How to Improve Time Management and Get Your Family to Support Your Online Business
As an online entrepreneur, you may find that you are constantly behind on your work. You may even feel that you have a time management problem. If so you might find yourself stressed, down on yourself or even having low productivity. But time management problems can be solved in just a few minutes if you think of time management as a separate problem from productivity and implementation themselves.
Let’s take a look.
What is your level of commitment to your biz?
When you assess your time with our Take Charge of Your Time download, you will better understand your level of commitment to your business. If you are slating out regular hours for your business, you are much more committed to it than if you are squeezing it in here and there. Once you see this in black and white, you can determine if slating out more time on a consistent basis is required for you to achieve your goal. In addition, you can determine if building a business is truly a priority to you right now or not.
How much time do you think you spend on your business?
It may not surprise you that you may think you spend more time than you actually do on our business. For example, you may sit down at your desk to work on your business, but do you actually work on your business? Or do you pay bills, check your email, look at social media, play a game, text your sister, shop, etc. By using our assessment guide, you may find that you are using your highest quality time on things that don’t matter to the bottom line of your business.
How much time do you actually spend on your business?
Using our assessment, you can determine how much time you will spend on your business and how much of that time is high-quality time: the time where you commit to fully focusing on your work. In addition, you can determine what to work on and when to work, based on the quality of time required for each task. Can you work on this item even if you have interruptions or not?
Does your family respect the time you need to spend on your business?
There can be a lot of emotion around this topic, but if you are being honest with yourself, you cannot have a successful business in secret. You must communicate your desires, goals and commitment to your business with your family.
If you don’t take your business seriously, your family won’t either. If you want their blessing and support, you must communicate the time commitment that it will take and how that will affect your family.
By being upfront with this, you will set expectations for everyone. No surprises.
By setting regular office hours you can assist your family in knowing what to expect for the week so they can plan around your schedule if they are in need of your time.
Leverage Your Own Behavior
Our Take Charge of Your Time guide will help you learn to leverage your own behavior patterns to find your most productive time to work on your business. You can still be flexible and by assessing your time needs each week, you can work around anything that comes up like doctor appointments and emergencies.
At the more detailed level, you can find time when you will have no interruptions for tasks that take full focus. You can also, leverage time when you may have disruptions by focusing on tasks that require less concentration.
The bottom line is that if you pay attention, you will find those windows of time when you are most productive and when you are most able to put time toward your business.
Set Office Hours
Setting regular office hours and posting those hours on your office door, the back of your laptop or on the fridge will help you and your family to know what your schedule is and when they can utilize your time. Consistency is best for everyone and having a repeating schedule will help your family get into a rhythm with you.
Communicate Your Time Commitment with Your Family
Communication is key if you want your family to respect the time you spend on your business. Visual reminders can help them as well. Post those things prominently where everyone can see. Our Take Charge of Your Time Guide will provide you with printable tools to communicate with your family that even a small child can understand.
Set Boundaries
Set boundaries by reminding your family about your schedule when they interrupt your work time with personal matters. Simply tell them you will be happy to talk to them or help them at the time you will be available; when you will have a break from your work.
Check out Our Take Charge of Your Time Guide
Remember that as an entrepreneur, it is up to you to create structure in your business that supports productivity and implementation. If you had a job, your employer would create that structure for you. But since you are your own boss, you must do that for your business and for yourself.
Our Take Charge course series is all about creating structure to lean on so you can stay focused on what matters now while keeping your eye on the goal.
So grab our free Take Charge of Your Time Guide and in 10 minutes you will have a better handle on your time constraints and a better plan to leverage the time you have.
