Time management is an essential skill for entrepreneurs who find themselves being pulled in many directions at once. Besides using a task management timer as we recently suggested here at SeanSEO.com, there are other things you can do as well in order to increase your productivity. Problogger talks about how batch processing helps him and that’s something you can do with your various tasks to stay on target and reach your goals.
Here are a few time management tips:
- Emailing is something most people do throughout the day but instead of checking email every minute or two and giving it a chance to take you away from the task you’re working on, turn off your auto-notification sound or alert and check it hourly instead. When you’re in the middle of a task, don’t be tempted to check it in the middle.
- Sometimes it’s better to be invisible for a bit! Instant messaging and Skype are great but can be very disruptive. Turn them off or stay invisible other than in short periods of time per day so you aren’t constantly interrupted by those who want to chat you up.
Here’s a big one:
Use Social Networking as a Reward
If you use microblogging tools like Plurk and Twitter, only stop in periodically during the day. Save socializing (even if it’s productive socializing) for after you’ve completed a task to reward yourself. For instance, if you’ve submitted to article directories, go on Twitter and Plurk to buzz your articles after you’ve done them and take that time to spend a few minutes surfing the blogosphere or chatting with your friends.
Having a productive lifestyle does take discipline and you occasionally need to hide from online friends and force yourself to work before you can play.
About Sean Rasmussen
A task management tool like http://www.statuswiz.com is hightly effective.
Thanks for sharing, Rohan. I’ll have a look at that tool for sure!
Hi Sean,
My time management is usually pretty good. Just occasionally something will get away from me, but mostly I’m pretty disciplined. Still, you have some great suggestions.
Online with all the interesting articles and pages that can sidetrack you time management is even more important. I guess every body has had this “O gosh, that late? I only wanted to do 15min …” I found that the timer helps me to not go overboard and having the surfing and social media as a reward is probably a good idea
Some great ideas here
I’ll have to check that tool out Rohan
Time management is one of the most difficult things for me. Something always seems to come out of the blue or take longer to complete. One of the biggest things that I have to over-come.
Hi Sean
I like reading anything on Time Management in my quest to be ‘Time Lord’ or master of time if the other title is a bit scary (lol)
I caught myself years ago constantly saying “I don’t have the time” or “I don’t have enough time” or “there’s not enough hours in the day” and you know what? I made that a truth. I was always running around in never ending circles meeting up with myself!
I then started to affirm that I had all the time in the world, time is on my side, I can stretch time to fit any situation or demand, I am a master of time. Now I seem to be able to stretch time so much further and get even more things done. I am always positive about time now. Any helpful hints are graciously received.
Thankyou.
Once you sit down in front of a computer connected to the Internet time management can be one of the first casualties. Unless you are extremely disciplined, it certainly would be wise to employ some time of software (or a separate timer) to help you allocate blocks of time to particular tasks and pastimes.
That’s a sensible suggestion re emails and Twitter et al. Often, I find myself distracted by answering emails and then go off on another tangent and not finishing the task i was originally on. I am actually doing that now (smack!)
But, I am in the throes of correcting my time management – have started to draw up my weekly work timetable – so keep me focussed and on track
“Eat that frog” and ‘Who moved my cheese” are also excellent time management books…and are very short and easy to read. Point taken on social networking…perhaps that is why we have a global financial crisis…no ones working ’cause everyone is on Facebook!!!! m/
Well that is actually a problem now, people spending too much time on facebook that is but isn’t it interesting that people love communicationg so much, even more than ever before which proves that it is an essentially good habit when used in the correct way, which is in a manged time slot.
I find that getting distracted can be quite easy and one problem I have with myself is that I tend to have a lot of tabs open and I tend to go through them to see if there are any updates. Skype can be quite distracting so having your self inactive is a good idea.