Time Management Skills: Top 5 Ways to Improve Them
By: Pamela Catey
Do you feel like your time management skills are lacking? Feel overwhelmed, stressed, or like you are losing your life as each day quickly passes by?
In this article, I will share with you the top 5 ways to improve your time management skills to regain control of your life. There is a great quote by Business Philosopher, Jim Rohn “Time is our most valuable asset, yet we tend to waste it, kill it, and spend it rather than invest it.” Are you investing your time in things that are producing the results you desire? If not, read on.
Plan Your Day
Another great piece of wisdom from Jim Rohn is to never start your day until it is finished on paper. It is great advice. You can piddle away so much time when you are not focused on how you are going to spend it. Have you ever noticed how you can waste a whole day before you even really started it? Plan it before you start it, and you will get more accomplished.
Prioritize
Are you clear about what your short-term, mid-term, and long term goals are? If not, get to work, eh? Every day is an opportunity to be taking action toward your short-term goal, which should be furthering your mid-term goal, which should be leading you down the road to achieving your long term goal. Taking even small actions on the things that matter will you give a sense of accomplishment and control.
Before You Go to Bed
Write down the 3 most important things to do tomorrow on a 3 x 5” index card. When you wake up in the morning, all you need to do is read your index card and schedule when you will do these 3 most important things. And of course, they should be in alignment with furthering your short term goal.
Be Relentless
Keep your eye on the prize. Stay focused on the objectives of the day until you have completed them. Be steady and persistent on the task at hand and only focus on one task at a time. When one is completed, focus fully on the next.
Value Your Time
No one will value your time as much as you do. So, it is vital that you relate to your time as the valuable asset that it is. It’s only when you regard your time as valuable, that others will do so. It has to start with you first. It is your responsibility because we train people how to treat us. If you want other people to value your time, you have to value it first.
I hope these 5 ways to improve your time management skills proves valuable for you. Let me know your results, I’d love to hear your wins!
Article source: www.ladypens.com
Pamela Catey, MA is a Best Selling Co-Author, Professional Life Coach, Musician, and Inspirational Leader. She holds a masters degree in Counseling Psychology and is a Licensed Massage Therapist. If you are ready to live a life you love or are interested in learning more about time management skills sign up for her Free “FunLightenment Newsletter” and www.FunLightenmentCoaching.com
This article is available for reprint with author’s resource box intact and all links live and clickable. Copyright is reserved by author.
How to Avoid Business Burn Out
By: Kelle Arvay
At some point or another, anyone who owns their own business will face some degree of burn out. Instead of learning to cope with such burn out it is better to learn how to avoid it in the first place.
Below are several ways you can avoid business burn out.
1. Organization
Staying organized is one of the first steps in avoiding burn out. Utilize all the resources at your disposal such as filing systems for tax information, payables, receivables, advertising, marketing, etc. This will help you keep your paperwork in order and easily accessible. Additionally, make sure you have a work place that is also organized. This could be your home office, studio or any other type of work place depending on the type of business you have. Making sure everything is organized and can be easily located will help you tremendously.
2. Time Management
Time management is probably the biggest challenge for most people. When you work from home it can be especially easy to get distracted from your work. While working from home allows you a lot of flexibility which is a good thing, it can also present challenges in regards to remaining focused. To help you, consider setting up a daily schedule for your self. Utilize calendars and tasks list to keep yourself on track. At the beginning of each week write out what you need to accomplish for the week. Keep the list handy in case you need to add to it throughout the week. It is also important to allow for those unexpected interruptions such as last minute doctors appointments or a trip to the office supply store. Additionally, consider setting up your weekly schedule based on what tasks you need to do on particular days. For example, Tuesdays may be a day you set aside as a marketing day. Every Tuesday your focus should be on tasks that have to do with marketing your business.
3. Hire Help
If you find that you are overwhelmed most of the time or getting close to being overwhelmed, it may be time to hire some help. Help can come in the form of a virtual assistant, marketing manager, mailing list manager or simply from setting up a auto responder. Anytime you can automate certain tasks, the better. But for those times you can’t, consider hiring someone to do those tasks for you. You may find that even the small, menial tasks like sending out an email to your mailing list, is a task that you could hire someone else to do. Even all the small tasks that seem relatively simple add up and before you know it, you are spending a great deal of time on these things.
