Time Management for the Entrepreneur What Time Management Is NOT

Time Management for the Entrepreneur What Time Management Is NOT

Time management, like other management strategies, is a how-to guide to form economical and resourceful ways to dealing with everyday occurrences in a business or entrepreneurial setting.

It is not the answer to everything and it is not something that will magically happen without your consent.

Time management does not happen overnight. It can be learned but a student of time management must find out how to use the techniques in their own way. Time management is meant to help you, not box you in.

The trick is, not to let time control you or get away from you, but to put a definitive process on how you use your time. In any business, the main goal of time management is to increase productivity.

In the 1900s, Henry Ford perfected the assembly line. The need for mass- produced cars rendered handcrafted machinery useless—the demand was so great that they needed to churn out hundreds of cars. Parts were assembled by hand by workers standing in a line.

Each worker was assigned a single part of the engine,

interior or exterior of the car. Assembly was timed down to the last second.

The assembly line was a response to the length of time it took to create a single part before the advent of industrialization. Handcrafted parts were labor-intensive and needed a lot of specialization. Breaking down the process in parts voided the need for specialized workers.

All Mr. Ford needed were people who had two hands and could work in a set amount of speed.

Ford’s assembly line is a great example of managing time, in the sense that it broke the process down and sped up production to the point where they were producing one car every three minutes.

Now, the point of time management is not to turn you into a human automaton but a method that one can use to “construct time” and turn it into something that works for you.

Mr. Ford solved his time issue by “creating” a human conveyer belt, by breaking down his process into simple, timed tasks.

You must also think of time management as a system and a tool, not the end all and be all.

Time management also has a risk of turning into a bad habit in itself. If you have ever spent an hour creating a to-do list and the rest of the day fine-tuning it, then you know a little bit of the dangers of over managing your time.

Time management is also not just a way to construct time at work or in a business setting.

For the entrepreneur, time management can be looked at as a lifestyle change.

It is one way to analyze and control the business that you are beginning. It is also a method to create organization for something that may initially be disorganized.

Different definitions of time management not only include day to day planning but also project planning—something that can easily be applied to a business plan to help you keep track of goals and achievements. Time management can be applied to different aspects of life, not just the business end of it.