From Employee to Entrepreneur - The Importance of Time Management

Making the jump from steady employment to a new life as an entrepreneur will most likely turn your regular day to day routine on its head. To make the change successful, you really have to understand the importance of time management. 

As an employee, you probably went into work every day and had a defined role where you'd know pretty much exactly what you'd need to complete and the time you had to do each task. You had 8 hours at work to close yourself off from your home life and focus on your job. You were probably able to browse the web throughout the day with no-one noticing or distract yourself by chatting to colleagues and yet you'd still bring home the same salary every month regardless of effort. 

As an entrepreneur, you'll probably have a much wider variety of tasks that need to be done, some of which are likely to take you away from the core money making part of your business. You'll need to determine for yourself the jobs that need to be accomplished during the day and make decisions regarding your schedule. Perhaps the biggest implication regarding the importance of time management is that if you fail to accomplish the tasks that needed to be done, it could result in a direct loss of income - or no income at all. 

If you are home-based, you have to carefully balance the demands of home and work to keep a healthy overlap between work and family life. You no longer have the routine of going into the office for 8 hours a day to focus solely on work. When you're home based, it's easy to be distracted by running a couple of errands, going to the shops, doing some cleaning, or picking the kids up from school. You have to learn to be strict with yourself about what task is most important, and make sure you do it first.

Here are some tips to get you in the habit:

• Write a To Do list - and stick to it!
• Prioritize your To Do list in to categories, e.g., If there will be serious consequences of not doing something, label it "A", if there is something you should do but it's not going to seriously affect you if you don't do it immediately, then label it "B", and if there is something that you'd like to do, but it's not important then label it "C". Make sure you do the "A" jobs first!
• Begin every day with the most difficult task, it's likely to be the one thing that adds the most value to your day but the thing you are most keen to avoid.
• Avoid distractions! Turn off your email, don't allow yourself to browse on the internet.
• Give yourself a set amount of time to get a job done and reward yourself with a break when you finish.
• Consider the consequences of what you're doing, and you'll know whether or not it is worth your time to do it.
• Be realistic about how long something takes to do. If you put too many things on your list you won't do each job justice because you'll be rushing to complete it.

Remember, everyone gets distracted from time to time. Acknowledging the importance of time management and putting it into practice are two different things, but keep working on it. You'll know that you're getting it right if at the end of the day you've accomplished everything that was on your to do list and you will have the satisfaction of knowing that the tasks you did that day will lead to the attainment of your goals and objectives

By James Debono

Article Source: https://EzineArticles.com/expert/James_Debono/884091