When you are starting a home business, time management is an aspect of business management that can be often overlooked or neglected.

Surely we all know someone in small business who races at it like a bull all day, never enough hours in the day, all they do is panic and get overloaded – is it that this person is you! To the week’s end, when the rush settles, what have you taken from it? Do you replay the day and think “what happened to the day, I didn’t get as much finished as I planned I should. If this is familiar, then you may have an organisational and time management problem.

Successful people never appear to rush, they are always composed and unflustered. The difference from them and everybody else is they command time management.

What is time management? It is merely planning hours in your day in an organised and efficient process. Before we can fully take on how to time manage our day, we need to figure for ourselves what we are trying to complete today, this week, this year and up to ten years from now. This is “Goal setting”.

The easiest way in my view to complete goals is to write them down. You can go back to these goals from time to time to know that they are appropriate and realisable but not so simple to do that you don’t need to put in the hard work to complete them otherwise what is the reason of the goals in the first place?

From the beginning of each new working year you can takethe time and reflect on what you plan to get this year. It may be that you plan to enlarge your profits by 20%, you might decide to move into better premises, you perhaps desire to take down your debt in a susbstantial way. By the beginning of every working week you should write down on a note pad or in your diary the large tasks that have to be taken care of this week, and check back them on every day to know that you’re making progress and hopefully polish some of the chores from your list.

You might keep the list on your desk or in a place where you will be persistently reminded of what needs to be done each week. This list may be in order of importance so that the major jobs at the top of this list get accomplished early. All the tasks not completed this week need to be taken onto next week at a higher priority, this should ensure it gets finalised.

The next thing you can be doing is giving yourself a daily list of tasks to accomplish. This will help keep you focused on each day. Again, this list will be displayed where you can continually check on it and wipe off the tasks completed. Marking off the chores could allow you a pride of accomplishment and let you check on how you are working during the day. Always adhere to your list unless not possible and keep working from the highest priority to the lower priority. I know things sometimes appear through the day that sometimes throw the whole day up in the air, but you have to either take on the crisis and then get back to your list or if the sudden situation isn’t as time sensitive as some of the projects on the list then target it lower on the list and continue on with the item you were doing.

Each project you need to do can be written down for a couple of reasons. Firstly, so you don’t neglect to do it and secondly, so you have each day scheduled and you realise your daily goals. Be wary of starting jobs and not completing them. This might turn tomorrow in a disaster of half baked projects and could cause “list blowout”.

You will end up with your list at a mile long and you will throw it up in despair and revert back to those habits of working in a hurry during your day and realizing nothing.

Remember that every day you achieve your goals and tick off every chore on your list, you get a bit closer to realizing your weekly and eventually your yearly and long term goals.

A few tips on Time Management:

• Do it once and do it well, it’s pointless coming back to the task and needing to redo it.
• Learn to civilly say to people when you’re busy with work and that you would speak to them at a later point.
• Learn to pass out work that really don’t need your direct involvement.
• Don’t embark on wild goose chases.
• Don’t spend time with phone calls that aren’t going to do something.
• Don’t procrastinate.
• Check back on your list of things to do regularly at points through the day.
• “Map out your day” in the car and write out your daily list as soon as you get to work. Accomplish what you initiate.
• Prioritise all your jobs, always take chores in their order of importance to you and the business.

Get away from time wasters, people that simply decide to chat all day, and if they work for you, set them straight, or get rid of them.

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