Time Management When Working from Home
When starting out in a from-home business, time management is an aspect of business management that can be often overlooked or neglected.
Sure enough, everybody knows some person in small business who races about like a mad dog all day, rarely enough hours in the day, all they do is panic and get overwhelmed - is it that this person is you! By the week’s end, when the dust settles, what have you accomplished? Do you reflect on the day and ponder “what happened to the hours, I didn’t get as much done as I hoped I could. If this seems familiar, then you may simply have an organisational and time management problem.
Successful people seldom appear to rush, they are always composed and unflustered. The difference with them and everybody else is they command time management.
What is time management? It is simply allocating hours in your day in an organised and efficient scheme. Before we can truly go ahead on how to time manage our day, we first need to question ourselves what we are attempting to do today, this week, this year and up to ten years from now. This is “Goal setting”.
The easiest way in my opinion to complete goals is to write them down. You might reflect on all your goals sometimes to know that they are appropriate and realisable but not so easy to do that you don’t have to put in the work to accomplish them otherwise what is the point of those goals in the first place?
From the start of each new working year you could pause and ponder what you want to accomplish this year. It might be that you wish to enlarge your profits by 20%, you can hope to move into different premises, you can hope to get rid of your debt significantly. From the beginning of every new working week you may write down on a note pad or in your diary the large projects that have to be achieved this week, and reflect them on each day to know you’re making progress and hopefully tick some of your jobs off your list.
You may keep your list on your desk or in a point where you can be constantly reminded of what will be undertaken throughout the week. The list may be in order of necessity so that the key tasks at the top of this list get accomplished first up. Any work not checked off this week must be brought forward next week at a higher urgency, this should demand it gets achieved.
The next thing you will be doing is creating a daily list of jobs to achieve. This should assist keep you on track during the day. Again, this list can be displayed where you are able to repeatedly look back to it and check off the projects finalised. Writing off the tasks helps to allow you a feeling of a job well done and let you check on how you are going across the day. Always stick to this list unless not possible and try to continue working from top priority to less priority. I know changes will appear through the day that could throw the whole day out, but you must either deal with the crisis and then get back to the list or if the unplanned chore isn’t as time sensitive as some of the projects on the list then list it at the bottom on your list and continue on doing the task you were doing.
Every aspect of work you plan to finish must be written down for a numerous reasons. Firstly, so you don’t neglect to do it and secondly, so you have each day outlined and you accomplish your daily goals. Be sensitive to starting tasks and not completing them. This can become tomorrow in a mess of incomplete chores and will cause “list blowout”.
You will end up with your list a mile long and you will give up in despair and revert back to old habits of getting in panic during the day and achieving nothing.
Remember for every day you achieve your goals and polish off all the projects on your list, you will be a bit closer to polishing off your weekly and eventually your yearly and long term goals.
A few pointers on Time Management:
- Do it once and do it well, it’s fruitless going back to the task and having to redo it.
- Learn to politely inform people when you’re working and that you will get back to them at a later point.
- Learn to delegate work that truly don’t require your direct participation.
- Don’t go on wild goose chases.
- Don’t waste time by phone calls that can’t achieve something.
- Don’t procrastinate.
- Look at your list of chores to do often through the day.
- “Map out your day” in the shower and schedule out your daily list as soon as you get to work. Complete what you start.
- Prioritise always, always take issues in their order of importance to you and your business.
Get away from time wasters, people who only start 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.
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