Time Management When Working from Home

When you start a from-home business, time management is an aspect of business management usually overlooked or neglected.

Surely we all know some person in small business who races at it like a chicken with its head cut off all day, seldom enough hours in a day, all they do is push and get overloaded - perhaps this person is you! By the day’s end, when the rush settles, what have you gotten out of it? Do you reflect on the day and think “what happened to the time, I didn’t get so much done as I thought I would. If this is familiar, then you may just have an organisational and time management problem.

Successful people don’t seem to rush, they stay composed and unflustered. The difference between them and others is they have exceptional time management.

What is time management? It is just allocating hours in your day in an organised and efficient process. Before we can actually take on how to time manage our day, we first need to question ourselves what we are trying to master today, this week, this year and perhaps even ten years from now. This is “Goal setting”.

The most effective way in my preference to complete goals is to write them down. You can go back to the goals at times to feel that they are meaningful and realisable but not so simple that you don’t have to make the effort to succeed at them otherwise what is the point of those goals in the first place?

At the beginning of a working year you can sit and plan what you wish to get this year. It can be that you wish to raise your profits by 20%, you perhaps hope to move into better premises, you can want to reduce your debt once and for all. From the beginning of a new working week you should write down on a note pad or in your diary the large projects that must to be finished this week, and review them at the end of each day to be sure that you’re making progress and hopefully wipe some of those jobs from your list.

You can hold your list on your desk or on a spot where you can be continually reminded of what must be accomplished each week. This list can be in order of necessity so that the major chores at the top of this list get finalised first up. Any of the chores not finished this week should be put onto next week on a higher priority, this will demand it gets achieved.

The next thing you will be doing is having yourself a daily list of projects to achieve. This will assist keep you focused throughout the day. Again, this list should be placed where you are able to constantly look at it and wipe off the tasks finished. Checking off the chores will allow you a feeling of completion and remind you how you are progressing across the day. Always adhere to the list if possible and keep working from higher priority to low priority. I know things could jump up over the day that might throw the whole day up in the air, but you need to either take on the crisis and get back on to the list or if the sudden job isn’t as time sensitive as some of the items on the list then put it at the bottom on your list and continue on doing what you were doing.

Every piece of work you need to get done can be written down for a multitude of reasons. Firstly, so you don’t forget to do it and secondly, so you keep your day planned and you complete your daily goals. Be careful of beginning chores and not completing them. This could show up tomorrow in a cloud of half finished chores and can cause “list blowout”.

You will end up with a list a mile long and you will throw it out in despair and change back to bad habits of being in rush all day and realizing nothing.

Remember each day you plan your goals and mark off all the chores on your list, you get a day closer to accomplishing your weekly and soon your yearly and long term goals.

A few tips on Time Management:

• Do it once and do it well, it’s pointless returning to the project and having to redo it.
• Learn to simply tell people when you’re busy with work and that you will return to them later.
• Learn to give out items that truly don’t need your involvement.
• Don’t take on wild goose chases.
• Don’t fizzle away time on phone calls that are not going to accomplish something.
• Don’t procrastinate.
• Refer to your list of items to do continually at times through the day.
• “Map out your day” in the shower and write out your daily list when you begin work. Achieve what you begin.
• Prioritise all your chores, always take care of items in their order of importance to you and your clients.

Stay away from time wasters, people that will 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.