Learning to master time management can make or break your home business. In the early days of your home business, you will still have a lot to learn and as you fill orders, work with customers and businesses; the hours can fly by very quickly. You will discover that there are not enough hours in a day to complete all of your daily tasks.
Efficiently managing your time will help you to create order out of chaos. If you wake up and simply start moving things around without some sort of plan in place, you can easily forget important jobs that need to be completed, forget orders, neglect to call back clients and lose customer confidence in your fledgling company.
Plan Ahead
Have a plan in place such as a daily schedule. Follow up that schedule with a weekly schedule that fully covers all of your daily tasks. With this plan in place, you can quickly take stock of your time to figure out what needs to be done. This will help you to achieve your goals by completing important tasks first, and getting through simple tasks with time to spare. Get into the habit of checking, editing and updating this schedule as last minute plans may arise.
This plan will allow you to get your work done without creating a backlog because you accepted too much work in a short amount of time. When new requests come in, you can look at these schedules to see if you have the time to spare or if you should turn down the job due to lack of time. It can be hard to turn away new business or repeat offers but if you accept more work than you can complete in a comfortable amount of time, you will disappoint clients who will go elsewhere when they have new jobs.
Start Business Early
Some people will create a home business to sleep late and work whenever they want to. However, this is not likely to happen. If you sleep all day, no one is running your business and it will not be successful. If you have family as well, getting up early will allow you to take care of them and send them off in the morning. You can then shower, eat breakfast and head off to your home office awake, refreshed and ready to work.
Separate Family and Business Life
Spending more time with your family may be one reason that you decided to open your own business, but you will have to keep the two separate to be productive and to keep everything organized. If you have young children, keep them away from your home office if possible. If you allow them to play in this room while you are working, they may feel that they can enter it when you are away. This can lead to ruined or lost paperwork that you need for your business, and may be a source of distraction in the future if your children have learned that it’s acceptable to hang out in your office while you work.
Separating business and family is also a good way to help you relax and get away from work. When you have completed your tasks for the day, you can simply close the door and go spend time with your family. This is hard to do if your computer and business is in an area that is accessible to the entire household. You want a personal space that you can shut away from the outside world when you are working and away from your personal life when you want to get away from the home office.
Set Priorities
If you do not have your priorities in order, you can end up doing a lot of work and have nothing to show for it at the end of the day. Completing a large amount of work one day won’t help you if you have forgotten to complete an important and time sensitive job because you did not schedule your time correctly. Remember, prioritize first, then get to work! Your home business will thank you for your discipline and commitment with greater growth and long-term stability.
