When you are starting a home based business, time management is an aspect of business management that is frequently overlooked or neglected.

Sure enough, everybody knows a friend in small business who races at it like a chicken with its head cut off all day, without enough hours in each day, all they do is push and get overloaded – maybe this person is you! To the end of the week, when the pace settles, what have you accomplished? Do you replay the day and think “what happened to the day, I didn’t get as much finished as I intended to. If this feels familiar, then you may just have an organisational and time management problem.

Successful people never appear to rush, they seem composed and unflustered. The difference from them and others is they have mastered time management.

What is time management? It is just allocating time in your day in an organised and efficient way. Before we can really take on how to time manage our day, we first need to figure for ourselves what we are planning to do today, this week, this year and perhaps even ten years from now. This is “Goal setting”.

The simplest way in my perspective to take on goals is to write them down. You can review the goals sometimes to feel that they are relevant and realisable but not so easy to do that you don’t need to work to succeed at them otherwise what is the point of your goals in the first place?

At the beginning of every working year you can sit and reflect on what you hope to achieve this year. It can be that you hope to raise your profits by 20%, you may want to move into better premises, you perhaps hope to get rid of your debt in a significant way. By the beginning of each new working week you might write down on a note pad or in your diary the major jobs that have to be finished this week, and check on them each day to check that you’re making progress and hopefully check some of your tasks off the list.

You should put the list on your desk or in a place where you could be persistently reminded of what needs to be accomplished each week. The list can be in order of priority so that the major chores at the top of the list get taken care of earlier. All work not done this week need to be taken up to next week on a higher ranking, this should ensure it gets taken care of.

The next thing you may not be doing is having yourself a daily list of projects to take care of. This should assist keep you focused each day. Again, this list could be put where you can constantly see it and check off the items accomplished. Ticking off the tasks will give you a pride of a job well done and let you check on how you are moving over the day. Always stay to your list where possible and try to continue working from top priority to less priority. I know difficulties do come up through the day that sometimes throw the whole day up, but you have to either deal with the problem and then return to the list or if the newly arisen situation isn’t as urgent as some of the projects on the list then put it at the bottom on the list and continue with the project you were doing.

Every project you plan to accomplish should be written down for a number of reasons. Firstly, so you don’t put off to do it and secondly, so you keep every day planned and you accomplish your daily goals. Beware starting tasks and not completing them. This can become tomorrow in a cloud of incomplete chores and will cause “list blowout”.

You will end up with your list at a mile long and you will throw it up in despair and reverse back to those habits of getting yourself in panic during the day and realizing nothing.

Remember each day you plan your goals and write off everything on your list, you get a little closer to completing your weekly and ultimately your yearly and long term goals.

A few hints on Time Management:

• Do it once and do it well, it’s frustrating returning to the work and having to redo it.
• Learn to nicely say to people when you’re busy working and that you would speak to them later.
• Learn to give out tasks that truly don’t need your involvement.
• Don’t make off on wild goose chases.
• Don’t fizzle away time with phone calls that will not achieve something.
• Don’t procrastinate.
• Review your list of tasks to do often through the day.
• “Map out your day” in the shower and plan out your daily list when you start work. Achieve what you start.
• Prioritise all your tasks, always take care of things in their order of urgency to you and your work.

Avoid time wasters, people who simply go off to chat all day, and if they are your employees, set them straight, or get rid of them.

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