Conclusion

Conclusion

In the end, successful time management will not only create pockets or windows of time for you to do the things that are important to you. It will also allow you to manage your business in a more productive manner, no matter what kind of endeavour you have chosen to venture into.

Remember that it takes time to make changes to old and bad time habits and there will be days that you find yourself procrastinating or multitasking. Do not worry if you backslide, it happens to everybody. The important thing that you have to do is simply get right back to your good time habits. Eventually you will

see that you are living in a world where you have the time, are more productive and stress free.

Time management is a life skill that you do not just have to apply to your business but it is also wonderful way to manage your life. As an entrepreneur, you may have to wear a dozen hats everyday and take on so many different roles. It does not mean that it has to overwhelm you. When you make your own time, you make the money.

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Break tasks down into smaller tasks

Break tasks down into smaller tasks

Procrastinators procrastinate because they cannot handle the enormity of the task ahead of them.

For example, Clara is a landscape gardener. She landed a big client—a hotel— and they want her to redesign the entire front area of the hotel. Initially Clara dives into work but the enormity of the task soon daunts her and weeks later, her plans are just that, plans scattered on her table.

When you are faced with large tasks, it makes sense to break them down into smaller, more manageable ones. Instead of diving into the plans outright, Clara could have started with planning the types of shrubs, bushes and flowers needed for the landscape project and continued on from there.

It helps to make a list of what you need to get down, very much like goal setting but instead, for a task. The added advantage is that crossing out items on the list will not only bring a sense of accomplishment but a feeling that for every item crossed, you are getting closer to your goal.

Another way to avoid procrastination is to give a little bit of time to the task daily instead of tackling it all at once. It reduces the resistance of having to deal with an enormous task you do not like and will eventually get things done.

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Breaking Bad Time Habits: Other Simple Ways to Help You Manage Your Time

Breaking Bad Time Habits: Other Simple Ways to Help You Manage Your Time

Organize your desk, organize your life

This is where a good planner comes in. Again, it does not really matter what type of planner you choose, only that what you choose works for you.

When faced with disorganization, the first thing most people think is, do I really need a clear desk? When faced with a Spartan desk, people can implode. Creative types may prefer to have pictures and a semblance of clutter on their desk.

The trick here is to find the right filing system for you, so you save time looking for things. The first step is to clear out your desk. Yes, just simply remove everything. If you are eyeing mounds of paperwork, you may need a recruit or two to help you get through the mess.

Throw out outdated things and things you do not need. This includes outdated paperwork, pens that no longer work and other objects that are simply taking up space. Throw them out or send them to the recyclers.

Most people like to keep essential supplies right at the top of the desk. Find a nice mug or container and stash pencils, pens and other supplies that you use on a daily basis. Refrain from putting everything in there. Other office supplies like staplers, punchers, highlighters and Post-Its can go in your desk drawer.

Separate paperwork into a filing system that makes sense for you. Try putting like things together, like client information in one folder or inventory systems into another. Place this in drawers and label them. Better yet, invest in a metal file cabinet and place it under or beside your desk.

This filing system is also great for computers. Keep a master file on your desktop computer with the names of all your files. The initial time you invest in this master file will save you oodles of time later on, when you have forgotten a file name or two.

Now, this is only the beginning of organization. Disorganized people can clean a desk and keep files. The hard part is making them stay that way.

Two simple tips will help you here:

1. Return things to their proper place.

2. Take ten or fifteen minutes a day to re-organize everything.

Make this a habit and you will always have a beautifully clutter-free desk and PC.

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Take Breaks

Take Breaks

A part time or full time entrepreneur like you may not even want to take a break. You may have not had a vacation in two years, partly because you enjoy your work and partly because you are terrified that everything will fall apart if you take a week off.

Taking a well-deserved break is an essential form of time management. It gives you needed time to recharge and reformat your brain to refocus on the task you need to finish. People are not wired the way machines are. They cannot do the same thing over and

over again without

feeling the need to rest.

Entrepreneurs like you may feel like taking a break is tantamount to cheating, that the minutes that you spend not working are a waste of time. You may find that you have been taking too many or too few breaks during the course of your day. Either is counterproductive.

Breaks are meant to help get focused and regain your concentration. Your brain just is not set up to keep doing the same thing over and over again. There is a point where your neurons just surrender and refuse to work.

Studies have shown that the people should take breaks every 2 hours to prevent this phenomena from happening. If you have ever stayed at a task for more than an hour or so and find yourself staring at the screen, your mind a blank, then this has happened to you.

