9 Business Time Management Skills You Need To Succeed

By Dan Preston

Do you have plenty to do, but don’t have enough time to do it all in? These days it appears there is a mad scramble to accomplish more in a shorter amount of time.

As a business owner, there will be times that you feel overwhelmed with tasks you want to accomplish, but seem to never have enough time to complete everything.

Here you will find 9 time management suggestions which will in turn help you accomplish tasks more efficiently and give you a chance to open up more opportunities to do the things you'd rather be doing.

1) Create A To Do List – Having a well plotted “To Do List” will keep you focused on the tasks that need attention and will help you from straying away from the things you want or need to accomplish.

2) Prioritize Your To Do List – If you have a “To Do” list that contains several tasks, it is wise to separate the items that must be done now from the ones that hold lesser importance. Tasks with a deadline should be first on your priority list.

3) Spend Time Planning – Using your time to plan and think ahead is time spent wisely. Having a clear direction where you want your business to be in a few years down the road will allow you to spend your precious time and money more effectively and efficiently. It has been said, that if you do not plan, then you are planning to fail.

4) Create Goals For Yourself – Without goals your life would have no direction. When setting goals be sure to create ones that are specific, achievable, realistic and at the same time cause you to reach beyond your comfort zone so that you gain the ability to reach those goals that are more difficult to obtain than others.

5) Overcome Procrastination – Many people put off things that they don’t want to do until the very last minute. One way to overcome procrastination is to work on tasks just a little bit at a time or for only a set time period rather than for long time periods all at once. This way you are still getting your important tasks done, but just at a slower rate.

6) Eliminate Important Tasks First – Check off on your “To Do” list as to which tasks out rank others as far as importance is concerned. By doing this you will not get side tracked or find yourself in a deadline rush to get the items with greater rewards finished on time. Once the important tasks are completed then you should move onto the less important items on your list.

7) Nobody’s Perfect – Doing a job well to the best of your abilities is a practice of honorable measures. By spending the time to try and be perfect at everything you do is not time well spent because the time you do spend could be used at accomplishing other important tasks. Although, some things do need to be close to perfect, but not all.

8) Be Flexible – Plan your time so that if there are distractions or emergencies to attend to, you won’t find yourself in a situation where you must delay the completion of important tasks, but can attend to the distraction and still keep on schedule.

9) Treat Yourself – To make life happier and healthier for oneself, it is important that you take time away from your work to just have some fun. If all you do is work, work, work, then accomplishing the goals you have set for yourself will have little meaning and you risk mental burnout. Taking time out to have fun is also necessary to relieve yourself from the many stresses that life has to offer.

Dan Preston has been in the ebook business for over 3 years and has enjoyed every moment of it. His website InfoHeaven Digital Books offers a variety of ebooks big enough to answer almost anyone's how-to questions. http://online-book-store.net

Tips to Manage Incoming E-mail

By Pam Woods

Friends, colleagues, and clients are all telling me that one of their biggest challenges is trying to manage e-mail overload. They say everyone wants something from them and consequently, they’re buried in e-mail. Is this a struggle for you? If so, here are a few tips that will save you some time in reading and receiving e-mail.

1. Limit personal e-mail at work.

Yes, this may seem a drastic step but it’s one that will help you stay focused on priorities so you can complete your work and then spend time doing the things that mean the most to you.

2. Use a spam program.

Your employer or ISP may already cover this but if you are running your own system you’ll want a spam blocker to help minimize unwanted e-mail as much as possible. (Tip: PC World rates Cloudmark's SpamNet as one of the best.)

3. Use folders to store e-mail.

Your inbox isn’t a storage facility, it’s for incoming mail. Create folders within your e-mail program that “mirror” the folders you use to store hardcopy in your office/workspace.

4. Change the subject of e-mails to summarize its content.

Make it easy to find any e-mail you decide to keep by changing the subject. For example: if you receive an e-mail with the subject “Update” and it turns out to be a request for you to send someone an update, change the subject to “Send John Doe product update on 8/29/05.” This functionality is available in most e-mail programs.

