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When you start out in a from-home business, time management is an element of business management that can be often overlooked or left out of the equation.

Everybody knows a friend in small business who races at it like a mad dog all day, never enough hours in a day, all they do is panic and get overloaded - perhaps this person is you! By 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 hours, I didn’t get so much finished as I thought I could. If this sounds familiar, then you may have an organisational and time management problem.

Successful people do not appear to rush, they always seem composed and unflustered. The difference with them and others is they have exceptional time management.

What is time management? It is merely allocating hours in your day in an organised and efficient way. Before we can actually get how to time manage our day, we first must decide for ourselves what we are planning to complete today, this week, this year and perhaps ten years from now. This is “Goal setting”.

The top way in my view to accomplish goals is to write them down. You should go back to the goals at times to ensure that they are appropriate and achievable but not so easy to do that you don’t need to work to complete them otherwise what is the meaning of the goals in the first place?

At the beginning of a new working year you can takethe time and plan what you hope to end up with this year. It may be that you plan to increase your profits by 20%, you can want to move into larger premises, you can want to take down your debt once and for all. By the beginning of every working week you should write down on a note pad or in your diary the large chores that have to be accomplished this week, and check up them every day to make sure you’re making progress and hopefully wipe some of those tasks from your list.

You might have your list on your desk or on a location where you should be persistently reminded of what will be achieved each week. This list may be in order of importance so that the impending work at the top of the list get completed early. Any of the projects not completed this week must be carried onto next week at a higher priority, this will demand it gets taken care of.

The next thing you could be doing is having yourself a daily list of projects to do. This might help keep you on track on each day. Again, this list can be put up where you are able to constantly see it and mark off the tasks finished. Ticking off the projects helps allow you a sense of a job well done and let you reflect on how you are moving across the day. Always stick to the list unless not possible and try to continue working from the highest priority to lower priority. I know loopholes do turn up over the day that might throw the whole day up in the air, but you must either take on the crisis and get back to your list or if the unplanned work isn’t as urgent as some of the items on the list then target it at the bottom on your list and continue on with the item you were doing.

Every job you hope to get done can be written down for a couple of reasons. Firstly, so you don’t put off to do it and secondly, so you have every day outlined and you finish your daily goals. Beware initiating tasks and not completing them. This can come back tomorrow in a plethora of half finished jobs and will cause “list blowout”.

You will end up with the list a mile long and you will back out in despair and revert back to those habits of getting yourself in a fuss every day and realizing nothing.

Remember for each day you set your goals and write off all the projects on your list, you get a bit closer to realizing your weekly and soon 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 needing to redo it.
• Learn to simply say to people when you’re busy working and that you will speak to them at a later point.
• Learn to pass out items that truly don’t need your direct participation.
• Don’t take on wild goose chases.
• Don’t use up time with phone calls that won’t assist with something.
• Don’t procrastinate.
• Refer to your list of jobs to do regularly throughout your day.
• “Map out your day” in the morning and write out your daily list the minute you arrive at work. Complete what you begin.
• Prioritise all your chores, always begin tasks in their order of urgency to you and the clients.

Get away from time wasters, people that will merely choose to chat all day, and if they are employed by you, set them straight, or get rid of them.

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