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When starting out in a home based business, time management is an aspect of business management that is frequently overlooked or ignored.

Everybody knows a person in small business who races around like a bull all day, rarely enough hours in each day, all they do is panic and get overtaken - perhaps this person is you! To the end of the week, when the dust settles, what have you accomplished? Do you reflect on the day and ponder “what happened to the time, I didn’t get so much finished as I hoped I should. If this seems familiar, then you might simply have an organisational and time management problem.

Successful people do not appear to rush, they seem composed and unflustered. The difference in them and others is they command time management.

What is time management? It is simply scheduling the clock in your day in an organised and efficient method. Before we can truly take on how to time manage our day, we need to decide for ourselves what we are hoping to complete today, this week, this year and possibly even ten years from now. This is “Goal setting”.

The top key in my perspective to take on goals is to write them down. You could reflect on these goals from time to time to ensure that they are appropriate and achievable but not so simple to do that you don’t need to work to complete them otherwise what is the reason of your goals in the first place?

From the start of a new working year you should sit and reflect on what you wish to get this year. It may be that you wish to enlarge your profits by 20%, you could want to move into other premises, you can plan to take down your debt in a significant way. From the start of every new working week you could write down on a note pad or in your diary the important chores that must to be accomplished this week, and check up them on every day to be sure you’re making progress and hopefully tick some of those tasks from the list.

You can put your list on your desk or on a place where you should be persistently reminded of what has to be finalised this week. This list could be in order of urgency so that the key chores at the top of your list get accomplished earlier. Anything not checked off this week need to be brought through to next week at a higher importance, this will demand it gets accomplished.

The next thing you may not be doing is having a daily list of jobs to take care of. This should help keep you on schedule during each day. Again, this list should be placed where you can repeatedly look at it and write off the projects finalised. Polishing off the jobs should allow you a sense of a job well done and let you know how you are moving across the day. Always hold to this list unless not possible and try to continue working from higher priority to low priority. I know changes can show up through the day that sometimes throw the whole day off track, but you have to either take on the crisis and then return to the list or if the sudden work isn’t as serious as some of the jobs on your list then place it for later on the list and continue with the item you were doing.

Every task you hope to achieve can be written down for a number of reasons. Firstly, so you don’t forget to do it and secondly, so you have each day outlined and you accomplish your daily goals. Be careful of beginning chores and not finishing them. This may turn tomorrow in a disaster of half baked chores and could cause “list blowout”.

You will end up with the list being a mile long and you will back out in despair and change back to those habits of getting yourself in a hurry all day and achieving nothing.

Remember each day you set your goals and tick off all the chores on your list, you get a bit closer to realizing your weekly and finally your yearly and long term goals.

A few hints on Time Management:

• Do it once and do it well, it’s wasteful returning to the project and having to redo it.
• Learn to civilly say to people when you’re busy with work and that you would return to them at a later point.
• Learn to give other people chores that truly don’t demand your involvement.
• Don’t take on wild goose chases.
• Don’t spend time during phone calls that will not accomplish something.
• Don’t procrastinate.
• Review your list of jobs to do frequently at times through the day.
• “Map out your day” in the shower and schedule out your daily list when you arrive at work. Finish what you begin.
• Prioritise always, always do issues in their order of importance to you and your business.

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

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