Work at Home Series: Managing your Time

You have often heard that time is money; this is so true in the home-based business industry.  In fact, it is so important that if you do not master the time management skills required to stay focused and on course each day you run the risk of failing to meet your goals and could end up in business failure.

Think about it for a moment.  If you are new or a just researching the inner workings of the home-based industry you may not have an appreciation for the time commitment needed to ensure that you are successful.  Let us look at a few things that will happen when you start working from home.

Remember those friends that would just show up at your door to go out for a few hours for shopping and a cup of coffee.  Can you still do this, or better, should you be doing this?

Remember how you could volunteer at the school when they needed help getting an event together.  Now if the time is not convenient to your work schedule, can you still do this, or better, should you be volunteering?

Remember how you could sleep in if you felt like it.  Now you need to answer email, read productivity reports, check on what is going on in your industry, building business leads that can translate into sales.

Can you and should you still be doing the same things you did when you had a lot of time on your hands.  The answer is no, you will need to change your routine.  You should set a new schedule.  This commitment does not mean that you cannot volunteer at school, take your daughter to dance lessons or your son to soccer practice.  This is the reason why you wanted to stay at home and to start a business, so that you can raise your children while earning some money.  You just have to be smarter now. 

Here are some ideas for how to organize the new schedule.

Set a start time each day.  Start times can vary depending on your other commitments.

Set a number of hours you want to work each week.

Make sure that you finish off marketing activities early each week, that way you ensure that you will have business in the weeks to follow.

Stick to the plan, but do not fret if you fall out of whack.  This will happen and you can recover, but you need to focus on being consistent over time.

Let your friends know that you are still around by spending time with them, but let them know that you are in business.

Lastly, have fun.

This article has been written to give you an idea of things you should be thinking of, but you will need to consult other resources to get the full picture.  Try buying a book and speaking to someone else in the home-based business.

I hope that you have enjoyed this article and I hope that it was helpful to you, best of luck in starting your business and if you are already in business for yourself, I hope that you will continue to enjoy success.