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When starting up a home business, time management is an aspect of business management that can be often overlooked or left out of the equation.

Surely we all know someone in small business who races at it like a chicken with its head cut off all day, seldom enough hours in every day, all they do is rush and get overloaded - maybe this person is you! By the week’s end, when the dust settles, what have you taken from it? Do you reflect on the day and think “what happened to the time, I didn’t get as much completed as I planned to do. If this is familiar, then you may simply have an organisational and time management problem.

Successful people don’t ever appear to rush, they seem composed and unflustered. The difference from them and other people is they have accomplished time management.

What is time management? It is simply scheduling minutes in your day in an organised and efficient way. Before we can really go ahead on how to time manage our day, we must question ourselves what we are aiming to complete today, this week, this year and perhaps ten years from now. This is “Goal setting”.

The best method in my view to accomplish goals is to write them down. You should reflect on the goals at points to ensure that they are purposeful and workable but not so easy that you don’t need to work to succeed at them otherwise what is the reason of any goals in the first place?

At the start of each new working year you could sit and think about what you desire to achieve this year. It can be that you want to raise your profits by 20%, you can decide to move into bigger premises, you may wish to get rid of your debt substantially. By the first day of a new working week you should write down on a note pad or in your diary the major tasks that must to be completed this week, and review them at the end of every day to check you’re making progress and hopefully mark some of the projects from the list.

You can put your list on your desk or at a spot where you could be persistently reminded of what needs to be achieved throughout the week. The list should be in order of necessity so that the key chores at the top of the list get taken care of first up. All the jobs not finished this week will be taken through to next week on a higher priority, this will demand it gets ticked off.

The next thing you could be doing is having yourself a daily list of projects to get done. This can assist keep you organised each day. Again, this list should be placed where you can persistently refer to it and wipe off the projects done. Finishing off the items should give you a sense of success and let you check on how you are progressing through the day. Always stay to your list if possible and try to continue working from higher priority to the lesser priority. I know changes could turn up during the day that sometimes throw the whole day off schedule, but you have to either take on the dilemma and get back on to the list or if the new project isn’t as important as some of the projects on the list then list it later on your list and continue on with the project you were doing.

Each issue you have to accomplish needs to be written down for a few reasons. Firstly, so you don’t forget to do it and secondly, so you have the day outlined and you complete your daily goals. Be sensitive to initiating jobs and not finishing them. This will become tomorrow in a plethora of incomplete tasks and could cause “list blowout”.

You will end up with your list reading a mile long and you will back out in despair and change back to bad habits of running around in panic each day and completing nothing.

Remember that each day you write out your goals and polish off every chore on your list, you become a step closer to completing your weekly and finally your yearly and long term goals.

A few essentials on Time Management:

• Do it once and do it well, it’s wasteful reverting to the item and having to redo it.
• Learn to civilly inform people when you’re too busy and that you would speak to them at a later point.
• Learn to give other employees items that actually don’t need your direct involvement.
• Don’t take on wild goose chases.
• Don’t use up time by phone calls that aren’t going to do something.
• Don’t procrastinate.
• Look back to your list of things to do regularly at points through your day.
• “Map out your day” in the shower and schedule out your daily list when you get to work. Achieve what you begin.
• Prioritise habitually, always take care of tasks in their order of importance to you and the clients.

Stay away from time wasters, people who would merely go off to chat all day, and if they are employed by you, set them straight, or get rid of them.

For more information about self employment Brisbane, home business Brisbane, or work from home Brisbane, contact Lifestyle Switch. Make the switch to your own business today.