When you start a home business, time management is an aspect of business management that is often overlooked or ignored.
Sure enough, we all know a person in small business who races about like a chicken with its head cut off all day, never enough hours in their day, all they do is rush and get overtaken – is it that this person is you! At the day’s end, when the pace settles, what have you accomplished? Do you replay the day and ponder “what happened to the hours, I didn’t get as much accomplished as I planned to do. If this seems familiar, then you might just have an organisational and time management problem.
Successful people seldom seem to rush, they always remain composed and unflustered. The difference from them and others is they command time management.
What is time management? It is just scheduling time in your day in an organised and efficient method. Before we can fully understand how to time manage our day, we need to decide for ourselves what we are aiming to complete today, this week, this year and up to ten years from now. This is “Goal setting”.
The best process in my view to achieve goals is to write them down. You could reflect on these goals from time to time to ensure that they are meaningful and achievable but not so simple to do that you don’t have to work to achieve them otherwise what is the meaning of the goals in the first place?
From the beginning of a new working year you should sit and plan what you wish to end up with this year. It may be that you desire to gross up your profits by 20%, you could plan to move into larger premises, you may plan to take down your debt substantially. By the beginning of every new working week you could write down on a note pad or in your diary the signifcant chores that need to be completed this week, and check on them at the end of every day to ensure you’re making progress and hopefully polish some of those chores off your list.
You might put your list on your desk or in a point where you could be repeatedly reminded of what needs to be done each week. This list may be in order of necessity so that the impending chores at the top of the list get completed early. All the work not finished this week need to be carried onto next week at a higher ranking, this should make sure it gets achieved.
The next thing you could be doing is giving yourself a daily list of tasks to accomplish. This might help keep you on schedule throughout the day. Again, this list might be put up where you are able to repeatedly refer to it and tick off the jobs finished. Writing off the chores could allow you a touch of success and let you reflect on how you are progressing through the day. Always hold to this list if possible and keep working from the highest priority to the lowest priority. I know issues sometimes show up throughout the day that might throw the whole day up in the air, but you need to either take on the dilemma and then get back to the list or if the new chore isn’t as important as some of the chores on your list then put it after these on your list and continue on with the chore you were doing.
Every job you plan to achieve must be written down for a few reasons. Firstly, so you don’t forget to do it and secondly, so you have the day planned and you complete your daily goals. Beware beginning chores and not finishing them. This would become tomorrow in a disaster of half finished jobs and can cause “list blowout”.
You will end up with the list reading a mile long and you will give it up in despair and go back to bad habits of working in a hurry during the day and achieving nothing.
Remember for every day you set your goals and check off all the items on your list, you will get a bit closer to finalising your weekly and eventually your yearly and long term goals.
A few basics on Time Management:
- Do it once and do it well, it’s pointless coming back to the chore and having to redo it.
- Learn to nicely communicate to people when you’re working and that you can return to them some time later.
- Learn to give other employees items that actually don’t demand your hand.
- Don’t embark on wild goose chases.
- Don’t waste time with phone calls that cannot accomplish something.
- Don’t procrastinate.
- Look back to your list of work to do regularly throughout the day.
- “Map out your day” in the shower and make out your daily list the second you start work. Complete what you list.
- Prioritise habitually, always take issues in their order of necessity to you and your clients.
Don’t get in with time wasters, people that would simply go off to chat all day, and if they are your employees, set them straight, or get rid of them.
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