Business Podcasting Blog

Time management is an area of business management often overlooked or ignored. We all know someone in small business who races around like a madman all day, never enough hours in a day, all they do is rush and get worked up - maybe this person is you!

At the end of the day, when the dust settles, what have you achieved? Do you review the day and wonder “what happened to the day, I didn’t get as much done as I thought I would”. If this sounds familiar, then you may have an organisational and time management problem.

Successful people never seem to rush, they remain composed and unflustered. The difference between them and everybody else is they have mastered time management.

What is time management? It is simply allocating time in your day in an organised and efficient way. Before we can really understand how to time manage our day, we must ask ourselves what are we trying to achieve today, this week, this year and possibly ten years from now. This is “Goal setting”.

The best way in my opinion to achieve goals is to write them down. You should review these goals from time to time to ensure that they are relevant and achievable but not so achievable that you don’t have to try hard to achieve them otherwise what is the purpose of the goals in the first place?

At the start of each working year you should sit down and think about what you want to achieve this year, it could be that you want to increase your profits by 20%, you may want to move into larger premises, you may want to reduce your debt substantially. At the start of each working week you should write down on a note pad or in your diary the major jobs that need to be done this week, and review them each day to ensure you’re making progress and hopefully mark some of the tasks off the list.

You should keep the list on your desk or in a place where you will be constantly reminded what needs to be done this week. This list should be in order of priority so that the most important tasks at the top of the list get done first. Anything not achieved this week will be carried forward next week on a higher priority, this will ensure it gets done.

The next thing you should be doing is having a daily list of jobs to do. This will help keep you on track each day. Again, this list should be displayed where you can constantly refer to it and mark off the jobs completed. Marking off the jobs will give you a sense of achievement and let you know how you are progressing through the day. Always stick to the list where possible and keep working from high priority to low priority.

I know things can come up through the day that can throw the whole day out, but you must either deal with the crisis and return to your list or if the new task isn’t as important as some of the jobs on the list put it at the bottom of the list and continue doing what you were doing.

Every task you have to do should be written down for a couple of reasons. Firstly, so you don’t forget to do it and secondly, so you keep your day organised and you achieve your daily goals.

Beware starting jobs and not finishing them. This will turn tomorrow into a mess of half finished jobs and will cause “list blowout”. You will end up with a list a mile long and you will give up in despair and revert back to old habits of being in confusion all day and achieving nothing.

Remember each day you achieve your goals and tick off everything on your list, you get a little closer to achieving your weekly and ultimately your yearly and long term goals.
++

For Mackay Bookkeeping, Townsville Bookkeeping and Cairns Bookkeeping, contact Dollarwise Bookkeeping. Dollarwise have a remote MYOB bookkeeping service for all types and sizes of business.