Archive for the ‘Time Management’ Category

Wake up early and be the bird that gets the worm.

Because every minute adds to your profits when you work from home, it can be very advantageous to you to wake up early and squeeze more time into your day. Even if you don’t clock in more hours, you can gain more time to work in silence while everyone else is asleep, and have more time to spend with your family by being able to finish up your workday early.

Here are 12 ways to help you wake up early each day so you can maximize your free time and profits.

1. Give yourself a reason to get up.

Make it clear to yourself the night before exactly what it is you want to wake up early for – write down your specific reason if you have to. You’ll need it to get yourself out of bed when you’d rather sleep in.

Every second you are able to use effectively while working is money in the piggy bank.

Here are 8 ways to help you glean the most time out of your workday:

1. Learn to say no.

Say ‘no’ to any requests on your time that don’t actually move your work along. You can be nice about it, but avoid taking on new projects that get in the way of you getting actual work done. Your family members, friends, or neighbours might get the impression that you have more free time to do them favours or tackle errands and housework during your workday unless you make it clear to them that working at home is still working. You can help them out if you do, in fact, have time to spare, but remember that the completion of your work should be your top priority.

2. Put big tasks first.

Get your biggest task or project done first thing in the morning so you can devote the time you need to it. You can get the smaller tasks done between projects or multitask (for example, return your calls while heating up your lunch). Saving your smaller tasks for short moments and for the end of the day ensures that you don’t take too much time doing them. Get a feel for how long it takes you to do a task so that you’ll know if you need to spend time to get it done or do it as you do some other task.

Wasting your time is like throwing away your money: Especially when you work from home, every second counts. And as good as you think you may be at managing your time, there are always “time-wasters” that can be eliminated from your daily life.

Here are 6 ways to stop wasting your time and start working more productively.

1. Respond to important emails only

Any email that is not directly related to the execution and completion of your job is a time-waster. You should do whatever you can to either delegate or eliminate needless emails, as the time you spend going through it doesn’t help your business in any way. If you have an assistant, you can have them filter your non-essential emails. If not, you can send a polite request to your email contacts to be removed from non-essential bulk email lists. Try to get to the point where you are checking essential emails only.

2. Turn Off the TV

The TV takes you away from the many things you could be doing to earn more money. Even when it’s running in the background, you can’t devote 100% of your attention to maximizing your income when it’s on. While you may get a momentary laugh or quick moment of satisfaction while watching it, it won’t do anything to help your business or income streams. So leave the TV off while you’re working.

3. Make a To-Do List

Creating a to-do list for the following day will help you focus your mind on success-supporting actions and fill up your schedule so that time wasters don’t have a chance to worm their way in. You should prioritize everything on your list so that even if you don’t have time to complete everything, you’ll at least finish the most important items.

Time boxing is one of the simplest yet most effective ways to use your work hours more productively.

It’s a deceptively simple concept – instead of working on a task until it’s completed, commit to working on it for a specific amount of time instead. You’ll quickly see how fixing a time period to work on a task or group of tasks can help you boost your productivity in a big way.

Here are 11 ways to take advantage of time boxing to get more done in your workday.

1. Make Progress on Big Tasks

Setting aside time each day to work on your bigger tasks ensures that you continuously make progress on them, while also preventing them from eating up your entire day.

2. Get Minor Tasks out of the Way

Time boxes help stop you from letting all your little tasks pile up. Instead of continuing to postpone them until they become a major headache, you can create a time box to tackle all of the tasks at once.

Taking vacations is important when you run a work-at-home business. It’s your time to use the money you’ve earned to take a break to really enjoy yourself and recharge so that you can come back fresher and more positive.

There’s a big misconception that being self-employed gives you more freedom. In reality, it’s actually much harder to take time off for yourself. Because you’re responsible for every aspect of your business, it involves a lot more than just handing in a vacation request. You’ll need to plan for the interruption in revenue and let existing and potential clients know where you’ll be so that you can enjoy your time off, worry-free.

Here are some tips to help you plan for a stress-free vacation.

1. Budget for Your Break

To make sure that your time off doesn’t get in the way of paying your bills on time, you’ll need to plan ahead. Remember that you will need to earn enough money to fund not only your vacation expenses, but also the period of time when you will not be making any money. You can start setting aside chunks of your revenue for your vacation budget, as well as put more hours into working to increase your productivity and revenues before your trip.