Business Podcasting Blog

When starting up a home business, time management is an aspect of business management that can be overlooked or ignored.

Surely everybody knows a person in small business who races at it like a bull all day, rarely enough hours in each day, all they do is rush and get overloaded - maybe this person is you! At the end of the week, when the pace settles, what have you gotten out of it? Do you replay the day and think “what happened to the hours, I didn’t get as much accomplished as I thought I should. If this sounds familiar, then you may have an organisational and time management problem.

Successful people don’t seem to rush, they seem composed and unflustered. The difference between them and the other people is they have great time management.

What is time management? It is just arranging hours in your day in an organised and efficient scheme. Before we can truly understand how to time manage our day, we must ask ourselves what we are aiming to achieve today, this week, this year and possibly even ten years from now. This is “Goal setting”.

The top key in my view to achieve goals is to write them down. You should go back to your goals at times to make sure that they are appropriate and possible but not so simple that you don’t need to put in the work to succeed at them otherwise what is the point of your goals in the first place?

From the start of a new working year you could take time and reflect on what you hope to take away from this year. It may be that you desire to enlarge your profits by 20%, you can desire to move into other premises, you might hope to take down your debt finally. From the start of a new working week you could write down on a note pad or in your diary the signifcant tasks that have to be accomplished this week, and check back them on every day to make sure that you’re making progress and hopefully polish some of your chores off the list.

You should place this list on your desk or at a location where you will be persistently reminded of what will be achieved throughout the week. This list may be in order of necessity so that the key projects at the top of the list get taken care of first up. All tasks not ticked off this week will be carried through to next week on a higher ranking, this should ensure it gets ticked off.

The next thing you might not be doing is writing a daily list of projects to accomplish. This might help keep you focused during each day. Again, this list should be displayed where you are able to persistently see it and write off the jobs finalised. Writing off the jobs should give you a sense of accomplishment and let you check on how you are going through the day. Always hold to your list where possible and continue working from top priority to less priority. I know changes do turn up during the day that sometimes throw the whole day off schedule, but you have to either take care of the dilemma and return to the list or if the unplanned work isn’t as important as some of the chores on your list then list it lower on the list and continue on with the task you were doing.

Every project you need to complete should be written down for a couple of reasons. Firstly, so you don’t neglect to do it and secondly, so you keep the day planned and you get your daily goals. Beware starting jobs and not completing them. This might come back tomorrow in a mess of half finished work and will cause “list blowout”.

You will end up with the list reading a mile long and you will throw it up in despair and reverse back to old habits of being in a fuss every day and finishing nothing.

Remember that every day you achieve your goals and check off all the items on your list, you get a step closer to succeeding in your weekly and soon your yearly and long term goals.

A few basics on Time Management:

• Do it once and do it well, it’s pointless going back to the job and needing to redo it.
• Learn to nicely communicate to people when you’re working and that you can get back to them at a later time.
• Learn to pass out jobs that actually don’t require your direct work.
• Don’t embark on wild goose chases.
• Don’t spend time by phone calls that cannot accomplish something.
• Don’t procrastinate.
• Look at your list of jobs to do frequently throughout your day.
• “Map out your day” in the car and write out your daily list as soon as you arrive at work. Don’t stop what you start.
• Prioritise in everything you do, always do jobs in their order of urgency to you and your work.

Be evasive with time wasters, people that just choose to chat all day, and if they are your workers, set them straight, or get rid of them.

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