DAILY TIME MANAGEMENT FOR HOME BUSINESS OWNERS

 ©  Rosamunde Bott 2008

If you have a part or full time online home business, a household to keep, a family to look after and dreams of how your life could be if only you could just get things done, then this article is definitely for you.

 Time is an interesting concept.  Actually, it doesn’t really exist.  It is man-made. We created seconds, minutes, hours, days etc…  It’s subjective, and as such, we often have our own personal feelings about it: long, short, boring, stressful or valuable; we talk about the best time in my life, the worst times, the good old times.  So, if time is man-made then we can influence the way we experience it.

 Have you ever noticed how time tends to go much faster when you have lots of things to do? Similarly, it tends to go slower when we are bored, or doing something we hate.  In order to manage time effectively, therefore, you need to be in control.

 Having a time management system produces results.  Instead of lots of unfinished tasks that leave you dissatisfied, you will feel in charge and with a feeling of completion at the end of the day.

 Distractions are the worst enemy of good time management.  The telephone rings, the neighbor calls, the children come home from school, there is laundry to be done, the dinner to be cooked etc, etc.  We have all experienced these when we are trying to get work done at home.

 Here are a few tips on setting up a time management system:

 1. Analyse Your Current Situation

 How are things are going right now?   Make a list of everything that works well and a list of things that could be improved.

 2. Visualize

 Visualise yourself as if you had the best time management system in the world.  See yourself getting those tasks done.  Take some time over this.  Now ask yourself, what is it that is helping me get those things done?  Feel that you already have a system, and you can see clearly what that system is. 

 If you find this difficult, look again at your current situation and get in touch with how that feels.  Feel the dissatisfaction of not getting those tasks done.  This will provide you with some motivation to change your present unsatisfying situation and

you can then go back into your visualization of the ideal situation and see what’s different. 

 3. Prioritize

 First, make a list of all those tasks that are swimming around in your head.  Categorize them into those that need to be done daily, weekly or monthly, so you have three separate lists. 

 Now, give each task a number between 1 and 10 according to their importance.  You should now find that you have just a small amount of tasks that are urgent, and others that can wait.

 When you have tasks written down and prioritized, you ease the pressure because you can get on with an important job without having a nagging feeling in the back of your head that there’s something else you need to be doing. 

 4. Focus

 When you try to work in a rush you will not enjoy the task and there is a tendency to leap from one thing to another without really completing it.  This does not lead to a happy work experience and will leave you feeling exhausted and dissatisfied.

 You need to be aware of your own working speed and then work out how much time each task will need.  Take the first item that needs to be done, give yourself a realistic time scale for that task and then focus on that task only within the given time period.  Do not let anything distract you.

 5. Be decisive

 With a home business, you will have constant decisions to make and no-one to discuss them with.  Every action you take or don’t take is your decision.  Without action you don’t have a business. 

 Decision-making can eat away at your time, however.  Once you are aware that you have a difficult decision to make, it sometimes makes sense to allocate a time to think about it so that it is not interfering with your present task.  Also, with every decision you make, there will be a consequent action to be taken.  Make sure that you are aware of your decisions, and write down each action required in your to-do list, within its appropriate category and given its priority number.

 6.  Eliminate Distractions 

 You are in control – not your telephone, your friends, your family or your dog.  If there are too many phone calls that are not business, take charge.  Tell your callers, your friends and family that between certain hours, you are Working – not available just because you are at home.  If necessary you can switch the phone off.  Pets can need attention at any time, but in my experience, once you have your own routine they will learn it too and not bother you too much outside of walking or feeding times.

 7.  Evaluate

 Constantly keep track of how you are doing.  If there are still tasks that are not getting done by their deadlines, you need to re-evaluate and see what can be improved.  Are you being realistic about your working speed?  Do you need to work an extra half hour every day?  Are your priorities right? 

There are only 24 hours in each day, and it is totally up to us how we experience those hours.  Each hour, minute, second makes up our lifetime experience, so make sure that each is a happy one.   Sometimes we can get lost in greed or certain material goals which do not guarantee a lifetime of happiness. Maybe once in a while it would be a good idea to evaluate what our lifetime means to us and how we want to use it.

 
After all, it is your life and your time.  It is up to you to change anything that does not satisfy you.

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