5 Ways to Manage Your Time for Business Success

by: Heather 0

The latest office time management statistics in American Time Use collected by The Bureau of Labor Statistics indicates that most Americans spend an average of 7.6 hours per day working.

This means that about half your waking day is spent on your job, with the remaining hours likely attending to household chores and sleeping (an average of 8.6 hours per night). Even working half the day, it still seems that there is never enough time to accomplish all the tasks needed to be performed.

However, if you are serious about growing your online business you will need to develop time management skills to make the most of the hours you do have.

Below is a list of five strategies that can help you to use time wisely:

1. Prioritize your tasks

With the myriad of responsibilities to attend during the day, it is best to list them in order of importance. According to Franklin Covey, leading trainer in the area of time management, tasks may be ordered as “Urgent” and “Non-urgent.”

• Urgent tasks are those which cannot be put off, such as calling a client or preparing a presentation.
• Non-urgent tasks do not need your immediate attention; e.g., updating your blog or checking email.

To determine which tasks are urgent, start by clarifying your goals each day: what are the three to five top tasks that you must accomplish? Jot them down in order of importance and commit to completing each one. Tick off each task as it is completed so you may experience a sense of accomplishment and remain motivated.

2. Focus

A 2009 study on time management by Clifford Nass, Eyal Ophir, and Anthony Wagner published in The Stanford Report showed that people who try to juggle multiple streams of online information are not able to pay much attention to any of them and are often not good with multitasking. On the contrary, those who are able to focus on one task at a time are better able to manage their workload and accomplish many more tasks per day.

Time Management...

Committing to your daily goals will help you develop the focus needed to get through your agenda. Focus helps you to forestall the urge to “play” by surfing the Web, engaging in chat room discussions, or checking into Facebook too often. After a period of time, you will find that your ability to focus becomes easier and you are better able to accept delayed gratification. Indeed, you may find yourself feeling a bit guilty for “cheating” on your schedule should you veer off.

Habits may develop slowly but, once ingrained, they are hard to shake!

3. Get Organized

In a survey conducted by David Lewis of the Boston Globe in 2006, 43% of Americans classified themselves as highly disorganized with the result that 21% missed critical work deadlines. Half of the respondents claimed that their disorganization resulted in the need to work beyond normal hours at least two times per week.

Keeping in mind that disorganization directly impacts work-life balance, it helps to arrange your work space to maximize productivity during your work day so that you are not stuck working long hours. Arrange your desk so that you may easily locate any needed file, document, work tool, or contact number.

• Create a daily calendar of your tasks with the time to start and anticipated time of completion. You might also want to jot down the steps involved in each.

When you are organized your work progresses smoothly and efficiently, with minimum disruption. Disruption leads to loss of focus so the better organized you become, the more you will accomplish.

Getting organized should be your first task every morning as it revs up your engine for a productive day!

4. Work Efficiently

Don’t waste effort on extraneous activity but get right into the meat of what needs to get done.

As an example, an online writer works efficiently when s/he carefully chooses words and does not include a ten word description when five will suffice! A Web site developer does not overdo the bells of whistles of design to the detriment of quality content.

When you become used to working this way, you will actually be surprised by how much you can accomplish in a relatively short period of time.

5. Work Effectively

This ties in somewhat with working efficiently with the key difference being that working effectively means keeping the end goal in mind. When you know what you want to accomplish you are able to devise a plan to get there. When you haven’t a clue as to your overall goal, you might as well be shooting darts at a board with a blindfold!

Referring back to our online writer and Web designer, each would want to know the purpose of the content or design in terms of target audience in order to tailor their efforts to address their needs.

As the saying goes, “failing to plan is planning to fail”!

Guest Author: Heather Thomas is a contributor at the credit card comparison website, CreditDonkey. Using CreditDonkey.com, entrepreneurs can compare business credit cards to help manage their cash flow for business success.

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