When starting up a home based business, time management is an aspect of business management that can be often overlooked or neglected.

Surely everybody knows a person in small business who races around like a chicken with its head cut off all day, seldom enough hours in their day, all they do is panic and get worked up - is it that this person is you! To the end of the week, when the panic settles, what have you achieved? Do you think about the day and ponder “what happened to the time, I didn’t get so much finished as I hoped I could. If this feels familiar, then you may have an organisational and time management problem.

Successful people do not seem to rush, they always stay composed and unflustered. The difference with them and the other people is they possess time management.

What is time management? It is just allocating minutes in your day in an organised and efficient process. Before we can really take on how to time manage our day, we must question ourselves what we are planning to achieve today, this week, this year and perhaps ten years from now. This is “Goal setting”.

The best way in my preference to accomplish goals is to write them down. You might reflect on the goals at times to ensure that they are relevant and realisable but not so simple to do that you don’t have to work to achieve them otherwise what is the meaning of any goals in the first place?

At the start of a working year you can take time and ponder what you desire to achieve this year. It might be that you plan to raise your profits by 20%, you could want to move into different premises, you can desire to take down your debt once and for all. From the beginning of each new working week you could write down on a note pad or in your diary the large jobs that must to be achieved this week, and check up them on every day to ensure that you’re making progress and hopefully wipe some of your jobs off the list.

You could place the list on your desk or in a spot where you can be persistently reminded of what must be undertaken this week. The list may be in order of necessity so that the major work at the top of this list get completed early. Any of the jobs not achieved this week will be taken forward next week on a higher ranking, this should demand it gets ticked off.

The next thing you can be doing is giving yourself a daily list of tasks to get done. This can help keep you focused during each day. Again, this list may be placed where you are able to persistently look at it and wipe off the tasks completed. Checking off the tasks will allow you a sense of a job well done and let you know how you are progressing over the day. Always adhere to the list when possible and keep working from higher priority to low priority. I know loopholes can turn up during the day that could throw the whole day out, but you have to either take on the problem and get back on to your list or if the newly arisen problem isn’t as important as some of the chores on the list then target it lower on the list and continue on doing the chore you were doing.

Each job you need to accomplish must be written down for a multitude of reasons. Firstly, so you don’t put off to do it and secondly, so you have each day organised and you complete your daily goals. Be wary of initiating tasks and not finishing them. This will show up tomorrow in a mushroom cloud of not completed chores and can cause “list blowout”.

You will end up with a list a mile long and you will throw the towel in in despair and change back to bad habits of getting in a fuss during your day and accomplishing nothing.

Remember that every day you plan your goals and write off all the jobs on your list, you will get a day closer to polishing off your weekly and soon your yearly and long term goals.

A few tips on Time Management:

• Do it once and do it well, it’s fruitless coming back to the issue and having to redo it.
• Learn to civilly inform people when you’re busy with work and that you can get back to them some time later.
• Learn to give other employees items that actually don’t require your direct participation.
• Don’t embark on wild goose chases.
• Don’t fizzle away time by phone calls that are not going to accomplish something.
• Don’t procrastinate.
• Check back to your list of chores to do repeatedly through your day.
• “Map out your day” in the shower and list out your daily list right when you get to work. Don’t stop what you begin.
• Prioritise always, always take things in their order of necessity to you and your business.

Avoid time wasters, people that would just decide to chat all day, and if they are your workers, set them straight, or get rid of them.

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