When you start a home business, time management is an area of business management that is usually overlooked or neglected.

Surely everybody knows a person in small business who races at it like a chicken with its head cut off all day, without enough hours in a day, all they do is hurry and get overwhelmed – maybe this person is you! To the end of the week, when the dust settles, what have you achieved? Do you reflect on the day and ponder “what happened to the time, I didn’t get as much done as I intended to do. If this sounds familiar, then you might have an organisational and time management problem.

Successful people don’t ever appear to rush, they seem composed and unflustered. The difference with them and others is they have exceptional time management.

What is time management? It is just arranging minutes in your day in an organised and efficient scheme. Before we can truly get how to time manage our day, we first need to figure for ourselves what we are aiming to achieve today, this week, this year and up to ten years from now. This is “Goal setting”.

The simplest key in my opinion to take on goals is to write them down. You may reflect on these goals at times to know that they are purposeful and possible but not so simple that you don’t have to try hard to achieve them otherwise what is the purpose of any goals in the first place?

At the beginning of a new working year you should take time and ponder what you plan to complete this year. It can be that you hope to enlarge your profits by 20%, you perhaps want to move into different premises, you might wish to take down your debt substantially. From the first day of each working week you can write down on a note pad or in your diary the important tasks that have to be completed this week, and look back on them on each day to be sure you’re making progress and hopefully check some of the tasks off your list.

You might keep the list on your desk or in a spot where you should be continually reminded of what has to be done this week. This list may be in order of urgency so that the impending tasks at the top of this list get achieved earlier. Any projects not done this week should be carried forward next week on a higher urgency, this will demand it gets done.

The next thing you may not be doing is writing a daily list of tasks to achieve. This may assist keep you on schedule on each day. Again, this list may be displayed where you are able to persistently check on it and check off the tasks completed. Wiping off the chores will allow you a sense of success and remind you how you are going over the day. Always stick to your list unless not possible and keep working from the highest priority to less priority. I know difficulties do appear over the day that sometimes throw the whole day up, but you have to either take on the crisis and return to the list or if the new issue isn’t as time sensitive as some of the issues on the list then list it at the bottom on the list and continue on doing the chore you were doing.

Each project you plan to achieve needs to be written down for a multitude of reasons. Firstly, so you don’t neglect to do it and secondly, so you have every day organised and you get your daily goals. Be wary of initiating tasks and not finishing them. This may turn tomorrow in a plethora of not completed work and will cause “list blowout”.

You will end up with the list reading a mile long and you will give up in despair and reverse back to bad habits of being in a fuss each day and achieving nothing.

Remember for each day you write out your goals and mark off all the items on your list, you will get a little closer to realizing your weekly and ultimately your yearly and long term goals.

A few tips on Time Management:

• Do it once and do it well, it’s pointless going back to the task and having to redo it.
• Learn to civilly inform people when you’re too busy and that you can speak to them at a later time.
• Learn to give other people work that truly don’t require your involvement.
• Don’t make off on wild goose chases.
• Don’t fizzle away time by phone calls that are not going to do something.
• Don’t procrastinate.
• Look back on your list of things to do continually throughout your day.
• “Map out your day” in the shower and write out your daily list the second you begin work. Finish what you start.
• Prioritise every day, always do items in their order of importance to you and the work.

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

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