Effective time management has proven to be a very effective way for reducing stress. Time management entails balancing between your most valuable and undervalued resource. The way we spend our time determines to a large extent, how successful or otherwise, we are in life. Time is ultimately the most valuable resource we have and it is perishable. I present you with the 6Ps approach to effective time management. Remember, we all have a limited amount of time (24 hours) and we are responsible for what we do with our time. To quote the great martial artist Bruce Lee — “To spend time is to pass it in a specified manner; to waste time is to expend it thoughtlessly or carelessly. We all have time to either spend or waste and it is our decision what to do with it. But once passed, it is gone forever.”

Principle: To be able to spend time effectively, you have to be principled. Being principled entails sticking to your values against all odds. You can only be principled when you identify your roles in life and your values. Your roles and your values provide directions, guide your personal conduct and also determine how you relate to people. You have to stand for something, know yourself and try as much as possible not to be influenced in any way. Stick to your sets of belief, and be yourself at all times. Once people accept you for you, they will fall in line. This way you are able to call the shots and not vice versa.

Practice: Adhering to your values and living a principled life takes a lot of practice. You have to make a conscious effort and create a pattern of ideals that you subscribe to. Practice means knowing when to wake every morning, when to eat your breakfast, and when to catch the bus for work. It also means tackling your problems, dealing with your tasks head on by either dealing with it, delegating, putting a deadline on it, dumping it on a subordinate or breaking it into parts (Dissecting it). You should be able to adjust your lifestyle until you are able to adopt a routine that makes it easy for you to live a fulfilling life. Regular practice forms a habit and very soon you will be able to manage your time without having to work at it. As the saying goes ‘practice makes perfect.’

Planning: Effective time management is about effective planning. You have to plan and set SMART (Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Realistic, Time bound) goals. Effective planning helps you to achieve a lot. Plan your life, your daily activities, and always plan when dealing with tasks. Always have an angle, a plan, an approach for dealing with issues and remember to fix deadlines; the point at which you evaluate and check if your plan is working. Use a planner- don’t just go shopping, make a list, plan your route and fix a specific time for that. Have an inventory of your future commitments and have an approach for dealing with those commitments. Planning is the most important P among the lot. To manage time effectively means to plan effectively. As they say ‘failing to plan is planning to fail’. Plan for success, have a plan in your career, plan your family, plan your day and always remember to tackle the most important things first. Cascade by arranging your plan into years, monthly, weekly and daily.

Prioritisation: You can’t plan effectively if you don’t prioritise. Your planner (To do list) should always have a list of your tasks with the most important ones on top. In prioritising you should consider your life as a person; think about your projects, your monthly, weekly and daily commitments and arrange them in order of importance. Grouping your tasks helps to tackle them more efficiently. You should re-prioritize tasks regularly and cross off completed tasks from your list. A very important rule is to carry forward uncompleted tasks to the ‘to do’ list of the next day. But you must try not to keep carrying forward. If you keep putting off a particular task, it could either be because: the item is non urgent in which case it does not belong on your short-term to do list, or the item is making you put it off in which case you should either discard it or better still tackle it. Prioritising also helps to determine your level of concentration. You can easily identify which times of the day to focus all your attention on your tasks and which times to relax.

Punctuality: ‘It is the characteristics of being able to complete a required task or fulfill an obligation before or at a previously designated time’- Wikipedia. Need I say more? Punctuality begins with acquiring a watch. Keep your time accurate and constantly check the time -the trick is to set your watch 2 minutes ahead of time. One very important reason for being late is because people fail to realise that the time is going by as quickly as it is. You can’t use the weather to tell time, neither can you rely on the church bell, get a watch. The accepted norm (Since I am UK trained) is to arrive 15 minutes early. Things usually take longer than you think. It is why you need practice. Commit yourself to arriving 15 minutes early. Try as much as possible to examine how long your tasks take. If possible use an alarm to keep you in check. Punctuality also means that you have to meet your deadlines. Keep organised, and as stated, plan by prioritising. This way you are able to always be ahead of schedule.

Procrastination: The only negative P in the lot is Procrastination. At all times try not to procrastinate. Avoid time thieves – procrastination is one of them. You can tackle procrastination by listing all tasks that you are putting off. Take them one by one by putting a time frame on it and by all means reward yourself when you tackle a difficult task you’ve been putting away- Have a cold beer, a bottle of wine, eat out if you can. It also means being honest, and punishing yourself when you procrastinate- Lock yourself up and deal with the task, avoid leisure when you have work to do.

The greatest objective for effective time management is to avoid crises and stress. Remind yourself constantly that there is a limited amount of time available to you. Differentiate between what is urgent, important and less important. My advice- try not to remain in your comfort zone.

