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How to Schedule your Way to Success for your Home-Based
Business
Here
are just a few tips to help you maintain sanity and
get your work done. With a little planning and a little
effort, you can balance your home life with your home-based
business and literally schedule your way to success.
A lot of people dream of owning their own home-based
business. They dream of setting their own hours, working
when they want to work and with whom. The reality is
that very few of these people ever take the time to
ensure that they have the right skill set - the right
tools - to make the leap to a home-based enterprise.
The
first major pitfall that most new home-based business
owners face is a lack of scheduling discipline. They
just don't plan out their work days. This can cause
problems in two ways, under-working and overworking.
Let's
look at the first one, "under-working." It's
very easy to sit at home, on the ol' PC surfing the
web. You might intend on working on your new website
or putting up auctions on eBay, but, before you know
it, you've spent the entire day reading email and surfing
for the latest news and gossip. Sure, you were online
and you were doing something, but the things you were
doing are not the things that will put a dime in your
bank account.
Overworking
is pretty easy to understand. Some people simply don't
know how to keep business hours. When they work from
home, the temptation is there to "work 'til you
drop." That's not good, especially if you are building
your home-based business on the side and still work
a day job. If you spend all your time working, you'll
soon feel that you're never getting any "down time,"
and burnout is sure to follow. Believe me, I know all
about this one.
Here's
the solution. You must be very disciplined in planning
your day. Write down what you need to accomplish every
day and how long you will work on each item. Be sure
to include downtime in your plan - time for your family,
relaxation, exercise, whatever. This is important. after
all, you're building a home-based business to build
a lifestyle, not to become the richest person in the
cemetery!
Your
daily plans and goals need to be very specific. It won't
do you any good to write something like, "work
on project x." What does that mean? How exactly
do you "work on something?" Your plan needs
to include a definite finishing point, such as "write
a new article on dog grooming for page one of the website."
See the difference? You can "work on" a project
for years and never reach a point where you've had any
success. By contrast, when you "write an article
on x," you know you're done as soon as you've typed
the final period.
If
you're in a marketing business, try to farm out as much
of the non-marketing related work as you can afford
to do. For example, if you sell products or services,
it might be beneficial for you to hire someone to help
build and maintain your website. The money you'll spend
to have someone else do it will be more than offset
by the amount of time it will free up. Other areas you
can outsource might be bookkeeping, mailing, etc.
Be
realistic when planning your day. If you're still working
your day job, schedule that from the time you get up
in the morning until you get home from work. Don't forget
to include commute time. Then, plan out your evening
accordingly. Don't schedule a four hour task to be completed
in one hour. It won't happen. If you have huge tasks,
break them up as much as possible and schedule your
time accurately. This will allow you to have a feeling
of accomplishment and you'll get a lot more done in
the long run.
Don't
multi-task. I know that this is the latest "buzzword,"
but, in reality, multi-taking is one of the leading
killers of productivity for most people. Schedule only
one project at a time. You can work on more than one
project during the day, but you shouldn't work on more
than one project at a time. It's very difficult, if
not totally impossible, to serve to masters at the same
time. Give one project your undivided attention. Once
you've completed that task, move on to another tasks
on that project or to another project.
You
should also be a little flexible in your scheduling.
In any business, there are bound to be interruption
s that you couldn't possibly have planned for. In home-based
businesses, the chance of distraction goes up exponentially.
You'll be working on that hot new project, only to have
the toilet overflow or a neighbor ring the doorbell.
Plan on it. There will be things that happen that you
can't plan for. That's why your schedule needs to include
a little cushion.
What
I like to do is plan out the items I want to get done
and overestimate the time it will take to do them, by
say 10%. Then, I have other items which are "on
deck." These items aren't quite on today's schedule,
but I want to do them soon. If I complete all of my
scheduled tasks for the day, I simply look to see what's
on deck and start on one of them. It's a bonus.
Sometimes,
no matter how well you plan, you just won't finish what
you schedule. It happens to everyone. That's when you
simply revise your schedule for the next day to include
the missed item(s). Don't get hung up on the fact that
an item or two didn't get done as planned. Just take
it in stride and keep on moving forward. Now, if you
find yourself routinely missing your deadlines, you'll
need to reevaluate your scheduling. Are you being realistic
in your time allotments? Probably not. Adjust accordingly.
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