I used to laugh at people who said to me that I needed to be aware of my time management when I start working from home. I honestly thought it was an easy concept and wondered why people made it out to be so important – anyone could time manage right? How wrong was I! Time management is a crucial factor in ensuring you have the lifestyle out of work you want, have maximum productivity, earn the most money in the shortest possible space of time each day and keeps you motivated towards your business. Here are my main 5 time wasting activities and tips to help you with your time management.

Friends & family

It is great to see friends and family, however, surprising me in the middle of a week day to take me out to lunch/have a catch up is not helpful for motivation because the likelihood that I would get back to work after lunch and have a productive afternoon would be very slim. However, if you read the next tip you can structure your work day around not having to work in the afternoon. Family and friends tend to not understand the importance of no distractions when you work from home, so they feel it is ok to pop in and distract you from the email/article/work/phone call you were in the middle of. Before you know it 1-2hours of your day has disappeared. One way round this is to ask friends and family to “pop in” after 3pm during the week or at lunchtime or schedule in a time to catch up.

Start early to finish early.

I am not an early bird, however, the thought of starting my day at 7.30am so I can finish my day at 1.30pm gets me springing out of bed in the morning. I really enjoy having my afternoons free to do whatever takes my fancy! Personally, I have found that an uninterrupted morning of a 6 hour stint is far more productive than a full 8 hour day with breaks in. Your daily structure does need to be tailored around your most productive times of day and how you work. But choosing to start early does ensure that by 2pm you can be outside with your children, animals, friends and family doing anything you want knowing you ha

ve already done a full day. This is great for job satisfaction, giving you a great quality of life and ensures you have a lifestyle you want as well as your own business. Go and start that hobby/sport you have always wanted to do!

Procrastination

This is the main big issue for most self-employed people. It is a lot more fun to research your next holiday than it is to work. I have even found myself tidying the house (which I hate doing) over working on my latest project. I have no idea why this happens but if you applied the same energy used to procrastinate to your work you would probably surprise yourself with how much you can get done. Not to mention decrease your stress levels – there is nothing better for job satisfaction than having a productive day!

Emails, emails, emails

As an avid email checker it really is important to only look at your emails twice a day. I have found myself on numerous occasions replying to non-urgent, unimportant emails instead of concentrating on my important piece of work that needs to be completed today. People are used to only being emailed during working hours, they really won’t mind if you don’t reply to them at 8pm in the evening because chances are that they won’t even reply back to you until after 9am the following day.

Meetings

I love meetings – I could pencil them in to fill my days. However, you don’t get paid for them (most of the time) and you end up using up your day without much to show for it. Therefore, my suggestion to you if you were going to adopt the early to work system is that you should pencil your meetings into your afternoons when you are free. This way you can get a full work day in so you aren’t in the meeting worrying about that email you needed to send or the phone call you needed to make because you will have completed your tasks for the day.