Kim Haas
If you work from home, you already know how difficult it can be.
You've probably had to deal with looming deadlines and mounting
work piles mixed in with laundry, squabbling kids and doctor
appointments. This article will help you keep your family and
your business organized.
The first step to effective time management is figuring out how
much time you are willing to spend working on your business. How
many hours per day and per week can you devote to the business?
Many people start out part-time while working outside the home
and raising children. Some people have the available time and
finances to work their new business full time.
Write a list of your daily activities and figure out where the
business fits in and how much time you will have to work with.
Don't just assume you have XX amount of hours per week. You must
get a very good idea of how much time is available to you so you
can "budget" that time for the necessary activities involved
with running a business from home. The trick here is to slowly
add in the time required to run a business while still allowing
for the daily tasks without adding extra stress on yourself and
your family.
Some people find it very difficult to keep to a schedule, even
when working a job outside the home. Being your own boss will
require much more discipline as you will not have anyone else
keeping track of your activities but you.
There are ways to make more time in your already hectic day that
can give you more time to work on your business venture. Here's
a few tips for starters:
Consider giving up or changing some of your pastimes such as
watching the soap operas every afternoon, having long
conversations on the phone with friends and even lounging on the
sofa in the mornings with that first cup of coffee.
Schedule your errands to work in with other things you have to
do during the day. If you have to take your children to school,
stop off on the way back home to get your grocery shopping done.
Organize yourself so you can take care of as many things as
possible in one trip.
Make a list or schedule of the things you want to accomplish the
next day, before you go to bed at night. Not only will this help
you to remain organized, but will help you start out your day
without having to figure out what needs to be done. This in
itself is a major time saver!
Set aside a specific time to get your chores done. Plan to
handle the laundry and vacuuming on Mondays, get the lawn mowed
on Tuesdays etc. By spreading your regular chores over the
course of a week, you will have more time each day to
concentrate on your business.
Take care of your mail, and e-mail the day you receive it. If
you let these pile up, you will find yourself getting frustrated
because you are falling behind.
Get yourself a daily planner in which you can make notations of
things that need to be done. By scheduling tasks, you not only
effectively manage your time, but you also prevent the
possibility of losing a "reminder note" and forgetting that you
had to take your husband's dog to the groomer.
The secret to being successful is knowing how to properly budget
your time and make the best use of it. The better you organize
yourself, the happier and more productive you will become.
To properly budget your time, you must be realistic. Don't try
to cram everything into one day, or you will find yourself over
worked and disappointed when you can't get everything done that
you planned or scheduled.
Try to avoid putting off the less attractive items on your list
that need to be done. When you put things off to handle at a
later time, you either don't get them done, or you find yourself
with another huge pile of work to do and not enough time to
complete it. This actually defeats the purpose of making a
schedule for yourself. If a task is scheduled for a certain
time, make sure it gets done on schedule.
The most important thing to remember when budgeting your time is
to set aside some time for yourself and your family. You are
actually defeating your purpose of working from home if you
don't allow yourself the time to spend enjoying your children
and taking some quiet "alone time" for yourself.
Keeping all this in mind while preparing your daily schedule,
you should have no problem reaching your goal of succeeding in
your own business.
About the author:
Kim Haas is a WAHM and Founder of http://Womans-Net.com, a
popular online networking community focusing on working from
home and women in business and Owner of http://Article-Host.com.
To learn more about Kim, visit http://kimberlyhaas.com Copyright
2005
|
