Effective Time Management

Everyone around this time of year starts to feel a little harried with the upcoming seasons, work, school and family events. One of the greatest things we can do for ourselves and our families is to learn effective time management skills.

Depending on where you work, there are different issues that you will face and alternate factors that are under your control. I’m going to focus on working from home issues because I work from home and can actively relate to them. I will also discuss some strategies that will work anywhere, and link to sites with more information about time management skills.

Working from home is a huge endeavor that requires not just you to do the work, but the cooperation of family, the support of your significant others and some serious organizational skills. There are several methods you can use as a framework: 1) electronic organization (PDA, PPC, Outlook, PIM software etc.) 2) Published schedule and physical timers 3) Good Old To Do Lists and a Master list.  There are many blends of the three, but usually the method falls into one of the three categories I’ve found.

I use the first category, and the third. I have ADHD, and scheduling is a very important part of living productively. Because I work fulltime, go to school fulltime and am also a fulltime SAHM (stay at home mom) to two toddlers, scheduling became literally a life skill. My initial attempts at scheduling however, were not very productive, wasted time and ended up frustrating me even more.  I had everything cataloged throughout the day, all my appointments in my calendar, and all my to do lists written out. It seemed like all I was doing was pushing things around and rescheduling; not freeing up time and being more effective.

Working 12-14 hour days everyday of the week is not only completely miserable, it’s not healthy. I had to figure out a way to be EFFECTIVE with my time, not just LABELING it.

First things first: Take a look at your prior week.  Highlight, notate, whatever… each item in your prior week that fit into these categories below. Then tally up each day, putting the highest amount first.

1) Crisis mode. Handling emergencies, putting out fires, critical activities that side track others etc.

2) Interruptions. Things you ended up doing, whilst in the middle of another thing. Phone calls, tasks, busy work, friends, family etc. that ended up being distractions and delaying completion of work, tasks, chores, personal time and so forth.

3) Uninterrupted work.

4) Uninterrupted personal time.

Take a look at your completed chart. What did you spend the most time (top two) doing last week? Based on these results now look at the week in front of you. We’re going to pull these out in a little bit and plug them in to finish off the time management plan.

What framework do you have set up for working at home successfully? What are your Business hours, days and preferences? Are they published? If you don’t have an answer to these questions, stop immediately and figure them out. You work from home for a reason; whether it’s more time with family, owning your own business, more money.. whatever. The point is that you are YOUR BOSS. You decide what the heck you are doing when; your work doesn’t decide that for you. Believe it or not, all work of any type needs to function this way. Have you ever thought “Wow must be nice for my Dr. to just take off on that vacation of hers when she feels like it”? Or “Gee nice that my boss gets to decide when he comes into work and when he leaves for errands”. Well you are THAT BOSS. You decided to have your own business, or work from home on your schedule with a company that functions that way. So start acting like one. Figure out what hours/days you will be working. Don’t plan work hours when your kids are most wound up. Don’t plan meeting availability during times you almost always have to be out doing other things like picking up kids, errands, soccer practice etc. Think smart, think separate. I work at two sometimes three separate time through out my day that avoid conflicts with family events and personal time.

You may thinking at this point that this is quite alot of rigidity and overplanning. But you’ll see. Do the prep work now and reap the benefits of personal management later!

So no you should have two thing in front of you: a) chart of activity b) your set work hours/days.  On to the next step.

Quite arguably the most important step you can take in this whole process. Planning YOU time. So go back to the calendar.  Take a look at what times during the day you had set previously for you. Be it exercising at the gym, at home, quiet time, pampering, time with your best friend, or napping… where is it and how much of it are you doing. Unfortunetaly most of us find that category happens about once or twice a week at most. This must change. You need personal time everyday. Some people find it best to have an hour in the morning, some in the afternoon. I do both. I get time for exercise, yoga, my coffee, my vitamins and suppliments, and to wind down in the afternoon. We are far more important commodities than the work we slave over, the chores we tackle everyday and the busy work we get lost in. So if we can make time daily to do those, then we can make time daily for ourselves. Just do it.

Let’s look at what we have now. We have our personal schedule, our business schedule and by default our family schedule. With out realizing it, we planned our work and business around an already established family schedule. So those three things fit together nicely now. Now lets take that chart from forever ago and plug that info into our new grid. Looking at what you have scheduled now and what you usually end up doing during the week lets rethink. During business hours are you likely to face distractions, emergencies, and interruptions? If so, write down from what. Are those issues related to environment? time of day? do you need to realistically replan your business hours? If most of what your seeing is interruptions from the phone (friends, family) or interruptions from kids/family then you can keep your hours set. But put your foot down. When your working, your working and everyone needs to respect that. No phones, no questions, no interruptions.

Continue with that chart and comparison through your whole schedule. Rearrange as necessary so you have pure blocks of time. This may take a few weeks. Keep doing what we did in step one, so you can track what categories you are doing most during the week. Then you can tweak your time management “software” to continuously up productivity and effectiveness. You’ll find you’ll start having alot more free time. When you are focused you actually get more done in less time.

Enjoy your life! You are part of an elite few that choose to have a home based business, own their own business and work from home. So maximize the benefits and make that work… work for you!

Coming next: Tips for Work at Home parents to get even more free time!