Time Management When Working from Home
When starting up a from-home business, time management is an area of business management often overlooked or left out of the equation.
We all know a friend in small business who races at it like a bull all day, never enough hours in every day, all they do is push and get overwhelmed - perhaps this person is you! To the end of the day, when the rush settles, what have you taken from it? Do you review the day and ponder “what happened to the time, I didn’t get so much accomplished as I hoped I could. If this is familiar, then you may have an organisational and time management problem.
Successful people seldom seem to rush, they seem composed and unflustered. The difference between them and everybody else is they have accomplished time management.
What is time management? It is merely arranging hours in your day in an organised and efficient method. Before we can actually get how to time manage our day, we first need to question ourselves what we are aiming to accomplish today, this week, this year and perhaps ten years from now. This is “Goal setting”.
The easiest way in my opinion to take on goals is to write them down. You may review your goals at times to feel that they are meaningful and possible but not so easy that you don’t have to work hard to accomplish them otherwise what is the purpose of those goals in the first place?
At the start of every new working year you should takethe time and plan what you plan to end up with this year. It could be that you need to increase your profits by 20%, you could hope to move into larger premises, you might plan to get rid of your debt in a susbstantial way. From the beginning of each working week you could write down on a note pad or in your diary the major chores that have to be done this week, and review them each day to be sure you’re making progress and hopefully polish some of your chores off the list.
You should keep the list on your desk or on a place where you can be persistently reminded of what must be finalised this week. This list should be in order of necessity so that the key tasks at the top of your list get achieved first up. All work not finished this week should be brought up to next week on a higher priority, this should make sure it gets finished.
The next thing you can be doing is creating a daily list of chores to get done. This might assist keep you organised throughout the day. Again, this list might be placed where you can continually check on it and tick off the jobs done. Checking off the chores could give you a pride of a job well done and let you check on how you are moving through the day. Always hold to your list where possible and try to continue working from the highest priority to the lower priority. I know problems could turn up through the day that sometimes throw the whole day topsyturvy, but you have to either take care of the dilemma and then get back to the list or if the new situation isn’t as important as some of the projects on your list then list it lower on the list and continue with the job you were doing.
Each chore you hope to get done needs to be written down for a couple of reasons. Firstly, so you don’t neglect to do it and secondly, so you keep every day outlined and you complete your daily goals. Be alert to beginning jobs and not finishing them. This could show up tomorrow in a mushroom cloud of incomplete tasks and can cause “list blowout”.
You will end up with the list a mile long and you will give up in despair and go back to those habits of being in a fuss each day and finishing nothing.
Remember for each day you plan your goals and mark off all the chores on your list, you will be a little closer to realizing your weekly and soon your yearly and long term goals.
A few essentials on Time Management:
- Do it once and do it well, it’s wasteful returning to the task and needing to redo it.
- Learn to nicely say to people when you’re busy with work and that you would return to them later.
- Learn to give out items that really don’t require your hand.
- Don’t make off on wild goose chases.
- Don’t fizzle away time on phone calls that can’t do something.
- Don’t procrastinate.
- Look back to your list of work to do often through the day.
- “Map out your day” in the car and schedule out your daily list right when you start work. Accomplish what you start.
- Prioritise always, always start things in their order of necessity to you and your work.
Get away from time wasters, people who just like to chat all day, and if they are your workers, 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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