Effective Time Management Techniques

Setting and Achieving Your Goals

As Seven Habits author Stephen Covey has pointed out, you can't manage time. We all have the same 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. It's a question of how well you organise yourself to get the most important tasks done. You can manage yourself by:

• Identifying important roles and goals: many people forget about this critical stage. Unless you are facing an emergency, it's vital to spend time thinking about what you want to achieve in your life and your home business. Stephen Covey calls this Beginning with the End in Mind
• Scheduling what to do and when: once you know what's important, the next step is to plan your activities into the time available. What are the key goals that would be very valuable to achieve tomorrow, next week, this month, this year? It's very helpful to plan short term goals in the context of your longer term objectives.
• Completing tasks: Every day we all complete tasks. But are they the right tasks? Do they take us nearer to achieving our long term goals - and, in particular, closer to building a successful home based business? You stand a much better chance of success if you have already gone through the first two stages of identifying and scheduling your most important priorities.

In my view, effective time management techniques do not mean that you spend all day every day carrying out an exact plan with military precision.

However, it is possible to ensure that you make some forward progress each day towards your important long term goals.

The time management techniques that work for you may not be the exact same ones that work for me or anyone else.

However, it's vital to find a strategy that does work for you.

What the are biggest mistakes to avoid? What causes people to spend their time on tasks that appear to be of no real value to them?

• Failing to set goals: Zig Ziglar has a saying "If you aim at nothing, you will hit it every time".
• Setting too many goals: there are several problems here. One is that you may spend your time on some relatively less important goals on the list and leave the big tasks undone. Another issue is that you set yourself up for failure. You never complete your list.
• Ignoring your schedule: suddenly you come with a better idea of what to do today, and you ignore your plan. Sometimes this works but, as a general rule, it makes more sense to stick to your carefully thought out plans.

The best step by step method I've come across to manage your day to day workflow efficiently is David Allen's getting things done system.

David Allen gives very specific advice on exactly how to deal with all your paperwork, emails and projects.

Identifying a good small business idea is vital for your home based business. However, I'd say that effective time management strategies and goal setting will play at least an equal part in your future success.

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