Time Management is the Key to Your Business Success.
Walk into any bookstore today, and you’ll find entire wings dedicated to business success. In general, business owners invest hundreds of hours and thousand (and thousands) of dollars finding and buying those books. Aside from a lot of excellent tips about Loving What You Do, Working in the Now and Shifting Your Paradigm, every one of the books has at least one chapter dedicated to Time Management. The ability to get everything done you NEED to get done, in a reasonable work day, seems to be a recurring theme. I honestly feel some “success” authors just write in 3 dozen anecdotes, because a one chapter book on time management probably wouldn’t sell.
Time Management Tips
Here are some tips you may find helpful:
- Your desk is a work area, not a storage shed. Keep it as neat and free of clutter as possible.
- Organizing your desk is NOT “getting work done.” Get your desk organized the way you like it once, and then keep it that way.
- Keep a trash basket near your desk, and use it often! If an item crosses your desk that you cannot act on right now, set inside your IN Basket or file in a cabinet, chuck it.
- Consolidate all of your calendars, appointment books, notes and random floating pieces of paper with information on them, into one organizer. Keep that organizer near you always.
- Spend a little time each evening, 5 to 20 minutes, planning your following business day, in writing.
- Block out time for each task or project: Client Callbacks from 8 to 11:AM, Lunch to Noon, paperwork to 1:PM Outbound sales calls from 1 to 5:PM, or whatever your day should entail.
- Learn how to say NO. If it does not help you or a customer reach your goals, you might not want to do it.
- DELEGATE. Sometimes, the best way to get a job done well is to assign someone to it, specifically. Answering the phones, for instance.
- Create and use Checklists: Pilots use them. Nuclear Submarine Captains use them. What could they possibly know about success, that we don’t?
- Focus on one task at a time, and work on it until it’s complete. Multitasking tends to leave things undone.
- And finally, remember to take time off for yourself and your loved ones, and do absolutely nothing related to work.
If you’re a local business person here in Reno, your success is important to the whole community. This is hardly the definitive time management list, but if it points you in the right direction or helps you in the least, then it was time well spent. If you would like to learn how Front Office Staff Reno can help you manage your time better, as we have for many other local businesses, please contact me at 775-353-6600 right now. I look forward to speaking with you.
Have a nice day,
Rena Zatica
08/06/12