Knowing how you work and how you work best helps when scheduling breaks into your time blocks. Some people find that small frequent breaks throughout the day help them focus better. They take 5 to 10 minutes out of every hour to just stretch, relax and move around.

Others find that a longer break is more beneficial to their health and work sanity. Taking thirty minute and hour long breaks is common. You will find that you return to work in a different state of mind, ready to tackle something new.

No matter what type of break you feel works for you, remember to get out of your current area. Have a cup of coffee or tea and just let yourself relax. It is always good to take a walk, read a little or even play a video game to get your mind off things. Those minutes you invest in a break will give you great returns in the long run.

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Delegate Tasks You Hate Doing

Delegate Tasks You Hate Doing

When running a freelance, work-at-home or small business, entrepreneurs tend to start with nothing. They fulfil all the roles needed to run the business: accounting, marketing, blogging etc.

As your business expands and as you become more successful, learning the art of delegation can save you time and money.

For example, work at home moms may feel overwhelmed because not only are they running a business but they are also doing all the chores at home. The simple answer to this is to delegate the chores to your children. Laundry, mowing the lawn, washing dishes and other day to day chores are time consuming tasks that you can easily delegate to the children.

Entrepreneurial bloggers are a great market right now and many entrepreneurs are finding niches online and making some serious cash off of it.

If you find yourself struggling with technical tasks such as encoding keywords or designing websites, why not delegate this task to someone who can design it for you? Instead of spending 8 hours tearing your hair out and ending up with a terrible website, why not invest and delegate to someone who can do it for you?

Learning to delegate also includes the hidden blessing of learning to network. If you already have employees, then it also means that you are evaluating and singling out employees who can run the business even when you are not there. There will be a second or third person who can handle a crisis in the event of one.

Delegation is also a clever way to get rid of tasks that you hate doing. For example, if you are already running a small business, it makes sense to hire an accountant to help you sort out your paperwork during tax season.

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Creating Good Time Habits

Creating Good Time Habits

Knowing your goals and needs is the first step to using time management as a way to successfully run your business. Now is the time to learn the simple strategies to carve time out of nothing and give you ways to solve problems like procrastination, distraction, multitasking and disorganization.

Learning how to block time

The first and most important skill you need to teach yourself is learning how to block time. This involves thinking of time as a physical or spatial being, of something that can be controlled.

If you have chosen to implement the Daily Battle Plan, this task will become much easier because you already have a list of the priorities that you need to accomplish per day. Goal setting then becomes an important skill to master that will allow you to learn the following skills in an easier way.

Blocking time simple means that you create a schedule to follow during the day. This turns time into less of an intangible, fleeing construct and gives you something solid to look at. Earlier chapters recommended the use of paper, computer or phone planners to assist you with this. Technology has made it easy to create time and schedule time the way that you want it.

Again, do not be afraid to be creative. Blocking time means setting aside parts of your day for certain tasks.

A word of warning: do not be tempted to schedule every single second of your day. Doing so will set the stage up for failure. In any day, dozens of unexpected things can happen. You may end up getting an important phone call and you may feel like you are thrown off schedule for the rest of the day.

Remember that you manage the time, time does not manage you. Another way for you to effectively manage your day is to group tasks into similar times of the day. Set aside a specific time for certain tasks.

In a day, set aside 2 to 4 hours for work related tasks. It is best to group like tasks so that you do similar tasks at once and set them aside for the rest of the day.

A great example is email. A great many of us constantly check email throughout the day, expecting new messages to come in at any time.

A great way to block your time is to set specified periods during the day where you answer and send email. Otherwise, ignore it and move on to other tasks you have set.

When blocking time, you must also block parts of your day where you are expected to do nothing. It might look counterintuitive, but with the many hats and roles you wear, something will come up.

Plan this as emergency time, the time that you need to deal with the unexpected. Alternating your schedules between planned tasks and leaving room for unplanned tasks will have a great impact throughout your day.

In order for you to accurately block your day, you must master the art of estimating time. People often limit or downgrade how much time they actually spend on one thing, by either overestimating or underestimating it. Estimating time correctly will help accurately judge how much time you need to perfect a task and help you decide what resources you may need to tap later on.

Blocking out your time and your tasks this way also creates focus and helps avoid chronic multitasking.

