Time Management When Working from Home

May 18th, 2010

When you start out in a home business, time management is an aspect of business management often overlooked or neglected.

Surely everybody knows a friend in small business who races about like a madman all day, never enough hours in their day, all they do is panic and get overloaded - maybe this person is you! To the week’s end, when the rush settles, what have you done? Do you think about the day and wonder “what happened to the time, I didn’t get as much finished as I hoped to do. If this seems familiar, then you may have an organisational and time management problem.

Successful people don’t appear to rush, they stay composed and unflustered. The difference in them and other people is they achieve time management.

What is time management? It is just arranging the clock in your day in an organised and efficient method. Before we can fully go ahead on how to time manage our day, we first need to decide for ourselves what we are hoping to complete today, this week, this year and possibly even ten years from now. This is “Goal setting”.

The best process in my view to complete goals is to write them down. You could think about all your goals at points to ensure that they are purposeful and achievable but not so simple that you don’t need to put in the work to accomplish them otherwise what is the meaning of your goals in the first place?

From the beginning of each new working year you could sit down and ponder what you plan to accomplish this year. It may be that you want to enlarge your profits by 20%, you may desire to move into bigger premises, you can desire to take away from your debt finally. At the beginning of each working week you could write down on a note pad or in your diary the large tasks that have to be accomplished this week, and reflect them at each day to be sure you’re making progress and hopefully polish some of the chores off the list.

You might keep the list on your desk or at a place where you could be repeatedly reminded of what will be done each week. The list can be in order of priority so that the impending chores at the top of this list get accomplished first. Any of the jobs not ticked off this week will be put forward next week on a higher priority, this will ensure it gets taken care of.

The next thing you may not be doing is having a daily list of jobs to get done. This should help keep you on track during each day. Again, this list will be put up where you can persistently see it and write off the jobs completed. Wiping off the chores helps give you a pride of accomplishment and let you check on how you are moving through the day. Always hold to the list if possible and try to keep working from top priority to the lowest priority. I know difficulties could come up over the day that might throw the whole day up in the air, but you must either take care of the crisis and then get back to your list or if the sudden issue isn’t as time sensitive as some of the chores on the list then place it later on your list and continue on doing what you were doing.

Every project you need to accomplish must be written down for a multiplicity of reasons. Firstly, so you don’t put off to do it and secondly, so you have each day planned and you get your daily goals. Be careful of starting items and not completing them. This may become tomorrow in a plethora of incomplete projects and could cause “list blowout”.

You will end up with your list at a mile long and you will back out in despair and change back to old habits of working in rush during the day and accomplishing nothing.

Remember that each day you accomplish your goals and write off all the jobs on your list, you will get a bit closer to reaching your weekly and ultimately your yearly and long term goals.

A few basics on Time Management:

  • Do it once and do it well, it’s fruitless reverting to the job and needing to redo it.
  • Learn to simply tell people when you’re too busy and that you will speak to them later.
  • Learn to give other people items that truly don’t need your participation.
  • Don’t take on wild goose chases.
  • Don’t spend time on phone calls that cannot achieve something.
  • Don’t procrastinate.
  • Refer to your list of jobs to do continually during the day.
  • “Map out your day” in the morning and list out your daily list the minute you arrive at work. Complete what you start.
  • Prioritise in everything you do, always do things in their order of urgency to you and your clients.

Avoid time wasters, people who will merely go off to chat all day, and if they are employed by you, set them straight, or get rid of them.

 

For more information about self employment Brisbane, home business Brisbane, or work from home Brisbane, contact Lifestyle Switch. Make the switch to your own business today.

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