Time Management When Working from Home

When starting up a from-home business, time management is an area of business management that is often overlooked or ignored.

Sure enough, we all know a person in small business who races about like a madman all day, rarely enough hours in a day, all they do is hurry and get overtaken - maybe this person is you! Come the day’s end, when the panic settles, what have you taken from it? Do you replay the day and realise “what happened to the time, I didn’t get so much accomplished as I thought I would. If this sounds familiar, then you may have an organisational and time management problem.

Successful people do not appear to rush, they always remain composed and unflustered. The difference from them and the other people is they command time management.

What is time management? It is merely arranging minutes in your day in an organised and efficient process. Before we can really get how to time manage our day, we need to ask ourselves what we are hoping to accomplish today, this week, this year and up to ten years from now. This is “Goal setting”.

The simplest method in my opinion to complete goals is to write them down. You can go back to all your goals sometimes to know that they are appropriate and workable but not so achievable that you don’t need to work to complete them otherwise what is the reason of those goals in the first place?

From the beginning of every new working year you should pause and think about what you wish to get this year. It may be that you desire to gross up your profits by 20%, you perhaps desire to move into different premises, you may desire to reduce your debt substantially. At the first day of every working week you might write down on a note pad or in your diary the major jobs that have to be taken care of this week, and review them on every day to check you’re making progress and hopefully tick some of the chores off your list.

You may have your list on your desk or on a location where you can be continually reminded of what will be completed throughout the week. Your list could be in order of importance so that the most important work at the top of your list get achieved earlier. All the tasks not checked off this week will be brought up to next week on a higher priority, this will require it gets accomplished.

The next thing you will be doing is having a daily list of projects to get done. This should help keep you organised during each day. Again, this list could be displayed where you are able to persistently look back to it and tick off the chores accomplished. Ticking off the tasks helps to allow you a pride of achievement and let you review how you are going throughout the day. Always adhere to your list when possible and continue working from top priority to low priority. I know issues could appear over the day that sometimes throw the whole day out, but you need to either take on the problem and then get back to the list or if the sudden problem isn’t as important as some of the jobs on the list then put it after these on the list and continue doing what you were doing.

Every piece of work you have to finish must be written down for a multitude of reasons. Firstly, so you don’t neglect to do it and secondly, so you keep each day planned and you complete your daily goals. Be wary of starting tasks and not completing them. This might come back tomorrow in a mess of half baked work and will cause “list blowout”.

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

Remember every day you accomplish your goals and write off all the jobs on your list, you will be a step closer to reaching 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 wasteful returning to the task and having to redo it.
• Learn to civilly say to people when you’re busy with work and that you can get back to them later.
• Learn to give out chores that actually don’t need your direct involvement.
• Don’t embark on wild goose chases.
• Don’t spend time with phone calls that won’t achieve something.
• Don’t procrastinate.
• Check back to your list of chores to do repeatedly at points through your day.
• “Map out your day” in the shower and write out your daily list right when you start work. Finish what you begin.
• Prioritise in everything you do, always do things in their order of priority to you and your business.

Get away from time wasters, people who simply like to chat all day, and if they are your employees, set them straight, or get rid of them.

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