When you are starting a home based business, time management is an area of business management that is often overlooked or ignored.

Everybody knows a person in small business who races around like a bull all day, seldom enough hours in each day, all they do is panic and get worked up – perhaps this person is you! To the end of the week, when the dust settles, what have you achieved? Do you replay the day and wonder “what happened to the day, I didn’t get so much completed as I thought I would. If this sounds familiar, then you may simply have an organisational and time management problem.

Successful people rarely seem to rush, they are composed and unflustered. The difference with them and the other people is they have accomplished time management.

What is time management? It is simply planning hours in your day in an organised and efficient scheme. Before we can truly take on how to time manage our day, we must ask ourselves what we are trying to complete today, this week, this year and perhaps even ten years from now. This is “Goal setting”.

The top way in my preference to take on goals is to write them down. You might go back to all your goals from time to time to ensure that they are meaningful and realisable but not so easy to do that you don’t need to try hard to achieve them otherwise what is the purpose of your goals in the first place?

At the start of every new working year you should take time and ponder what you desire to complete this year. It could be that you plan to enlarge your profits by 20%, you could desire to move into larger premises, you perhaps hope to take away from your debt once and for all. At the beginning of every working week you might write down on a note pad or in your diary the important chores that have to be completed this week, and check back them at every day to know that you’re making progress and hopefully tick some of those jobs off your list.

You might keep this list on your desk or on a spot where you could be continually reminded of what needs to be undertaken this week. This list might be in order of necessity so that the major tasks at the top of the list get finished first up. All jobs not ticked off this week will be brought through to next week on a higher urgency, this should ensure it gets checked off.

The next thing you may not be doing is creating a daily list of tasks to achieve. This will assist keep you on track on each day. Again, this list may be placed where you are able to continually look back to it and write off the tasks accomplished. Wiping off the jobs could allow you a feeling of achievement and let you check on how you are working through the day. Always stay to your list unless not possible and try to keep working from the highest priority to less priority. I know loopholes can appear throughout the day that may throw the whole day off track, but you have to either take care of the crisis and return to the list or if the sudden work isn’t as time sensitive as some of the issues on the list then put it after these on the list and continue on doing the item you were doing.

Each project you hope to accomplish can be written down for a multitude of reasons. Firstly, so you don’t forget to do it and secondly, so you have every day scheduled and you get your daily goals. Be alert to beginning jobs and not completing them. This will show up tomorrow in a mess of half finished work and will cause “list blowout”.

You will end up with the list reading a mile long and you will throw the towel in in despair and reverse back to those habits of getting in rush every day and finishing nothing.

Remember for every day you achieve your goals and polish off everything on your list, you get a little closer to reaching your weekly and finally your yearly and long term goals.

A few pointers on Time Management:

• Do it once and do it well, it’s frustrating returning to the project and having to redo it.
• Learn to civilly communicate to people when you’re busy and that you will return to them at a later time.
• Learn to give other people jobs that truly don’t demand your direct involvement.
• Don’t go on wild goose chases.
• Don’t fizzle away time with phone calls that will not achieve something.
• Don’t procrastinate.
• Review your list of items to do continually through your day.
• “Map out your day” in the shower and list out your daily list right when you get to work. Accomplish what you start.
• Prioritise habitually, always do things in their order of necessity to you and the clients.

Don’t get in with time wasters, people that merely choose to chat all day, and if they are your employees, set them straight, or get rid of them.

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