|
Home / Personal Development / Time Management
How to Schedule Your Success
By:Kevin Sinclair
Many people would love to own their own home-based business. They want to work their own hours and choose whom they work with at what times. The reality is that not many of these people take the time to make sure they have the right tools to set up a successful home-based business. They aren't sure exactly what to do or how to plan their time accordingly. They think it will be far easier than it will be and don't think about the groundwork.
The first problem facing most new home-based business entrepreneurs is a lack of discipline when it comes to scheduling. They don't plan out their work days properly and can end up either under-working or overworking.
Under-working is easy to do. You might intend to add to your new website or put auction listings on ebay but you think you'll have a browse first or send some emails. Something else might catch your attention online and you'll have a look at that too. Before you know it, you've spend the whole day wasting your time on the internet and you have not done any work. This is not good news for your business or your bank account and it is easy to do because you don't have a supervisor standing over you or anyone to tell you to do your job.
Overworking is the opposite end of this problem but just as bad for business. People working a 9 to 5 job tend to begin and 9AM and leave at 5PM, more or less. A lot of people working from home think they should work until they drop and have no concept of planning their time properly. If you spend all your time working, it is easy to become exhausted and then you start to make mistakes because of tiredness and resent your business.
The solution is to plan your day. Be disciplined when doing this. You should write down what you have to accomplish every day and how long you will work on each task. Include downtime in this list - time for your family, exercise, relaxation and anything else you want to fit into the day. You are building a home-based business to improve your lifestyle, not become the richest person in the cemetery!
You must be specific when making your daily plans and goals. Don't just put "work on project x" - what does that mean? How do you "work on" something? You need to be more definite, such as "write an article on desk lamps for project x", then you know exactly what you have to do. You can "work on project x" for years and feel like you will never finish. You can write the article and then it's done. You can tick that item off your list and feel good that you have accomplished something.
If you are working in marketing, try to farm out as much as the non-marketing work as you can afford to. If you are selling products or services, you might want to hire someone to build and maintain your website. You can also outsource mailing, bookkeeping and more. The money you spend should free up a lot of your time.
Try to be realistic when planning your day. If you are still working your day job, you should schedule that from the time you wake up in the morning until the time you get home. Include commute time. Plan your evening too. Don't schedule a four hour task in one hour. It won't work and will just leave you feeling frustrated. If you have large tasks, break them up into smaller ones and schedule your time accurately. This will make you feel you have accomplished more in the long run and encourage you to keep going.
Multi-tasking might be the latest buzzword but it can kill productivity. Aim to do one thing at once. You can work on more than one thing in the day but try to just work on one project at once. It can be very difficult if you work on more than one task. You can't divide your attention equally between everything. When you have completed one task, move on to the next.
You need to be a bit flexible when scheduling. There are going to be interruptions, more so at home. You might be engrossed in working on a new project when the phone rings or the baby starts to cry. Make allowances for this. There will be things you can't plan for.
It is a good idea to plan how long you think a task will take and then add on about 10% to give you an extra time cushion. Then if you have time left at the end of the day, you can do some work on tomorrow's tasks. If not, it doesn't matter. It is a kind of bonus.
Sometimes you won't finish your schedule, no matter how well you plan it. This happens to everybody and what you do then is just revise the following day's schedule to include anything you missed today. Don't worry about things not getting done. Just keep moving forward. If you keep missing deadlines, you will need to look at your scheduling because you are probably not being realistic about what you can do in a certain amount of time.
With some planning and effort, it will be easy to balance your new business with your home life and schedule your way to success. It might take a little practice in the beginning but will become second nature very soon.
Digg
del.icio.us
Blink
Stumble
Spurl
Reddit
Netscape
Furl
Article keywords: business success, time management, home business, small business
Article Source: http://www.articles2k.com
Kevin Sinclair is the publisher and editor of Be Successful News, a site that provides information and articles on how to succeed in your own home or small business.
|
|
| Top Time Management Articles |
- 1). Jim Estill's 8 Rules Of Time By : Jim Estill
I study the use of time and how to maximize productivity and enjoyment from it. From these studies, I have come up with the following list of time rules:
1 – It is more important to have clear goals than to be efficient. It is more important to work on the right things than to work efficiently. I liken this to the person who wants to get to Sudbury so gets in their car and drives 150 Km/hour.
|
- 2). Double Or Triple Your Time! By :
Why do some say that time is much more important than wealth? Nearly all biographies and self-help books, by top leaders and speakers from the past decades, all focus on time as being the most important resource available. When we manage our use of time, through self-mastery, success is a natural product of that effort. Success becomes the harvest we reap.
|
- 3). Staying Organized! Organize Your Life For Success! By : Jake Sebastian
Organizing the content of your life based on your needs is a best practice for managing your time, resources and money and is an essential first step if you are to fully achieve your potential in life. The reasons for this are simple. An organized clear mind leads to clear and objective goals, which in turn leads to you being able to achieve what you set out to do.
|
|
|
|
|
- 6). Time Management for High School Students By : Gord
High school student are one of the busiest people in the world. This people study, takes classes, join school activities, and socialize. They have a lot of work in school and at home.