A world full of deadlines and express services has made people undervalue how much time a good job can really take. Anyone who has ever had to redo a chore or task knows that it takes twice the time to do things twice.

Saying No

Now you are already prioritizing tasks and setting daily, weekly, monthly and yearly goals for your business. You have also already learned to block time. Another skill you must master as the entrepreneur is the art of saying no.

Saying no does not have to mean turning down a customer or stopping a new source of income from forming. It may simply mean something as easy as saying, “I am busy right now, but I can schedule you in for tomorrow.” By looking at your time blocks and priorities, you already know if this is a valid interruption of your day and how you can utilize it.

Serial procrastinators can benefit from saying no. Procrastinators love beginning new projects but lack the discipline to follow through and finish. By depriving yourself (or your procrastinating employee) of something new to get distracted on, you are forced to finish what you started.

Pleasing everyone is not the way to go, remember what you are working for in the first place. Entrepreneurs tend to commit to everything because they tend to be afraid that they might lose clients and valuable future resources. Committing to many things at one time can lead to overload and screw your priorities up.

Remember to ask yourself questions before you even say yes? Is this something that is needed? Will it have a significant impact on your business?

If at this point the answer is already no, then why waste time and resources doing it?

Will it affect your balance in life? By saying yes to this request, will it have a huge impact on the goals you are working towards or the vision you have for yourself and your company? The moment you feel doubt, the answer is no.

Like most entrepreneurs, you probably have a gut instinct about what is good for your business and what is not. Follow it when learning how to say no.

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Start Things Off With a Plan

Start Things Off With a Plan

Having your goals at hand means you will always keep them in mind. Think of this as a battle plan, something that will help you tackle day to day scenarios in your business. You already know what tasks are important to you and what tasks are not.

Depending on how you want to do, create a document or keep a notebook and dub it your battle plan. This document should contain the goals that you have for yourself and for your business. Make sure that this is placed somewhere that you can easily access or see. Call this your Battle Plan.

Do not be disheartened if your battle plan is empty at the moment. As you become more adept with planning, it will become an essential part of your life. A strategy, if you will, of dealing with the day to day.

Start each day off by planning what you want to do. Approaching each day in this manner will give you loads of relief from the stress that has been plaguing you. For those juggling a nine to five, a family and other responsibilities, this will also help you put things in focus.

One trick for the Daily Battle Plan is to write down the five or six most important things that you have to do. You will be tempted to add more, but start with just five or six. Why? Because crossing them out at the end of the day will give you a wonderful feeling of accomplishment.

But what if all the things you do are important? They are not. There are definitely some major tasks that you cannot leave out but once you have set goals and start planning your days.

Secondary tasks should also be part of the list but give it a bit of wiggle room. Will it really kill you if you do not complete that report today?

Once you have it down and see what you need to do, you can act around your list of priorities.

Another trick is to break your priorities and goals down into categories or by order of importance. For example, if saving enough capital to get your business off the ground without having to take a loan is your number one goal, what can you do to get to that place?

Know How You Work (And How Other People Work Too)

The next step is to evaluate your own personality. If you already have people who work for you and rely on you, you may want to evaluate their habits as well.

It is very simple and all you need are your powers of observation. You will easily be able to spot bad time habits and time traps without really lifting a finger.

The first thing that you have to remember is that people like to do things their own way.

Boxing someone in (including yourself) will end up causing damage.

Some people like to do things in fits and bursts. Others love to cram things with details. If you are the type of person who likes to color code your files, then use it to your advantage when changing your bad time habits. The great thing about technology is that you can use it to adapt to your environment.

· First, the paper freaks. They need to physically have something to touch in order to begin their time management process. These are the people who enjoy to-do lists, Post-It reminders, and paper or notebook planners. Investing in colored pens, highlighters and nice notebooks is a good start.

· Other people are more visual. They like to “see” projects, flows and tasks without having to consult a small notebook. They may set up bulletin boards or web spaces that allow them to add images and other visual reminders.

· Smart phones and computers often have downloadable applications that can help you manage your life. You may be the techie type of person who can benefit from this type of organization.

Knowing that different people adapt different and use different ways to manage their time and environment will help you in the long run. Think of the methods in this book as suggestions, not rules set in stone. Find something that works for you and stick with it.

Part of evaluating yourself is also being honest about your problem areas. Are you a serial procrastinator? Are you so disorganized that you have forgotten to pay bills and spend large chunks of your day looking for things? You have to be honest with yourself in order to know how to correct your bad habit.

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