5. Limit the frequency with which you review and process incoming e-mail to 2 or 3x’s per day.

Pick times other than when you are most focused, creative, or energized.

6. As a general rule, separate the task of “processing” your incoming e-mail from “working” on your e-mail.

Exception: If you can reply or forward an e-mail in a minute or two, do it, then delete it. Otherwise, save the doing/replying/composing for a later work period.

7. Organize your e-mail by “Received” order.

In other words, make sure you’ve set up your inbox so the newest e-mails are on top.

8. Empty your e-mail inbox in five steps. Here’s how:

• Scan all e-mail and delete the spam. It’s impossible to filter out all spam but you can learn to recognize it so you don’t waste time opening it or getting a virus. Common characteristics include: a random series of numbers in the “From” address, the “Subject” is followed by six spaces then a number, or the subject ends with three exclamation marks.
• Review remaining e-mails from oldest to newest and in order of importance. Read “high importance” and “to do” e-mails, then scan “FYI’s” and “newsletter” e-mails.
• If an e-mail contains information you want to reference later: a) drag it to the appropriate e-mail folder, or b) print it, delete it and file the hardcopy with like material.
• If an e-mail requires that you take an action: a) record the action in your calendar, then b) delete it or file it for future reference.
• If after reviewing an e-mail you determine it has no future value, delete it.

The volume of e-mail you receive isn’t likely to slow down. In fact, Bill Gates, Business Week and a host of other industry experts say e-mail overload is a drag on productivity. Try these techniques and don’t let electronic missives get you down.

Pam N. Woods is co-author of a bestselling book, Create the Business Breakthrough You Want: Secrets and Strategies from the World's Greatest Mentors; endorsed by Ken Blanchard and Dr. Stephen Covey. She is a Coach U graduate and President of Smart WorkLife Solutions, a coaching and consulting company devoted to co-creating customized solutions to fit clients business and personal organizing needs. Prior to founding her own firm she had a successful 20+ year career as an insurance executive and Vice President of Human Resources. For more free how-to articles and advice, or to contact Woods, visit http://www.worklifecoach.com Copyright 2005 - Pam Woods

Making the Best Use of Your Time

By Gary Simpson

Time - it is the one thing that we are all running out of. It cannot be replaced. When it is spent, it is spent.

What, then, are you doing to ensure that you are maximizing the use of time?"

Understand that time will pass regardless of whether you spend it wisely or simply waste it.

You can make time your friend or it can be your worst enemy. Most people leave important tasks till the last possible moment then they are forced by self-imposed circumstance to rush everything. This is a lack of planning and responsibility , often borne from that other scourge called procrastination - the inability to begin.

Leaving things until the "eleventh hour" is where that horrible word "URGENT" comes from. Whenever you hear that word you can almost certainly be sure that somebody in the chain is trying to deflect the blame onto somebody else for their own slackness. You don't do that do you?

How many times have you heard people complain that they "haven't had time!"? What they really mean, and what they should be saying, is "I left it too late and ran out of time." Ever hear anybody say that? Uh-uh - that sounds too self-deprecating doesn't it? So they blame time itself.

Time does not care how you spend it. You can use it to create marvelous things in your life or you can waste it. All of us have only 168 hours per week. About a third of that is spent re-charging, that is, sleeping. That leaves 112 hours to use - more than enough to achieve anything you want.

I have a saying about sleep. "You can sleep all you want when you are dead." In the meantime, if you have something really important to do then get up an hour earlier in the morning. Conversely, if you are a "night person" you can stay awake for several hours in the evening to get things done.

The wise use of time is the mark of a successful person.

Plan your actions. Use time wisely - you are never going to get it back. The clock is always ticking. Tick. Tick. Tick...

About the author: Gary Simpson is the author of eight books covering a diverse range of subjects such as self esteem, affirmations, self defense, finance and much more. His articles appear all over the web. Gary's email address is budo@iinet.net.au. Click here to go to his
Motivation & Self Esteem for Success website.

Time Management: Analysis is the Key to Mastery

By Burt Carlson

If you’re like most people, you want to get better at managing your time, whether at work or at home. The question is, do you know where to start?

