Time Management When Working from Home
Filed Under Uncategorized
When starting out in a home business, time management is an area of business management that can be often overlooked or ignored.
Surely everybody knows a person in small business who races around like a chicken with its head cut off all day, rarely enough hours in each day, all they do is hurry and get overloaded - is it that this person is you! By the day’s end, when the panic settles, what have you achieved? Do you reflect on the day and ponder “what happened to the hours, I didn’t get so much completed as I hoped I could. If this feels familiar, then you may have an organisational and time management problem.
Successful people seldom appear to rush, they always seem composed and unflustered. The difference between them and everybody else is they have mastered time management.
What is time management? It is merely scheduling hours in your day in an organised and efficient way. Before we can fully go ahead with how to time manage our day, we first need to question ourselves what we are aiming to master today, this week, this year and possibly even ten years from now. This is “Goal setting”.
The top way in my perspective to accomplish goals is to write them down. You might go back to these goals at times to ensure that they are meaningful and realisable but not so easy to do that you don’t need to try hard to complete them otherwise what is the purpose of the goals in the first place?
At the start of a new working year you should sit and think about what you wish to achieve this year. It can be that you wish to gross up your profits by 20%, you perhaps want to move into larger premises, you might desire to reduce your debt as much as possible. By the first day of every new working week you may write down on a note pad or in your diary the major projects that need to be achieved this week, and check back them on each day to know that you’re making progress and hopefully mark some of the projects off the list.
You might place the list on your desk or on a location where you can be repeatedly reminded of what has to be undertaken this week. Your list might be in order of priority so that the most important tasks at the top of the list get accomplished first up. Any projects not completed this week need to be taken forward next week at a higher ranking, this should ensure it gets ticked off.
The next thing you may not be doing is giving yourself a daily list of jobs to accomplish. This may assist keep you organised in the day. Again, this list will be displayed where you are able to repeatedly look at it and mark off the items completed. Checking off the projects helps give you a feeling of completion and let you check on how you are going during the day. Always stick to your list where possible and try to continue working from higher priority to the lesser priority. I know things will come up through the day that may throw the whole day off track, but you need to either take care of the situation and get back on to your list or if the sudden issue isn’t as urgent as some of the projects on the list then place it for later on the list and continue doing the work you were doing.
Every job you hope to complete must be written down for a multiplicity of reasons. Firstly, so you don’t forget to do it and secondly, so you keep the day planned and you realise your daily goals. Be wary of beginning chores and not completing them. This might become tomorrow in a plethora of half finished tasks and could cause “list blowout”.
You will end up with the list reading a mile long and you will throw it up in despair and change back to old habits of running around in a fuss all day and finishing nothing.
Remember that each day you plan your goals and polish off all the chores on your list, you become a little bit closer to finalising your weekly and finally your yearly and long term goals.
A few hints on Time Management:
- Do it once and do it well, it’s wasteful going back to the job and needing to redo it.
- Learn to simply tell people when you’re busy working and that you can speak to them at a later point.
- Learn to give other people tasks that really don’t demand your direct work.
- Don’t make off on wild goose chases.
- Don’t use up time with phone calls that won’t do something.
- Don’t procrastinate.
- Look back to your list of chores to do repeatedly at times through the day.
- “Map out your day” in the shower and list out your daily list as soon as you begin work. Complete what you begin.
- Prioritise as a matter of habit, always begin things in their order of importance to you and the business.
Be evasive with time wasters, people who will merely decide 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.
Sphere: Related Content