When you start out in a from-home business, time management is an aspect of business management often overlooked or left out of the equation.

We all know someone in small business who races about like a bull all day, without enough hours in every day, all they do is rush and get overtaken – perhaps this person is you! Come the end of the week, when the rush settles, what have you achieved? Do you reflect on the day and ponder “what happened to the time, I didn’t get so much completed as I thought I should. If this reads familiar, then you may simply have an organisational and time management problem.

Successful people don’t seem to rush, they seem composed and unflustered. The difference between them and the others is they have accomplished time management.

What is time management? It is simply scheduling the clock in your day in an organised and efficient way. Before we can truly take on how to time manage our day, we first must decide for ourselves what we are trying to master today, this week, this year and as far as ten years from now. This is “Goal setting”.

The simplest key in my preference to take on goals is to write them down. You may review the goals at points to ensure that they are appropriate and realisable but not so easy that you don’t need to work hard to achieve them otherwise what is the meaning of those goals in the first place?

From the beginning of each new working year you can sit and plan what you hope to take away from this year. It may be that you need to enlarge your profits by 20%, you may would like to move into different premises, you perhaps want to get rid of your debt in a susbstantial way. From the beginning of every new working week you could write down on a note pad or in your diary the signifcant projects that have to be taken care of this week, and reflect them each day to ensure that you’re making progress and hopefully mark some of those tasks off your list.

You may hold your list on your desk or at a place where you will be persistently reminded of what will be undertaken this week. This list might be in order of priority so that the major tasks at the top of this list get done first. Any of the jobs not completed this week need to be carried onto next week on a higher importance, this will ensure it gets finished.

The next thing you might not be doing is having a daily list of chores to achieve. This might assist keep you focused throughout each day. Again, this list can be put where you are able to constantly see it and wipe off the projects finished. Marking off the tasks helps give you a feeling of accomplishment and remind you how you are working across the day. Always stick to this list if possible and try to keep working from higher priority to the lower priority. I know loopholes sometimes turn up through the day that sometimes throw the whole day out, but you need to either take care of the problem and get back on to your list or if the unplanned job isn’t as time sensitive as some of the projects on your list then list it lower on your list and continue on with the chore you were doing.

Each task you plan to complete must be written down for a few reasons. Firstly, so you don’t put off to do it and secondly, so you have each day scheduled and you finish your daily goals. Beware starting jobs and not completing them. This might turn tomorrow in a mess of half baked work and can cause “list blowout”.

You will end up with your list at a mile long and you will throw the towel in in despair and revert back to bad habits of getting yourself in panic all day and finishing nothing.

Remember for every day you accomplish your goals and mark off all the items on your list, you get a little closer to reaching your weekly and ultimately your yearly and long term goals.

A few pointers on Time Management:

• Do it once and do it well, it’s frustrating returning to the project and needing to redo it.
• Learn to simply communicate to people when you’re working and that you can get back to them some time later.
• Learn to issue jobs that truly don’t require your direct participation.
• Don’t take on wild goose chases.
• Don’t spend time on phone calls that are not going to take care of something.
• Don’t procrastinate.
• Check back to your list of jobs to do continually through your day.
• “Map out your day” in the shower and schedule out your daily list as soon as you get to work. Achieve what you initiate.
• Prioritise habitually, always take care of things in their order of importance to you and your customers.

Be evasive with time wasters, people that just like to chat all day, and if they are your workers, set them straight, or get rid of them.

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