them and other people is they command time management.
What is time management? It is merely arranging minutes in your day in an organised and efficient way. Before we can actually go ahead on how to time manage our day, we need to figure for ourselves what we are hoping to achieve today, this week, this year and possibly even ten years from now. This is “Goal setting”.
The top way in my perspective to complete goals is to write them down. You can review all your goals at points to feel that they are purposeful and possible but not so simple that you don’t have to try to achieve them otherwise what is the purpose of the goals in the first place?
From the beginning of every working year you should sit and plan what you want to complete this year. It might be that you need to raise your profits by 20%, you might hope to move into better premises, you can hope to take away from your debt substantially. At the start of each new working week you should write down on a note pad or in your diary the large chores that have to be finished this week, and reflect them each day to make sure you’re making progress and hopefully check some of your tasks off the list.
You should keep the list on your desk or at a spot where you can be repeatedly reminded of what needs to be accomplished this week. Your list might be in order of priority so that the impending chores at the top of your list get finalised earlier. Any chores not completed this week must be brought onto next week at a higher ranking, this will ensure it gets checked off.
The next thing you can be doing is creating a daily list of projects to accomplish. This will assist keep you focused throughout each day. Again, this list can be put where you can constantly refer to it and check off the chores accomplished. Ticking off the chores will allow you a sense of completion and let you review how you are moving through the day. Always stick to the list where possible and try to keep working from high priority to the lowest priority. I know loopholes sometimes show up over the day that could throw the whole day off track, but you must either take care of the situation and return to the list or if the new work isn’t as important as some of the jobs on the list then list it after these on the list and continue on doing the task you were doing.
Each aspect of work you hope to get done can be written down for a multiplicity of reasons. Firstly, so you don’t forget to do it and secondly, so you keep every day outlined and you complete your daily goals. Be sensitive to initiating tasks and not finishing them. This might become tomorrow in a disaster of half baked work and can cause “list blowout”.
You will end up with your list a mile long and you will give it up in despair and go back to those habits of being in panic every day and achieving nothing.
Remember that each day you plan your goals and polish off all the jobs on your list, you become a little bit closer to succeeding in your weekly and ultimately your yearly and long term goals.
A few tips 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 inform people when you’re busy working and that you would speak to them at a later point.
- Learn to issue chores that actually don’t need your participation.
- Don’t make off on wild goose chases.
- Don’t fizzle away time on phone calls that won’t accomplish something.
- Don’t procrastinate.
- Review your list of things to do continually throughout the day.
- “Map out your day” in the car and plan out your daily list the minute you get to work. Accomplish what you initiate.
- Prioritise all your chores, always take tasks in their order of priority to you and your business.
Get away from time wasters, people that simply go off to chat all day, and if they are your workers, set them straight, or get rid of them.
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