When starting up a from-home business, time management is an aspect of business management that is frequently overlooked or neglected.

Everybody knows someone in small business who races around like a bull all day, never enough hours in the day, all they do is rush and get overtaken – perhaps this person is you! Come the end of the week, when the pace settles, what have you accomplished? Do you think about the day and wonder “what happened to the hours, I didn’t get as much done as I planned I could. If this seems familiar, then you may just have an organisational and time management problem.

Successful people rarely appear to rush, they always remain composed and unflustered. The difference between them and others is they have exceptional time management.

What is time management? It is simply allocating time in your day in an organised and efficient scheme. Before we can fully understand how to time manage our day, we must ask ourselves what we are aiming to achieve today, this week, this year and as far as ten years from now. This is “Goal setting”.

The easiest method in my view to complete goals is to write them down. You might think about your goals from time to time to make sure that they are purposeful and realisable but not so simple that you don’t have to make the effort to succeed at them otherwise what is the meaning of any goals in the first place?

At the start of each new working year you should takethe time and ponder what you hope to accomplish this year. It might be that you wish to raise your profits by 20%, you may would like to move into bigger premises, you perhaps hope to get rid of your debt significantly. From the start of each new working week you may write down on a note pad or in your diary the signifcant projects that must to be accomplished this week, and check on them each day to ensure you’re making progress and hopefully polish some of your jobs from your list.

You might have your list on your desk or at a place where you can be repeatedly reminded of what has to be completed throughout the week. Your list can be in order of priority so that the key jobs at the top of your list get achieved earlier. All chores not ticked off this week must be brought onto next week at a higher urgency, this should make sure it gets done.

The next thing you could be doing is giving yourself a daily list of projects to accomplish. This will assist keep you on track each day. Again, this list might be put up where you can repeatedly check on it and check off the items done. Finishing off the projects could allow you a touch of success and let you reflect on how you are progressing throughout the day. Always stay to the list unless not possible and try to continue working from top priority to less priority. I know difficulties do come up during the day that sometimes throw the whole day in the air, but you must either deal with the problem and get back on to your list or if the new chore isn’t as important as some of the items on your list then place it at the bottom on the list and continue on with what you were doing.

Every item you have to get done should be written down for a few reasons. Firstly, so you don’t put off to do it and secondly, so you keep the day planned and you accomplish your daily goals. Be wary of initiating chores and not finishing them. This will show up tomorrow in a cloud of half baked work and can cause “list blowout”.

You will end up with your list at a mile long and you will give up in despair and reverse back to those habits of being in a hurry each day and accomplishing nothing.

Remember for each day you accomplish your goals and check off every task on your list, you will get a little closer to finalising your weekly and ultimately your yearly and long term goals.

A few essentials on Time Management:

• Do it once and do it well, it’s pointless going back to the job and needing to redo it.
• Learn to nicely inform people when you’re too busy and that you can speak to them at a later time.
• Learn to give other people tasks that truly don’t need your direct participation.
• Don’t embark on wild goose chases.
• Don’t spend time with phone calls that cannot take care of something.
• Don’t procrastinate.
• Review your list of work to do often at times through the day.
• “Map out your day” in the morning and list out your daily list right when you begin work. Complete what you list.
• Prioritise habitually, always take things in their order of necessity to you and the clients.

Be evasive with time wasters, people that will simply like to chat all day, and if they work for you, set them straight, or get rid of them.

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