Time Management When Working from Home

When you are starting a home business, time management is an aspect of business management that can be frequently overlooked or neglected.

Sure enough, we all know a person in small business who races around like a bull all day, never enough hours in their day, all they do is hurry and get worked up – maybe this person is you! At the end of the day, when the rush settles, what have you completed? Do you replay the day and wonder “what happened to the hours, I didn’t get as much finished as I hoped I would. If this reads familiar, then you may just have an organisational and time management problem.

Successful people seldom seem to rush, they remain composed and unflustered. The difference between them and the other people is they have great time management.

What is time management? It is simply arranging minutes in your day in an organised and efficient scheme. Before we can actually go ahead with how to time manage our day, we first need to question ourselves what we are planning to master today, this week, this year and possibly ten years from now. This is “Goal setting”.

The easiest process in my preference to complete goals is to write them down. You could go back to your goals at times to ensure that they are meaningful and workable but not so achievable that you don’t need to make the effort to achieve them otherwise what is the reason of the goals in the first place?

At the start of each new working year you could pause and ponder what you hope to end up with this year. It could be that you desire to increase your profits by 20%, you perhaps desire to move into different premises, you might wish to take down your debt in a significant way. By the start of a new working week you might write down on a note pad or in your diary the large tasks that have to be achieved this week, and check up them at each day to make sure you’re making progress and hopefully polish some of those tasks from your list.

You can put the list on your desk or on a location where you can be repeatedly reminded of what has to be completed this week. The list should be in order of importance so that the impending jobs at the top of your list get accomplished first. Any of the chores not finished this week should be brought up to next week at a higher urgency, this will make sure it gets taken care of.

The next thing you can be doing is having yourself a daily list of chores to accomplish. This can assist keep you on track during each day. Again, this list will be placed where you are able to persistently see it and tick off the tasks finished. Checking off the chores can give you a pride of achievement and let you check on how you are progressing through the day. Always stick to this list when possible and try to keep working from higher priority to the lesser priority. I know changes could show up through the day that might throw the whole day up in the air, but you must either deal with the problem and then return to the list or if the unplanned dilemma isn’t as important as some of the tasks on the list then put it lower on the list and continue doing the project you were doing.

Each task you need to finish must be written down for a number of reasons. Firstly, so you don’t neglect to do it and secondly, so you have every day scheduled and you complete your daily goals. Beware starting chores and not completing them. This can become tomorrow in a mess of incomplete tasks and could cause “list blowout”.

You will end up with your list reading a mile long and you will throw the towel in in despair and reverse back to those habits of being in a hurry each day and finishing nothing.

Remember every day you set your goals and mark off all the items on your list, you will be a little bit closer to realizing 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 fruitless going back to the task and having to redo it.

Learn to civilly say to people when you’re busy working and that you would speak to them later.

Learn to pass out chores that truly don’t demand your direct work.

Don’t take on wild goose chases.

Don’t spend time by phone calls that cannot do something.

Don’t procrastinate.

Review your list of work to do frequently during the day.

“Map out your day” in the morning and write out your daily list as soon as you start work. Complete what you start.

Prioritise always, always keep jobs in their order of importance to you and your customers.

Don’t get in with time wasters, people that merely like to chat all day, and if they are your workers, set them straight, or get rid of them.

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