Unless you have a clear idea of where you are right now, no road map is going to help you get to your destination. That’s why, before you can think about managing your time well, you need to analyze how you’re using your time today.

Let’s backtrack a bit. Have you ever made statements like these?

"I’ll come over in a minute."

"Just give me a couple of minutes to get dressed and finish breakfast."

"I’m on my way; I’ll be there in two minutes."

If you think about it, all the above statements are probably false. There’s no way most folks will get dressed and finish breakfast in two minutes. And arriving at your destination in a minute or two is usually quite unlikely.

Yet we make such statements regularly. That’s because we often do not realize the amount of time we actually take to finish certain tasks.

To get a better grip on your time usage patterns, try and estimate the time you take for the following activities.

* Draft a letter to a customer

* Look through a file and sign it

* Have a cup of coffee

* Hold a meeting to brief your team

* Confer with your boss

* Prepare a presentation to senior management

* Lead a seminar

* Chat with colleagues

* Read emails

* Respond to emails

* Read through a one page letter

Feel free to add to the list above. Include activities you do regularly.

Have your time estimates ready? Here’s what to do next.

Pick out the three fairly time consuming activities you do repeatedly. Get a stopwatch and time yourself when you do those activities. Take care not to try to speed up those tasks while you’re timing them. Just work as usual.

Now compare the results with your estimates. Surprised? Most people are, when they discover that doing certain tasks takes much longer than they imagined.

The previous exercise had one goal -- to convince you that you need to take some effort and find out how you actually use your time.

Your next step is to maintain a running log of all your activities and the start and end times of each. Do this for a full week. Don’t stop and analyze your performance in between.

You can get your secretary to help you do this. But it works just as well if you keep the records yourself.

It’s not important to get your timing down to the microsecond! Just note down the approximate start and end-times of each activity, in serial order as you do them. The objective is to get a snapshot of what you do and how long it takes you to do them.

At the end of one full working week, sit down with your logs. Make a list of each of the tasks you do. Jot down the amounts of time you took to do them, for each day of the week.

Which are the repetitive activities? Which ones consume the most time? Are the tasks that consume the maximum time also the tasks that contribute the most to your performance? If not, is there any way you can eliminate those tasks -- perhaps by delegating them?

Are you taking on work that is not yours to being with? If so, perhaps you need to say no more often.

Take the time to think through what your log reveals about your work habits -- and about you. By doing so, you’ve taken a big step towards managing your time excellently. Repeat this process every few months and you’ll get far better results that others whose notion of time management is limited to writing a to-do list.

Burt Carlson is a top corporate executive whose passion is helping people get more out of life by managing their time better. He has written on time management and work, motivation, getting organized for better results and many other topics.

Time Management: How to Stay Motivated and Get More Done

By Burt Carlson

If you can motivate yourself at will to get any task done, you’ll have taken a huge step towards managing your time better. There are several practical ways to increase your motivation.

There are a couple of facts to remember about human beings in general. One, newness is a great spur to motivation. Think about when you took up a new job. Everything was fresh and you applied yourself to your work with great enthusiasm.

But that wore out after a few weeks or months. You settled down into a routine and work become dull and uninteresting again. That’s because you lost your sense of newness.

The second thing to remember is that while the human mind can accomplish a stunning range of tasks, the same mind is also easily distracted. Some studies show that the average person’s attention span does not exceed 35 minutes or so. Others claim it’s even less.

This tendency to get distracted easily is a key reason why we often have a hard time motivating ourselves to do a task.

With that in mind, here are 8 things you can do to get and stay motivated.

#1. Recognize your penchant for getting distracted. Take short breaks every half an hour or so; walk away from your workstation. Experiment and find out the optimum length of time you can work before you need a break. You’ll find your motivation goes up during the time you stay at the task.

#2. To satisfy your need for freshness and change, alternate between two tasks. If you keep at a single task for too long, you’re almost certain to lose motivation.

You can even exchange specific tasks with another colleague, if your work situation permits it.

