Time Management for the Entrepreneur What Time Management IS

Time Management for the Entrepreneur What Time Management IS

Does this sound like you?

· I can never get enough time to finish what I am doing in a day.

· I have so many things to do I get confused.

· I could be working out, but I just do not have the time.

· I got caught up, so I never got to finish that proposal on time.

· I’d love to start my dream business but I just do not have the time.

A normal person’s day is broken down in time segments. You need to get to work by a certain time, get to bank within a specified set of operating hours, go to the grocery, watch your kids and fetch your kids from school.

Depending on the type of business you own, you may need to speak with clients, set up meetings, finish products, ship them out etc. Entrepreneurs fulfil a lot of roles in their businesses and it is very easy to let one task overwhelm the others. This can translate to lost income—because the entrepreneur may end up missing something vital.

You may feel like you never seem to get enough done in a day, that you are always running after something. If you are already knee-deep in your business, you may feel like the clock is running after you.

You need to manage your time in order to get maximum returns from your mini-investments during the day. These are the minor things that you do during the day that end up adding up and give you a sense of accomplishment. Managing your time is also important because it allows you to easily prioritize what you need to do.

Time management has also been proven to reduce stress. People tend to feel stressed when they feel like they have no control over their surroundings.

It is a biological reaction causes psychological and physiological reactions in the body. These symptoms can be as minor, like nail biting or major, like a heart attack. Stress, lack of exercise and bad diets can all contribute to a killer heart attack later in life.

Knowing what tasks you will be doing for the day, controlling your time can reduce the amount of stress that you experience on a day to day basis. Even simple techniques can bring you to a point where the stress is easily managed.

It can also increase your productivity and give a sense of balance to your life. You will realize the impact of time management almost immediately by how relaxed you are feeling and how easily you are running things.

Time management can be simply defined as the process of controlling time. It usually involves setting or planning periods of activity over a set period. This time period can be as short as the next two hours of your life or the next few years.

Time management skills are so important that companies and business train their employees on how to become more efficient at managing their time. Thousands of dollars are spent to hire management experts to run seminars about managing time efficiently.

The first thing you have to remember is that time management is a skill and that skills can be learned. It is a trainable skill that you may not only want to possess but it is something you want potential employees or managers to possess.

Have you ever tried learning a new skill? It can be difficult and challenging at first but once you have it down, it can become as automatic as breathing.

The challenge is setting the skill. It involves getting rid of old habits and putting new ones in their places. It involves recognizing what works and what does not.

Imagine that you have decided to take up a form of dancing. Say, ballroom or salsa. If you have never been to a dance class before, you probably will be nervous. You enter the class thinking, I cannot do this. You see people warming up, stretching and even dancing a little.

You see your instructor and clutch your gym bag and think thoughts like I should just go get a cup of coffee.

Say you decide to try the first class. You will flounder about, make mistakes and generally be the clumsiest in your class. You do not know anything about timing. You forget steps and maybe even make a fool of yourself. The class ends, you take a shower and you go home.

Two things will happen here. The first is that you will decide never to go to another dance class. The other is that you will be back next week and the next.

If you decide to never return, you will never learn the skill. If you go back next week and the week after that, you will notice a change. Your muscles learn the movements (this is called muscle memory). Soon you find that you are in sync with the rest of the class. You remember steps because your body remembers them. You will slowly learn the skill of dancing.

This applies to any learned skill: driving, for example. Playing video games or going to gym. You have to form the habit and let your body ‘learn’ the skill for you.

If you decided never to go back to that dance class or ever sit behind the wheel again, the skill will never materialize. The same thing goes for time management. If you try it and keep at it, the skill will become ingrained.

Another thing that you have to consider when it comes to time management is letting go of formerly destructive habits. In an age where information and technology are undeniably linked, people are constantly wading through waves of knowledge that in the end are quite useless.

Breaking bad time habits can be as difficult as creating new habits. First, you have to recognize how harmful these habits actually are and then take the steps to breaking them. Recognizing harmful time habits can be difficult simply because of their routine nature.