Enjoy! Janet Schlarbaum

As a business owner, your work is never done. There is always another figure to check, prospect to call, or problem to solve. If you are not careful, you will end up working seven days a week. Here is how I learned over the years to manage my time and preserve my sanity:

Plan your business day. The last thing I do before snapping my computer closed for the night is to plan out the next day. It doesn’t always work. Crises will come up. But this at least gives me some control.

Compartmentalize your work. Do this by blocking out the things you will and must get done this day. Then estimate the time required and do not quit until they are done. Some days, if you get lucky, you may be out the door in five or six hours. Others, well, you could be there until midnight. Another option is to clock X number of dedicated hours each day, such as ten.

Example of a schedule of a home-based consultant:

Rise at 5:30

Exercise until 6:30

Work from 6:30 until 8 a.m.

Breakfast with the kids 8 a.m. to 8:30 a.m.

Work from 8:30 a.m. until 11:45a.m.

Lunch away from the job 11:45a.m. to 12:15 p.m.

Work without break from 12:15 p.m. to 3:30 p.m.

Take a 15-minute break at 3:30 to greet the kids as they come home from school

Work from 3:45 p.m. until 5:30 p.m..

Dinner with family 5:30 p.m. until 6:15 p.m..

Wrap up day and plan next day from 6:15 p.m. until 7:15 p.m.

Schedule vacation and free time. In December, I pencil in 40 vacation days for the next year. Many are Fridays, so I get some three-day weekends. Also, if you are able to give yourself some flex time, you can take a few hours off for your son’s baseball game and plan to make it up from 10:00 p.m. until midnight.

Schedule time for family and friends. If you run too hard too long, you will eventually collapse emotionally. Take one night a week for board games or to just watch television as a family. I work alone at home, so I schedule dinner out with friends and family members about four evenings a week.

Schedule time to read, pray and renew your heart, soul and mind. You must turn your mind off work now and then. Read, go to a ballgame, get involved in your house of worship and community, dig in the garden.

Take care of your body. Do not smoke; do not drink or eat to excess; find time for regular exercise; sleep at least seven hours a night. If you work 12 hours and then come home and pour yourself a tumbler of vodka, you’re self-medicating your body and it will not be ready for peak performance the next day.

Most of all, make a conscious effort to manage your time, your work, your life. Do not let others dump favors-that-need-doing in your lap or take on projects and jobs that do nothing for either your business or yourself.

The bottom line: Work hard when you work, but learn how to get away from work and play.

John Ingrisano is a small business owner who has weathered three major recessions. You can contact him at john@TheFreestyleEntrepreneur.com.

Posted by Janet Schlarbaum. Combining her interests in time management, Janet Schlarbaum has turned her likes into her life’s work.

Now, it is more obvious that the time is not that free and unlimited. Furthermore, you cannot turn time back or buy more, even if you are rich. Once the time has passed, there is no more. So, it is obvious that we need to manage our time given to perform a specific task, in a most time-efficient way.

Why we need the effective Time management? The answers are obvious. To achieve better results. To achieve quality of work To reduce stress To reduce errors To improve satisfaction with job To improve quality of private life.

In order to manage our time in a best possible way, we need to learn and utilize Time Management tools:

Prioritization

In every segment of our life activity, in our profession or in the recreation club, there are certain lists of activities that need to be accomplished. Since there are always more activities than we can handle at same time, we need to prioritize. In order to prioritize we use our judgment, common sense, experience or other people’s advices. However, there are more structured tools that can help us in prioritization.

Urgent/Important matrix

This tool helps us to filter tasks as per their urgency and importance. Urgent is something that needs attention – Now. Important is something that is related to results, goals and value. When we pair these two scales of importance and urgency, we get a matrix with four quadrants.

Pareto

Pareto principle is prioritization tool which states that 20% of our results comes from 20% of our effort. 80% of our revenue comes from 20% of our customers. 80% of our success comes from 20% of our effort.

This principle does not have to be in exactly 80:20 ratio, but essentially shows that there are certain activities that create most of our success, therefore we should give priority to them.

Fight Procrastination

Many people procrastinate (delay) accomplishment of tasks. In fact, everybody is procrastinating to some degree. To the most extreme situation, procrastination can totally block some process or destroy someone’s career.

In order to fight procrastination first we need to understand the degree of our habit of procrastinating. Second is to understand why is this happening. Third step is to take action to suppress habit of delaying or procrastinating task accomplishment.

Time Planning

While Prioritization is vertical dimension of Time Management, Time Planning is it’s horizontal dimension. Simply, by time planning, we position our activity in time. I order to track implementation of task planning through time, we conduct tracking in several time scales:

- Milestones are related to annual planning, project planning and seasonal events.

- Scheduling of Tasks is related to Monthly, Weekly and Daily scale, by recording incoming tasks and events in desired time format ( notebook, scheduler software, etc. )

- To Do List is a simple form of daily planning. It enables us to work better, serves as a reminder and helps us with task tracking. It also motivates us to do what we need to do and helps us to focus on priorities.

To Do List Tips:

1. At the end of a day spend 5 minutes to plan a next day.

2. Unfinished tasks from today schedule for tomorrow.

3. Include both, daily tasks and long term tasks in daily To Do list.

Reputation Management

By Constance Knieper

How many times have you looked at your schedule and wondered how you were going to fit everything in? How many times have you made the comment “this should have been scheduled here”? Do you have days where you’re empty at noon but the schedule dictates that you keep going until 5:00 pm? Do you dream of days that consistently flow smoothly AND you have accomplished everything intended – on time? Creating a scheduling template can solve these problems and change your life.

A scheduling template is a blueprint of your ideal day prepared in advance. It coincides with a prepared appointment guideline based upon individual desires and appointment history. The concept is similar to “painting by number”. Every possible or desired appointment is reserved in advance for up to one year at a time. Appointments are scheduled by referencing the guideline then locating the next available appointment of that kind.

Regain control of your time. The greatest benefit realized is the return of control over how your day is scheduled. Everybody seems to want everything yesterday or last week. Unfortunately, it is not always possible to respond that quickly, yet we are often forced to try. This is especially true if others are scheduling your appointments without a clear and specific set of instructions. A natural byproduct of the scheduling template is the development of a very clear set of scheduling instructions.

The formation of a plan for scheduling is a huge benefit. As stated, this is a natural byproduct of the template. Once created, it is easily learned and followed allowing anybody to schedule an appointment simply by referencing the guideline. People can be taught quickly, it is easily understood so they can begin scheduling immediately.

Incorporating personal desires with professional desires is often challenging. In fact, it is common for personal desires to be overlooked or skipped due to lack of time. A scheduling blueprint is a reflection of personal and professional desires. When creating the template, both are coordinated so that the ideal day includes time allocated to accomplish both.

Eliminate stress and fatigue. The scheduling guideline identifies all possible appointments including a list of all activities that can be completed within each one. Reviewing each appointment to ensure the time allocated is adequate for the activity aids in removing problems experienced routinely in the past. The ideal day is constructed using the guideline to reserve each predetermined appointment eliminating conflicts through the day. Since they conflicts are resolved in advance, stress and anxiety are reduced or eliminated.

Once the initial template and guideline are created they are easily updated. This is important since technology is improving at an astounding rate giving the ability to complete more in less time. Modifications to the template are easily incorporated and can be applied immediately or to subsequent years.

Generally, creating the ideal day carries forward to the ideal week, month, and year. Since the template is arranged to plan up to one year (can be longer if desired) it practically eliminates haphazardly scheduled days. The advance planning and development of a scheduling template has simplified the process of scheduling and resulted in more productive days.

Reputation Management