#3. It has been shown that soft music, especially baroque music, is a great aid to work. If possible, arrange for background music at your workplace.

#4. Make your work environment more appealing by using humorous posters (like those ‘Dennis the Menace’ posters) to make you smile. Have several available and once in a while, change the posters.

#5. On a related note, potted plants can be great stress relievers. Place one or two around your workstation. Do water them as needed; wilted plants are no good!

# 6. Create a list of the most important tasks you need to do the next day. Prioritize the list. And keep working in the order of your priorities. Being able to check off the most important items for each day is in itself a terrific motivator.

#7. Anytime you feel the stress getting to you or if you feel particularly distracted, just lean back in your chair and close your eyes for a minute or two. Hum a favorite tune softly. If you can’t relax in your chair, go to the restroom and do so.

#8. Implement a reward system for yourself. Decide in advance what you’ll reward yourself with when you complete certain tasks. It could be as small as an inexpensive trinket from a gift shop or a chocolate bar. It could even be a stroll in a nearby park.

Don’t neglect the reward routine. It’s one of the best motivators there is.

Burt Carlson is a top corporate executive whose passion is helping people get more out of life by managing their time better. He has written on time management skills, overcoming procrastination, time management at the workplace and many other topics.

Time Management: How to Make Your Meetings More Productive

By Burt Carlson

In most organizations, meetings are often the biggest time-wasters. With a bit of planning, it’s possible to both shorten the time spent in meetings and to make that time more productive. Here’s how.

* Let all participants know why you’re holding the meeting, what’s to be accomplished and what each participant is being called upon to contribute. This should be communicated well before the meeting.

* If any of the participants need to do preparatory work before the meeting, mention that fact. Don’t take it for granted that such preparation will be taken care of automatically.

* If the meeting is a follow-up to an earlier meeting, circulate a copy of the minutes of the latter, even if it has been done before. This is especially true if there’s been a significant time gap between the first meeting and the follow-up.

* Try to see that everyone arrives in time and is already seated when the meeting is due to begin. Someone walking in midway through a meeting can be a great distraction.

* Serving refreshments while a meeting is in progress is also a distraction. Set out refreshments before the meeting starts. Schedule breaks for refreshments if the meeting is to go on for several hours or a day.

* Make copies of all necessary papers. Passing around a single set of documents for everyone to read is highly unproductive. Yet, it’s surprising how often something as simple as this is not taken care of.

* Stick to the point. Whoever is presiding over the meeting should be ready to intervene if someone is digressing from the topic. Beating around the bush is a huge time-waster.

* Minimize interruptions from other participants when someone is speaking. Others can respond when the person has finished speaking.

* All cell phones must be switched off. Calls on land lines should be deferred as far as possible.

* The meeting should end with a summary of the main points covered and the conclusions reached. You should also spell out who is responsible for each specific action to be taken, along with a timeframe. Later, a written communication covering all these points should go out to all participants.

Making meetings more useful is all about using a commonsense approach. Stick to the above guidelines and watch your meetings become far more productive.

Burt Carlson is a top corporate executive whose passion is helping people get more out of life by managing their time better. He has written on developing time management skills, organizing your workday, eliminating procrastination plus many other topics.

Quick Tips On Time Management

By Ed Smith

Want to improve your time management?

Edward W. Smith, motivational speaker, author and TV show host, who specializes in quick tips on how to move your life ahead even faster, offers the following advice.

First, write out your top three priority goals.

Next commit to only working on these three until they have been completed. Then layout a plan that includes how each goal is to be achieved. Formulate a "time" budget that goes with each part of the plan, so you can understand what is involved with the projects.

Next begin to lay out a flow of the steps needed to be done across a time line and plug it into you daily schedule with "appointments" to work on specific tasks at specific times. Take into account your personal effectiveness level at various points of the day, scheduling more intensive tasks for when you are at your peak mentally. Say no to people and distractions that take you away from these priorities.

Finally, don't get bogged down trying to make things perfect, do enough to get things moving and go on to the next step.

