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OK, so I promised my next post would be about time management and I thought I would do it today as I have had a full day of relaxation/procrastination!!

So lets get into this then.

I have always struggled with time management to the point where my final coursework for Uni wasn’t started until the night before the hand in! Needless to say a bottle of aftershock and an all nighter later the coursework was handed in with a couple of hours to spare and I ended up with a first for it!! However I don’t recommend this style of time management for anyone!! I count myself as very lucky for this!

I am now planning my time a lot more successfully with daily to do lists and plans for the weeks/months ahead. I also do a lot of prioritization of my time. So I guess you want the gory details now…

Step 1

Every day I write down what I am doing and for how long on what I and others call ‘daily did sheets.’ These are amazing, they help you see exactly what you have achieved for the day and they also show you where you have been wasting time! It has pretty much revolutionized the way I work on my business.

Once the day is over I go through my did sheet alongside my to do list and see what I need to move on to the next day and also note down all the unproductive tasks I have done during the day. This helps me to re-evaluate my goals on a daily basis to keep me on track and it also helps me eliminate my hours of procrastination! There is nothing quite like getting to the end of the day and seeing you have spent 4 hours on a completely useless task that got you no further on. Or worse 4 hours of playing PS3 games when you said you would only have a half an hour break!!! Thats always a killer!

Step 2

Anyway, once I have gone through the days sheets I will create the to do list for the next day and prioritize it all and give each task an estimated timescale (these never hold true for me yet). I then tick off the major tasks that I have completed on my main business plans and feel very contempt with my achievements.

I have to say this is one of the great pleasures of planning your time. I always get an enormous sense of well being (thank you Blur) looking back over the day and knowing how much I have got done and how much further forward I am! It gives me that little boost needed to create the next days task list.

Step 3

First thing in the morning I review the task list I have written the night before even before getting out of bed. I sometimes add to it at this stage as a nights rest may have given me some inspiration or helped me to solve one of the tasks in a much shorter time (do I hear you say OUTSOURCING!!)

Once I am up and about I start with the biggest or most important task of the day to get it out of the way. This also helps you to feel like you have achieved a lot more as you have got your main task out of the way early. I will then usually go for a ‘B’ priority task just to break it up a bit as long as it is a short one. Then it’s back to the main priorities for the day. Get them all out of the way as soon as you can as these are what should enable you to progress further quicker.

Step 4

I break each task down into 1 hour chunks. These hours are completely devoted to the task in hand with no distractions, no phone, email, facebook, msn, skype et al. Todays world is full of distractions and just getting away from them for an hour will increase your productivity no end! At the end of each hour whether I have finished the task or not I stand up and take a break. Even if it is just walking around the house or making a cup of tea. It’s important to take that break to refresh your mind. You will then come back to the task with a slightly different perspective and be willing to carry on for another hour. Handy tip for this is to get a countdown timer. Set it for an hour at the start of each block and no matter what, stop when that timer pings (do timers still ping these days, Mine is digital so it doesn’t. Just curios!)

Once all my ‘A’ tasks are out of the way I then go down the list through the ‘B’s’ and ‘C’s’ until it’s time to sleep or if I’m lucky time to go out and relax! The early days of any business are the hardest and an online business is no different. You have to work so hard to get everything up and running before your business can even be called a business in my opinion!

I have found a new level of commitment to my business since starting to do more time management that I have got so much done in the past couple of months it puts the last 2 years to shame! I really don’t know what I have been doing all this time, literally I have no idea. I don’t have any record of anything I did, apart from a few really crappy websites that make me no money!!

I think that is all I have to say right now on this topic but if you want to know more just leave a comment and I’ll try and help you out as best I can! Thanks for reading again I hope you know it’s you guys that keep me going and without you this would just be another empty blog of some guy talking about some subject!

Thanks again

Simon

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Filed under: My Story So Far • Tips and Tricks

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