Time Management When Working from Home
When you start a from-home business, time management is an element of business management frequently overlooked or neglected.
Sure enough, everybody knows a friend in small business who races around like a madman all day, rarely enough hours in the day, all they do is push and get worked up - is it that this person is you! By the end of the day, when the pace settles, what have you gotten out of it? Do you think about the day and realise “what happened to the time, I didn’t get as much finished as I intended. If this sounds familiar, then you may have an organisational and time management problem.
Successful people don’t ever seem to rush, they are always composed and unflustered. The difference from them and everybody else is they have accomplished time management.
What is time management? It is simply allocating hours in your day in an organised and efficient scheme. Before we can really take on how to time manage our day, we first need to question ourselves what we are hoping to master today, this week, this year and up to ten years from now. This is “Goal setting”.
The most effective key in my opinion to accomplish goals is to write them down. You could go back to all your goals sometimes to ensure that they are meaningful and realisable but not so achievable that you don’t have to put in the work to succeed at them otherwise what is the meaning of any goals in the first place?
From the start of a working year you could sit down and plan what you desire to end up with this year. It can be that you plan to gross up your profits by 20%, you perhaps plan to move into different premises, you can want to reduce your debt substantially. By the first day of every new working week you may write down on a note pad or in your diary the signifcant tasks that have to be finished this week, and review them at the end of each day to check that you’re making progress and hopefully tick some of the projects from your list.
You should hold this list on your desk or in a point where you could be repeatedly reminded of what will be finalised each week. This list could be in order of importance so that the major jobs at the top of your list get achieved first up. Any of the chores not finished this week must be brought up to next week on a higher ranking, this should require it gets accomplished.
The next thing you can be doing is having a daily list of projects to do. This can help keep you on track throughout each day. Again, this list might be displayed where you can continually look at it and check off the items completed. Checking off the chores should give you a feeling of accomplishment and let you know how you are progressing during the day. Always stick to your list when possible and try to continue working from the top priority to the lower priority. I know loopholes could jump up throughout the day that might throw the whole day out, but you need to either deal with the situation and get back on to the list or if the new task isn’t as time sensitive as some of the work on your list then list it at the bottom on your list and continue on with the job you were doing.
Each chore you hope to get done could be written down for a numerous reasons. Firstly, so you don’t neglect to do it and secondly, so you have every day outlined and you finish your daily goals. Be alert to initiating items and not finishing them. This may become tomorrow in a plethora of half baked work and could cause “list blowout”.
You will end up with the list being a mile long and you will throw the towel in in despair and change back to bad habits of working in a fuss during the day and achieving nothing.
Remember that each day you plan your goals and write off all the chores on your list, you get a little closer to finalising 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 coming back to the job and having to redo it.
- Learn to politely communicate to people when you’re working and that you would get back to them at a later time.
- Learn to give out chores that really don’t require your direct involvement.
- Don’t embark on wild goose chases.
- Don’t waste time during phone calls that will not assist with something.
- Don’t procrastinate.
- Refer to your list of chores to do repeatedly during the day.
- “Map out your day” in the shower and schedule out your daily list the minute you get to work. Don’t stop what you initiate.
- Prioritise all your chores, always take chores in their order of necessity to you and your customers.
Don’t get in with time wasters, people that only start to chat all day, and if they are your workers, set them straight, or get rid of them.
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Posted by: Crane Data Logger 
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