When you are starting a home business, time management is an area of business management usually overlooked or neglected.

Surely everybody knows someone in small business who races about like a madman all day, rarely enough hours in the day, all they do is rush and get overloaded – is it that this person is you! By the end of the week, when the dust settles, what have you accomplished? Do you review the day and realise “what happened to the time, I didn’t get so much finished as I hoped I should. If this is familiar, then you might just have an organisational and time management problem.

Successful people never seem to rush, they always seem composed and unflustered. The difference between them and the other people is they possess time management.

What is time management? It is just allocating hours in your day in an organised and efficient scheme. Before we can fully take on how to time manage our day, we first need to question ourselves what we are hoping to accomplish today, this week, this year and as far as ten years from now. This is “Goal setting”.

The simplest process in my opinion to take on goals is to write them down. You should reflect on all your goals at points to make sure that they are relevant and possible but not so simple that you don’t need to try to accomplish them otherwise what is the point of those goals in the first place?

From the start of each working year you should takethe time and think about what you wish to end up with this year. It could be that you plan to gross up your profits by 20%, you could desire to move into different premises, you perhaps plan to reduce your debt significantly. From the start of a new working week you should write down on a note pad or in your diary the major chores that need to be achieved this week, and check on them every day to check you’re making progress and hopefully check some of the projects from your list.

You might have the list on your desk or in a location where you should be repeatedly reminded of what needs to be done throughout the week. This list could be in order of necessity so that the most important jobs at the top of the list get taken care of first up. Anything not completed this week must be carried through to next week on a higher ranking, this should require it gets finished.

The next thing you may not be doing is creating a daily list of jobs to accomplish. This will assist keep you on track in the day. Again, this list should be put up where you are able to continually refer to it and tick off the items completed. Checking off the tasks is a way to allow you a feeling of achievement and let you reflect on how you are moving throughout the day. Always stay to your list unless not possible and keep working from high priority to less priority. I know things will come up through the day that could throw the whole day off track, but you have to either take care of the crisis and return to the list or if the new situation isn’t as serious as some of the projects on your list then put it later on the list and continue with the item you were doing.

Every job you have to achieve needs to be written down for a few reasons. Firstly, so you don’t forget to do it and secondly, so you keep every day planned and you realise your daily goals. Beware initiating items and not finishing them. This might turn tomorrow in a mess of incomplete chores and could cause “list blowout”.

You will end up with the list being a mile long and you will back out in despair and reverse back to bad habits of working in panic every day and realizing nothing.

Remember every day you plan your goals and mark off all the chores on your list, you become a little bit closer to succeeding in your weekly and finally your yearly and long term goals.

A few tips on Time Management:

• Do it once and do it well, it’s frustrating going back to the project and needing to redo it.
• Learn to simply communicate to people when you’re busy working and that you would return to them some time later.
• Learn to give other employees chores that truly don’t require your direct involvement.
• Don’t take on wild goose chases.
• Don’t fizzle away time by phone calls that won’t achieve something.
• Don’t procrastinate.
• Look at your list of work to do continually during your day.
• “Map out your day” in the car and list out your daily list when you begin work. Don’t stop what you start.
• Prioritise habitually, always start items in their order of importance to you and the work.

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

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