Contact Information
Edward W. Smith, 201-568-0019, edsmith@brightmoment.com,
www.brightmoment.com, PO box 8106, Englewood NJ 07631-8106

Copyright Edward W. Smith 2005

Edward W. Smith is the Author of Sixty Seconds To Success, produces and hosts the Bright Moment TV show, is a motivational speaker and is president of the Bright Moment Seminars.

Time Management: 11 Tips

By Amy Andrews

Work more efficiently and be more productive using these time-management tips:


Use a timer.
Pick one item on your to-do list, set your timer for 15 minutes and get to work. Don't worry about finishing, just get started. It's easy to feel overwhelmed and get nothing done at all. Tackling tasks in small chunks helps you stay focused.
Delegate.
Don't be afraid to enlist the help of others to complete projects that are time consuming or monotonous. Whether you have to hire a professional or your 10-year old son, do it.
Set goals.
It's much easier to get something done if you know exactly what it is you're working toward. Set long-term goals first and then determine the short-term goals that will serve as stepping stones toward the larger goal.
Sort mail immediately.
Mail can quickly become beastly, taking over every nook and cranny. When you get your mail each day, open it directly over the garbage can. Most likely, the bulk of it can be dropped right in. For the rest, determine what action needs to be taken and deal with it appropriately.
Make an appointment with yourself.
Schedule at least one hour each day for "catch up" tasks such as work overflow, returning phone calls, answering emails etc. If you pencil time into your calendar, you're less likely to let the mundane (but necessary) tasks pile up.
Become friends with your voice mail.
Don't be a slave to the phone. It really is OK to let voice mail get it once in a while.
Have an assembly line mentality.
Complete like tasks together such as returning phone calls, answering email, sending out invoices etc. You'll be much more productive.
Work when you're most alert.
Figure out your most productive time of day and set your work schedule accordingly.
Use checklists.
For tasks that must be completed on a regular basis, make and keep simple checklists to ensure you don't overlook important steps in the process.
Give everything a place.
Don't waste your time trying to find things that seemed to have disappeared. Organize your workspace so that every item has a home. It'll make locating and storing items a snap.
Be prepared.
Reserve 5 minutes at the end of each day to review your schedule for the next. That way, you'll have no surprises.

Amy Andrews is the owner of SimplyComplete.com, where businesses & individuals hand off their "got-to-dos" so they can focus on their "want-to-dos."

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Time Management

By Kimberly Olver

Does it ever feel like there is never enough time in the day? Are you always rushing? Do you feel stressed at the end of the day? Do you believe that you are not accomplishing what you hoped? Better time management may be the answer.

Dr. Respect at http://marcusgentry.blogspot.com says we must “protect, organize and prioritize our time”. If you are having any of the above listed difficulties, then my guess is you are missing at least one of those elements.

Protecting our time is important. We all have the same amount of time in a day. It’s what we do with it that is critical. Do you find yourself doing things you really don’t want to do or spending time with people who take more than they give? These are examples of not protecting your time.

Your time is your gift to spend, as you will. You can spend it wisely or you can waste it. It’s your choice. However, one thing you can’t do is get it back to do over again.

Sometimes we all do things that we don’t really want to be doing but when we do, it should be in furtherance of a bigger goal that we have. Maybe we don’t want to be going to work today but we want to collect our paycheck at the end of the week, so it’s something we choose to do to get to the bigger payoff.

However, there are things that we do that just aren’t important, don’t lead to anything and waste our time. Can you think of any activities that fall into that category for you? Do you know that the average American watches on average three hours of television each day? How is that for a time waster?

I know when I first got my computer, one of the things I unwisely spent my time on was computer games. I don’t mean an occasional game here or there. I’m talking about an addiction, an obsession---playing solitaire until 2 AM. If I didn’t get that under control, I would have not only been wasting my time, but I would have been wasting my life.

I have three general categories for which I like to protect my time. One is for making progress toward my work/life goals. These are the things I do to move me forward in life. These are generally geared toward helping people in some way, generating more clientele, and increasing my revenue streams.