4. Joint Ventures and Partnerships
If you have a large project or new business idea, consider looking into establishing a joint venture with another business owner in a similar niche. The benefits of sharing the work load can be enormous. Also consider partnerships with other similar businesses in the areas of cross promotion and marketing. This could be in the form of exchanging web site links, mailing list advertising or other types of partnerships where the results benefit both of you.
5. Work Ahead
It is so much better to be ahead then to be behind. The pressure you begin to feel when due dates for finished work is upon you can be stress inducers. Avoid this by working ahead if you can. One example of work that can be completed in advance is article writing. When you have completed your daily tasks, consider taking a few moments to work on an article your writing. Another one would be blog posts. The nice thing about blogs is you can write a post in advance and save it for later. This is very true for several of the blog programs out there today. If you host your own blog, you can always save the post as a word document and post it later when your ready. Think of some of the other things you could work on in advance.
6. Take a Break.
One of the best things you can do to avoid burn out, is to take breaks. Don’t wait until your in desperate need of one either. Take breaks regularly. Each day you should take breaks throughout the day. Also you need to set aside breaks that consist of either an actual planned vacation, day trip or a certain day of the week that you set aside for some needed “me” time. During this time, work is not allowed. I know it can be difficult but you have to learn to allow yourself to take these breaks. You will find you are better focused and refreshed when you do return to your work.
Article source: www.ladypens.com
© 2007 Kelle Arvay is the owner of Pattern Mart with offers customers access to thousands of craft patterns that they can purchase and download instantly. Additionally, she is the owner of eCraft Classes which is dedicated to online craft classes. www.PatternMart.com www.eCraftClasses.com
This article is available for reprint with author’s resource box intact and all links live and clickable. Copyright is reserved by author.
Thirteen Reasons Why Your Business Needs a Blog
By: Heather Bixler
A lot of online business woman take for granted the benefits a blog has to their business, and a lot of them choose not to use a blog because they simply can’t see the benefit it has to them and their business.
Well in this article you will learn thirteen very important reasons why your business needs a blog!
1. Networking - Blogs are a great way to build relationships and networking with those looking for your services and/or goods.
2. Information - Blogs are also a great way to get information out about the products or services you sell!
3. Fun - Blogging is a great way to build your business while having fun. Really it doesn’t even feel like work!
4. Affordable - Sometimes having a blog can be more affordable to get set up than having a website. 1. Because the Wordpress Blogging platform is free to install on your own hosting and domain, and 2. you don’t need expensive software like Frontpage or Dreamweaver to maintain your blog.
5. Easy Maintenance - Using blogging platforms like Wordpress and the like make it so much easier to add content to your website, through the art of categories and the like, you can easily organize your content and make it easier for your visitors to find what they are looking for and therefore encouraging them to stay and visit for awhile!
6. Friends - While you are networking you can also make friends!
7. Interactive - With blogs you can be more interactive with your visitors by making posts, asking for comments, and then replying to the comments, all through your Wordpress admin dashboard! You can’t do that with a “regular” website!
8. Easy RSS - It is super easy to create an RSS feed with a blog which means more readers for your blogs!
9. Plug Ins - Plug ins add value to your blog by making it possible for you to host podcasts on your blog, and even generate Google sitemaps too! With regular websites you would either need to know alot about javascript, and a whole lot of code mumbo jumbo, but with Plug Ins all you have to do is intall, configure, and have fun! So much easier, and so much more fun!
10. More Search Engine Traffic - With the write Wordpress template and plug ins - your traffic will be streaming in no time at all.
11. Flexibility - With Wordpress you have the flexibility to create posts, pages, and you even have the control over what appears on your home page (like a sticky post or even a specific page) which provides you with the flexibility to either create more of a blogging type website, or a static type website.
12. Community/Partnerships - Wordpress blogs are a great way to create community blogs! So say you have a team of employees, or business partners, Wordpress makes the ability to have multiple authors of the blog seamless, which is a great way for your team to grow their business!
13. Perfect - All around Wordpress is the perfect choice for you and your business, by giving you the opportunity to communicate with your guests and to help build strong relationships that will in turn help you grow your business. No business should be without a blog, period!
Article source: www.ladypens.com
Heather Bixler is the owner and Lead Designer at Girly Blog Designz.
This article is available for reprint with author’s resource box intact and all links live and clickable. Copyright is reserved by author.