Being organized is essential in high school students. If you are a high school student, it may seem like you never have enough time to finish all your work in a day. You may feel that you are always running out of time and all you do is study and never get enough time with your friends and family.
|
- 7). Time Management: A Non-Renewable Resource By : Gwen Nyhus Stewart
Benjamin Franklin wrote: "If you want to enjoy one of the greatest luxuries in life, the luxury of having enough time, time to rest, time to think things through, time to get things done and know you have done them to the best of your ability, remember, there is only one way. Take enough time to think and plan things in the order of their importance.
|
|
|
- 9). Being Organized: Is it Worth the Effort? By : Lila Norden
The payoff of being organized goes beyond saving time, energy, and money. Organization increases the likelihood of success in achieving your goals. Here are a few ideas to help you get better organized.
|
- 10). Effective Time Management - Ten Top Tips By : Jackie Fletcher
Have you ever thought to yourself that there aren’t enough hours in the day, or felt overwhelmed at the tasks facing you? If you have, this article can help you!
• Clarify your goals and strategy. Be very clear about your aims and ambitions, both short and long term. Write them down. Once you know what you really want to achieve (and why) it’s easier to make decisions about what needs doing, and to plan accordingly.
|
| New Time Management Articles |
- 1). How to Use a To-Do List to Control Your Time By : Gerri Stone
Good time management is simply managing the events and activities of your day. If you feel like your days are getting away from you, you are not alone. Advances in technology have brought more information rushing toward us than ever before
|
- 2). Know the Avantages of Maintaining a To-Do List By : Mitch Johnson
There are times we are very confused which are the things that we have to complete or do in a day. There are many things which need to be done, but sometimes we tend to missed few things or tend to forget them because we were to busy.
|
|
|
|
|
- 5). Personality Test- Your Time Management By : CD Mohatta
All of us have heard quite a lot about time management. Thousands of books have appeared on this subject. The objective of time management is - how to set priorities, how to allocate time, how to effectively use it and how to get the best of the given time.
After learning all this and implementing, most of the people manage to implement only a part over long term.
|
- 6). Time is a Unique Resource By : Terence Traut
How many times have you thought or said, “Sure, I’d like to (take a course, take a vacation, work on an additional skill or project, etc) but there just isn’t enough time.” When we say, “There just isn’t enough time,” we’re shirking responsibility.
Let’s look at time and I’ll show you what I mean.
Time is a unique resource. It cannot be saved, stopped, or replaced.
|
- 7). Time Management for High School Students By : Gord
High school student are one of the busiest people in the world. This people study, takes classes, join school activities, and socialize. They have a lot of work in school and at home.
Being organized is essential in high school students. If you are a high school student, it may seem like you never have enough time to finish all your work in a day. You may feel that you are always running out of time and all you do is study and never get enough time with your friends and family.
|
- 8). Business Time Management By : Josh Riverside
Time Management, as the name suggests, means activities, ideas or methods that help a person perform the jobs allotted to him or her in a speedier, quality-conscious-manner within a given time frame, be it personal or professional.
Business Time Management would simply mean business planning with definite milestones of achievement of overall success.
|
- 9). What Would Save You Time? By : Cynthia Morse, CAP
We all get overwhelmed from time to time, and sometimes it seems as if 24 hours a day is just not enough to get everything accomplished that we would like. Let's consider this a brainstorming session. Start creating a list of everyday tasks that, if you didn't have to do them, would allow you to have more time in your day. For example, most of us have to do laundry on a regular basis.
|
- 10). To-Do list for success. Time management: theory & practice. By : Yola Eve
Yola Eve
Business Trainer
VIP Quality Software
Time Management is getting more and more popular day by day. People want to be more successful, proactive and wealthy. It is not new to everyone that there are common time wasters in our lives. Watching TV all evening long, spending too much time on the Internet, having a very long conversation over the phone, and, my favorite one, doing trifles instead of going bed and loosing your precious sleep – these are common time wasters that you already know of.
|
|
|