In this category, it is my sincere hope that one day I will have enough income to hire out all those necessary jobs that I don’t love to do so that I can focus all my time on the things that are my passion but until that time, there are still things I do to move myself forward that I don’t totally love. However, I try to get them done as quickly and as painlessly as possible.

The second category would be spending time with people I care about---those people who nurture me. I protect time for the special man in my life, my sons, my extended family and my friends. There are some people whom I avoid when I am protecting my time. They are the ones who generally take more than they give. Do you have people like that in your life? If they can’t be totally eliminated, at least minimize the time you give to these people.

The third category would be simply things that bring me pleasure or joy. There are things I do that I can do alone or with others when I need relaxation. I like to read a good book, watch a good movie, horseback ride, canoe, ski, walk in the woods and something I got to do this weekend---swim. Protect your time so that you get to do the things that bring you joy.

Organizing your time has to do with having a good time management system. Don’t wait until something is due tomorrow to start on it. Have a good plan and systems in place so you are in charge of your time instead of your schedule being in charge of you. Learn more about time management systems in our Time Management teleclass.

Another aspect of organizing one’s time is maintaining laser-like focus. Did you know that the average person’s mind wanders around seven to eight times a minute? Developing good work habits that include staying focused until the job is done is critical to organization.

Prioritizing your time has to do with deciding what’s most important. I said I have three categories---goal-oriented actions, time with important people and time doing enjoyable activities. They don’t necessarily prioritize in that order.

There must be a balance. I know that when I spend too much time working, I start to feel on edge and tense. This is generally a strong indicator that I need to switch my focus to one of the other areas. A person cannot be in control of their time if all they do is goal-oriented activity. A healthy balance is necessary for good time management and a healthy lifestyle.

To learn about stress management, visit www.Coachingforexcellence.biz and schedule a time management workshop for your workplace or check our events calendar for upcoming teleclasses, chats and workshops.

Kim Olver has an undergraduate degree in psychology, a graduate degree in counseling, is a National Certified Counselor and is a licensed professional counselor. Since 1987, Kim has extensively studied the work of Dr. William Glasser’s Choice Theory, Reality Therapy and Lead Management. She was certified in Reality Therapy in 1992 and continued her studies to become a certified instructor for the William Glasser Institute. She is an expert at empowering people to navigate the sometimes difficult course of life---teaching them how to get the most out of the circumstances life provides them. These are incredibly powerful ideas with equal application to one’s work and personal lives. Kim can work with you to empower your staff and clients and propel your organization to the next level.

To learn more about Kim and how she can help your organization, visit her website at http://www.Coachingforexcellence.biz

Effective Time Management - Delegating Techniques

By Ofer Tirosh

Do you manage your time or does your time manage you? Do you start your day knowing what you want to achieve today and how you are going to achieve it?

Time management is a skill. You should learn the basics and learn how to implement it.

Following a thorough research on the topic of time management , I strongly suggest you use the most important time management tip - delegate “Do not do what you do not have to do” You had enough time to realize what you are good at and what you are not so good at. Hand over things you are not so good at to others. Make people work for you.

Take a look at some of the delegating examples below. Create a personal effective time management using delegation techniques.

1. Take some one to sort your mail – most of the mail we get is junk mail or routine mail messages. Make someone sort the mail for you to manage your time better.

2. Send others to meetings – Meeting are great time wasters. When you are invited to meetings make sure you know what the purpose of the meeting is. If you do not have real contribution send some one else to the meeting. Give him a brief and make sure he gives you a summary of the meeting after it is finished.

3. Take a secretary – Your life must be organized. Most of us tend to lose our focus of the important things due to the amount of tasks we have to do. Prioritizing the different tasks and finding the right balance between business, family etc. is almost impossible.

Make it easier. Delegate it. You will soon not understand how you have organized your life without a secretary. Let the secretary manage your time – let her decide when you come and go from work, let her schedule meetings for you and most important let her handle all paper work and mails.

Find more time management tips on http://www.911makemoretime.com/. It's all about time management - The most comprehensive resource for time management skiils, Time Management Techniques, Time Management tips, Personal goals etc. - http://www.911makemoretime.com/