When starting out in a home based business, time management is an element of business management that is usually overlooked or ignored.

We all know some person in small business who races at it like a mad dog all day, seldom enough hours in their day, all they do is hurry and get overtaken – perhaps this person is you! By the day’s end, when the dust settles, what have you accomplished? Do you think about the day and think “what happened to the time, I didn’t get as much done as I hoped. If this seems familiar, then you might simply have an organisational and time management problem.

Successful people never appear to rush, they remain composed and unflustered. The difference with them and the others is they possess time management.

What is time management? It is merely planning the clock in your day in an organised and efficient way. Before we can fully go ahead with how to time manage our day, we must ask ourselves what we are attempting to complete today, this week, this year and possibly even ten years from now. This is “Goal setting”.

The most effective way in my preference to complete goals is to write them down. You could think about all your goals sometimes to know that they are meaningful and possible but not so easy to do that you don’t need to try to complete them otherwise what is the point of the goals in the first place?

At the start of each working year you could sit and reflect on what you hope to get this year. It may be that you plan to increase your profits by 20%, you may desire to move into different premises, you may wish to get rid of your debt finally. From the start of each new working week you should write down on a note pad or in your diary the signifcant tasks that need to be finalised this week, and check up them every day to be sure you’re making progress and hopefully wipe some of your tasks off your list.

You could place this list on your desk or at a point where you will be repeatedly reminded of what needs to be accomplished this week. This list could be in order of urgency so that the impending tasks at the top of this list get finalised early. Any projects not completed this week need to be taken onto next week at a higher urgency, this should require it gets completed.

The next thing you will be doing is creating a daily list of chores to accomplish. This can assist keep you on schedule throughout the day. Again, this list should be placed where you can repeatedly look back to it and mark off the tasks finished. Polishing off the chores should allow you a sense of a job well done and let you check on how you are working over the day. Always adhere to your list when possible and continue working from the top priority to the lower priority. I know loopholes can appear throughout the day that may throw the whole day topsyturvy, but you need to either take on the dilemma and return to the list or if the newly arisen issue isn’t as serious as some of the chores on your list then target it at the bottom on your list and continue doing the chore you were doing.

Each aspect of work you hope to accomplish needs to be written down for a multiplicity of reasons. Firstly, so you don’t put off to do it and secondly, so you keep every day planned and you complete your daily goals. Be sensitive to initiating tasks and not completing them. This will become tomorrow in a cloud of incomplete chores and can cause “list blowout”.

You will end up with your list being a mile long and you will throw it out in despair and go back to those habits of working in rush each day and completing nothing.

Remember each day you write out your goals and polish off all the items on your list, you will get a day closer to polishing off your weekly and eventually your yearly and long term goals.

A few pointers on Time Management:

• Do it once and do it well, it’s pointless reverting to the item and needing to redo it.
• Learn to nicely tell people when you’re busy with work and that you will speak to them later.
• Learn to give out tasks that actually don’t require your involvement.
• Don’t embark on wild goose chases.
• Don’t waste time during phone calls that are not going to do something.
• Don’t procrastinate.
• Refer to your list of jobs to do often at points through the day.
• “Map out your day” in the car and plan out your daily list right when you arrive at work. Achieve what you initiate.
• Prioritise in everything you do, always take care of jobs in their order of importance to you and the work.

Be evasive with time wasters, people who simply decide to chat all day, and if they are your employees, set them straight, or get rid of them.

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