Three Thoughts Thursday: Scheduling Your Day
Since we work from home, scheduling is essential in order to get everything done we need to in our business and our personal lives on a daily basis. That being said, we all know things don’t always go as planned, especially when you work from home. Here are my Three Thoughts on Scheduling Your Day as a work at home business owner.
1. Plan your day the night before, so you know exactly what you need to do. Since you work from home, include all the personal stuff that needs to get done and schedule it in as well. I have a daily planner where I write the business stuff down in red and personal in blue, but put it all in the same place.
2. Give yourself more time than you think you need for each task. It ALWAYS takes longer when you want to do a job right. Especially if you happen to have kids at home, you’re bound to get interrupted at least a few times a day.
3. Forgive yourself if you don’t complete all your tasks. We’re only human after all and things come up. Just be sure to reschedule those things that didn’t get crossed off your list appropriately. Getting stressed out about it doesn’t help anyone.
Feel free to share your own tips. I’m sure we need all the organization help we can get!
5 Comments:
Love the suggestion about using two colored pens Alice. I make two separate lists the night before - business and personal. What a great idea to be able to just operate from one list. So simple - now why didn't I think of that? :) Thanks Alice!
~Stephanie
Forgiving yourself is a big thing for me. I make to do lists and usually cant complete it all...then I feel horrible.
Nell
PS
You've been CBC'ed if interested.
http://answerladynetwork.com/blog/2007/10/18/cross-blog-conversations-are-fun/
I create my "To Do" list the night before. Then the next day I know what to work on.
I'm reading a book about time management, and the first thing the author says is this: There's no such thing as time management. You can only manage yourself! Looking at it from that perspective makes me feel a little more in control of my day.
I break every big item on my list into several small tasks, then check them off as I complete each small task. Even if the big item isn't done at the end of the day, I can see that I've made progress and feel good about that.
I don't make to do lists but I have a to do list :) How's that?
My friends will probably want to smack my head now for talking so much about GTD (Getting It Done). I'm a huge fan.
Everybody practices GTD differently, but at the very heart of it, this is what I do. Brain dump. Every day of every minute I dump anything I have to do into a trusted system. This can be anything paper or planner etc as long as you'll use it. I enter mine into an outliner on my Palm and desktop.
So, I would be on the treadmill or outside with the kids. If I'm suddenly reminded of something to do, I take it down. Everything. Including blog post ideas, don't forget the milk type messages, school stuff etc.
These are processed and organized into Home, At the Computer, In Town or Call. So when I'm at the computer I suddenly have an automatic to do list to work on. If I'm in town, I quickly refer to the In town section and see what needs to be done.
Being a huge procrastinator this has really worked out nicely for me. Before GTD, I would create regular to do lists and get so guilty about not finishing them.
Now, I don't because if I'm in town, I'm not at the computer so I don't sweat the stuff that needs to be done at the computer. When I do get back to my computer, everything is there on my list. GTD is nice like that because you make a habit of taking everything down, you don't 'forget' or get stressed over those days you know you have tons to do but not quite sure what they all are or where to start.
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