Time Management When Working from Home
When starting out in a from-home business, time management is an aspect of business management that is frequently overlooked or ignored.
Sure enough, everybody knows a friend in small business who races about like a bull all day, rarely enough hours in each day, all they do is push and get worked up - is it that this person is you! To the week’s end, when the panic settles, what have you gotten out of it? Do you replay the day and realise “what happened to the day, I didn’t get so much done as I planned. If this feels familiar, then you might simply have an organisational and time management problem.
Successful people seldom seem to rush, they stay composed and unflustered. The difference between them and the others is they have mastered time management.
What is time management? It is merely allocating the clock in your day in an organised and efficient way. Before we can actually go ahead with how to time manage our day, we first need to question ourselves what we are planning to master today, this week, this year and perhaps ten years from now. This is “Goal setting”.
The top key in my preference to achieve goals is to write them down. You should review these goals sometimes to ensure that they are relevant and possible but not so simple that you don’t have to put in the work to complete them otherwise what is the point of those goals in the first place?
From the start of every new working year you should take time and reflect on what you wish to get this year. It may be that you want to gross up your profits by 20%, you may would like to move into bigger premises, you can plan to take down your debt substantially. From the start of each working week you can write down on a note pad or in your diary the major jobs that must to be achieved this week, and review them at each day to ensure you’re making progress and hopefully tick some of the tasks off your list.
You should have your list on your desk or on a location where you can be persistently reminded of what must be done this week. This list should be in order of importance so that the most important chores at the top of this list get completed early. All tasks not completed this week should be brought up to next week at a higher priority, this will demand it gets achieved.
The next thing you will be doing is giving yourself a daily list of jobs to take care of. This should help keep you organised on each day. Again, this list might be put up where you can continually check on it and tick off the jobs accomplished. Wiping off the jobs is a way to give you a touch of accomplishment and let you know how you are working throughout the day. Always hold to your list where possible and try to continue working from high priority to lower priority. I know wormholes will come up during the day that can throw the whole day off schedule, but you need to either take care of the situation and return to the list or if the unplanned issue isn’t as time sensitive as some of the issues on your list then list it for later on the list and continue on doing the job you were doing.
Each chore you have to accomplish should be written down for a multitude of reasons. Firstly, so you don’t neglect to do it and secondly, so you have your day outlined and you complete your daily goals. Be wary of starting tasks and not completing them. This could come back tomorrow in a mushroom cloud of half finished projects and can cause “list blowout”.
You will end up with your list a mile long and you will throw it up in despair and go back to old habits of being in a hurry each day and finishing nothing.
Remember each day you plan your goals and check off all the projects on your list, you become a step closer to realizing your weekly and ultimately your yearly and long term goals.
A few essentials on Time Management:
- Do it once and do it well, it’s frustrating returning to the issue and having to redo it.
- Learn to simply tell people when you’re working and that you would get back to them at a later time.
- Learn to give out jobs that actually don’t require your direct participation.
- Don’t embark on wild goose chases.
- Don’t fizzle away time with phone calls that can’t assist with something.
- Don’t procrastinate.
- Refer to your list of tasks to do repeatedly throughout the day.
- “Map out your day” in the morning and list out your daily list the minute you start work. Finish what you list.
- Prioritise everything, always begin items in their order of priority to you and the customers.
Avoid time wasters, people that would only like to chat all day, and if they are your employees, set them straight, or get rid of them.
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Posted by: Crane Data Logger 
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