Keeping track of the endless tasks that need doing and appointments that need keeping can be a real challenge. Many small business owners wear all the hats in their business, so juggling the daily schedule and completing everything is often on the shoulders of one person. Not to mention fitting in what is needed in our lives outside work, keeping the balance!

When working from home it is easy to fall into the trap of spending too much or not enough time in the office as distractions and needs of home and family often overlap. It takes careful balance and skill to get the management of your time just right.

Rest assured there are some quick and effective planning tricks you can use to keep your time tamed, and your schedule under control.

Breaking down tasks into when and how often they should be handled is the first step to taming time. If you do break down to Daily, Weekly and monthly Business tasks you are well on the way to managing everything in a timely and efficient manner.

A common mistake many people make is to have a separate diary/planner for business and personal. It is vital that you only use ONE planner/diary for everything. Many people who use more than one are also know for lateness, double booking and missed appointments. By streamlining into one schedule for all your activities you will save yourself huge amounts of time, stress and energy.

In your planner make a recurring appointment on either Sunday PM or Monday AM for 30-60 minutes to do your planning. Gather the information for all the activities, tasks and appointments coming up and put them in your planner. If you need to, use a different color for business, personal etc. you must put everything in. The first appointments you should make are those with yourself. This is when you will schedule personal and vital activities that give you time out to look after you, also the times you need to do things like reading etc.

Once you have scheduled “me” time, then you can go and schedule all your other appointments and tasks.

Some examples of this are:

Daily tasks:

Make time in your planner to get the following things done on a daily basis, once you get the hang of it the mail should take 10 minutes at the most.

• Review to-do list and schedule to action items for that day.
• Read any URGENT items in your reading file.
• Back up Computer files at the end of the day.
• Check and sort mail into following:       
• Filing
• Action
• Invoices to pay
• Reading file

Weekly tasks:

• Empty your filing tray- file away all these items in to the appropriate file.
• Schedule one hour of uninterrupted reading time, go through items in your reading file in this time.
• Ensure you have entered items into your accounting system.
• Send out invoices to clients – schedule this task. Many business owners go weeks before invoicing for service, bad practice for good cash flow.
• Enter all new contacts, enquiries and clients into your Contact Management System.
• Follow-up ALL potential new client leads from the week.
• Celebrate achievements from previous week

Monthly tasks:

• Pay all outstanding invoices.
• Clear office of any clutter that has accumulated.
• Cull old items from reading file, more than one month is old news.
• Go through and archive or delete your emails.
• Attend at least one networking meeting in your area to gather new leads.

These are just examples of some of the regular tasks you are likely to have in your schedule.

Make recurring appointments on the same day each week for each weekly task. Know when you work best at certain things.  For example don’t schedule reading time for when you are most alert as that is the best time to be seeing clients etc. reading time can be at the beginning or end of Friday for example.

It is also important to schedule “inactive” time, these are the times you can use to reschedule or deal with those things that just seem to crop up at the last minute. Having some contingency time in your schedule allows you to deal with emergencies. Also allow extra time before and after client or sales meetings. If you are scheduling these back to back, you will inevitably be late for appointments and not have time to take notes and return calls after meetings.

Making your schedule work for you by being effective, efficient and on time gives your business a professional appearance. By trying to fit too much in and cramming in appointments your business can begin to look disorganized, as being late or missing appointments can seem like disinterest to your clients and colleagues.

Remember in your business time means money, so invest it wisely and make it work for you.

For further reading try:

“Getting a grip on Time”, Robyn Pearce

“Getting Things Done”, David Allen

“Eat that Frog”, Brian Tracy