Time Management When Working from Home

When starting up a from-home business, time management is an element of business management that can be frequently overlooked or ignored.

We all know some person in small business who races at it like a bull all day, never enough hours in the day, all they do is push and get overtaken - is it that this person is you! Come the day’s end, when the dust settles, what have you done? Do you replay the day and ponder “what happened to the time, I didn’t get as much done as I hoped I could. If this sounds familiar, then you may have an organisational and time management problem.

Successful people do not seem to rush, they remain composed and unflustered. The difference between them and the other people is they have great time management.

What is time management? It is simply allocating minutes in your day in an organised and efficient scheme. Before we can really go ahead with how to time manage our day, we must figure for ourselves what we are aiming to achieve today, this week, this year and even up to ten years from now. This is “Goal setting”.

The most effective process in my preference to accomplish goals is to write them down. You can go back to all your goals at points to feel that they are meaningful and realisable but not so easy that you don’t have to try to succeed at them otherwise what is the reason of your goals in the first place?

From the beginning of a working year you can sit and reflect on what you hope to take away from this year. It might be that you desire to increase your profits by 20%, you might would like to move into larger premises, you may hope to take down your debt in a significant way. By the beginning of each new working week you can write down on a note pad or in your diary the major tasks that need to be finalised this week, and reflect them on each day to be sure you’re making progress and hopefully check some of your chores from the list.

You might hold your list on your desk or at a place where you will be repeatedly reminded of what will be undertaken throughout the week. The list might be in order of priority so that the most important work at the top of the list get completed first. All the chores not finished this week will be carried up to next week at a higher priority, this will ensure it gets completed.

The next thing you could be doing is creating a daily list of chores to achieve. This might assist keep you focused during each day. Again, this list may be placed where you are able to persistently look at it and mark off the chores accomplished. Marking off the jobs should give you a touch of completion and let you check on how you are working over the day. Always stick to your list if possible and keep working from the highest priority to the lowest priority. I know problems do turn up over the day that might throw the whole day out of whack, but you must either take on the situation and return to the list or if the new situation isn’t as serious as some of the work on the list then put it later on your list and continue on doing what you were doing.

Every project you plan to accomplish needs to be written down for a multitude of reasons. Firstly, so you don’t neglect to do it and secondly, so you keep every day scheduled and you complete your daily goals. Beware initiating jobs and not completing them. This will become tomorrow in a mess of incomplete chores and will cause “list blowout”.

You will end up with your list at a mile long and you will give it up in despair and go back to those habits of getting in a fuss during the day and accomplishing nothing.

Remember that each day you achieve your goals and polish off every job on your list, you get a day closer to succeeding in your weekly and finally your yearly and long term goals.

A few essentials on Time Management:

• Do it once and do it well, it’s wasteful reverting to the issue and having to redo it.
• Learn to civilly tell people when you’re busy with work and that you would return to them at a later point.
• Learn to delegate chores that really don’t demand your hand.
• Don’t go on wild goose chases.
• Don’t fizzle away time by phone calls that are not going to accomplish something.
• Don’t procrastinate.
• Look back on your list of things to do frequently throughout the day.
• “Map out your day” in the car and write out your daily list right when you get to work. Complete what you start.
• Prioritise habitually, always do things in their order of necessity to you and your clients.

Don’t get in with time wasters, people that will simply go off to chat all day, and if they are your employees, 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.