Effective Time Management

The article talks about the effort to manage time effectively on a daily basis while having a full time work from home marketing business, a household to keep, a family to care for and lots of dreams about how life could change to the better if "I´m only getting things done".

Time is a very personal thing. It is man-made. Actually it doesn´t exist. Time takes on different characters: it can be long, short, boring, stressful, valuable, the best time in my life, horrible, the good old times… you get the idea? If time is man-made I can influence the way I´m experiencing it.

Finally Getting Things Done

Have you noticed that time tends to rush much faster when you have lots of things to do? In order to manage time effectively you have to be in control. This is not something you can figure out over night, it is a process which can take some time to accomplish.

My personal experience is that "getting things done" and the right time management gives you results rather than lots of unfinished tasks without the feeling of satisfaction. Will power is another important ingredient that helps you to focus on just the item you have decided to work on.

Distractions are everywhere. The telephone rings, the neighbor comes for a cup of coffee, the children come home from school, laundry, preparing dinner, you name it.

Here are a few tips how to get started:

1- Analysis First of all analyze your present situation how things are going right now. Make a list of everything that works fine and another one of items that should be improved.

2- Visualization Now visualize the best of all time schedules you can come up with. Don´t worry how to accomplish that.It will happen. Just visualize it in your mind and feel it as if it had already happened and was reality. If you don´t like what you feel, change the picture.

If you go deep into the feeling part it will provide you with the right motivation to change your present unsatisfying situation and you can always go back into that visualization of your ideal to get support and power for your actions.

3- Prioritize

Make a list of your daily tasks and evaluate their importance. Maybe also make a list of daily, weekly and monthly tasks. This will only help to lessen your burden for a short while because unprioritized tasks are always in the back of your mind all jumbled up together.

When you´ve sorted out a few and written them down, giving them a 5 or a 10 for importance you will soon notice that you just have a small number of tasks that are really urgent and others that can wait to be taken care of.

4- Focus

Now that you have separated the urgent from the less important take your time and try to find out which working speed you are comfortable with. Working should be fun! For me it is totally unacceptable to do things in a hurry. I set a wider time frame because this way I get better results. I want to be satisfied with my work.

But this doesn´t have to apply to your style. Anyway, find out your working speed and estimate how long a certain task will take you to get it done. Then focus on just that one within the given time period and don´t let anything distract you.

5- Decisiveness

Decision making is one of the most important tasks when starting or having a home business. No action without a decision and without decisions you don´t have a business. Try to be aware of your decisions. If necessary, write them down in your business diary or daybook.

It helps keep you on track and at the same time you can always look back, follow your personal development and the progress of your venture.

After all the man-made day has 24 hours and it depends totally on the set of values we carry in our hearts and minds how we experience time, our lifetime. Sometimes we tend to get lost in greed or certain material goals which do not guarantee a life in happiness.

Maybe once in a while it would be a good idea to evaluate what our lifetime means to us and what we want to spend it with. It is totally up to us to change anything that does not satisfy us.