Defining project time management means looking at a combination of actions which ultimately lead to a desired result. When you are planning a project, there is a start and end time and it’s what you achieve in between which determines whether you complete your objective.

We know time itself can’t be managed in a sense but how you use the time allotted to you each day is what counts. A person with a set of objectives and with the proper desire to achieve these objectives can work wonders in both their social and work lives.

Project Time Management Planning

It all starts with a plan. For example, if you are someone who conducts their business affairs from home and your income is wholly and solely dependent on your own levels of productivity, then managing your time is of utmost importance. Why? Unless you do it, no-one else will and your income will dry up quickly.

Project time management involves:

- planning your project- giving it a start and end date or time depending on how big a project it is- being able to actually commence the project which gets back to problems of procrastination- having the resources to work with- setting up some sort of reward feature for completing the project

Unless you start out with a plan or create a foundation for your project and clearly follow the objectives you set yourself then it could end up being a little like a dog chasing it’s own tail!

Project Time Management In Relation To Home Business

Once you have established your plan and associated goals it’s time to get to work. Don’t underestimate the power of a plan in relation to time management because having a written agenda has the power to hold you accountable should you begin to get off track.

You need to be flexible when applying short term project time management goals. A good way to maintain enthusiasm for your project is by setting a reasonable plan of action. Find a happy balance between too much and too little; setting an unrealistic plan will only serve to frustrate you when you fall behind and setting one which is too easy is like achieving false success.

Project Time Management Flexibility

By being flexible, you give yourself the option of reassessing your goals and permission to re-adjust them if you have to. Remember, when working on your own self-motivation is pretty tough especially when no-one is looking over your shoulder. If that’s the case with you, once you have your plan of action on paper, organise extra copies and give them to people you respect and trust.

By doing this, you give them permission to check in on you at certain intervals just to confirm where you are at with your project. This is also a powerful method of being held accountable for your actions. It’s like making a promise to someone of some authority and not wanting to break it so as to not look foolish in their eyes.

Procrastination is a major time management antagonist. You know it’s getting in your way and slowing you down and keeping you from getting things done, yet you don’t know what to do to stop it. Identifying why you are procrastinating is a first step in stopping the undesired behaviors.

Time management foilers. You procrastinate because you’re just plain stubborn, and you’re determined to show others that they aren’t going to push you into doing anything. You’re your own person, and you’ll do what needs to be done when and if you decide to do so and not before. It’s seems logical on the one hand, but it has also caused you some pretty bad unnecessary grief. If what you are asked to do shouldn’t be done stick to your guns and don’t budge, but if deep down you know that it’s going to have to be done at some point you may be better off choosing when and communicating that to others.

Time management exaggerators. You exaggerate the extent and involvement of the project. Part of you is hoping that will make others just give up and go away, but that doesn’t work all that often. Break the project down into it’s components to understand the full scope of the project, and then just work on one component at a time until it’s done.

Time management fretters. You create all sorts of imagined problems that may or may not ever happen. You fret about what might happen if you succeed. You fret about what might happen if you fail. You fret about what others will think. You fret that you don’t really know how to tackle the problem. With all this fretting you’re like the kids who cheat in school rather than study. It would take a whole lot less time and energy to just do it and let the chips fall where they may than it does to do all that fretting.

Time management stargazers. You’d rather think about doing something way more than just doing it. The problem is that nothing ever happens until you take action, so the longer you stargaze about what could be the more you prolong not getting the possible.

Time management perfectionists. You just can’t let go of a project and call it done because there is always just one more thing you could do to make it perfect. The problem is almost no one else wants, expects, or appreciates that level of perfection that you demand. You’re expending all your energy on the apex of perfection when everyone else around you just wants ok.

Time management procrastinators are frequently creatures of habit. You’ve been procrastinating so long that you automatically put everything off even when it’s something you really want. Something that would end a major discomfort or bring you great pleasure keeps getting put off. The only way to break a habit is to make a commitment and then follow through with action until you develop a new habit. The key is understanding: what you have to gain from the new habit, and replacing the bad habit of putting things off so you never have enough time with getting things done, so you have time to do something you really want to do.

Procrastination is a real time management foe. Identify which type of procrastinator you are. Evaluate the rewards that behavior is giving you, and identify the rewards you could get if you let go of that behavior. Doing so will enable you to refocus your energies so you can do the right things, in the right way, for the right reason, at the right time.

Time is your most precious resource when you work from home on the Internet. If your Internet connection goes down or your computer blows up, the situation can be remedied but if you waste time, it is gone forever. If you fail to develop effective time management techniques you will all too often find that the hours you had intended to use productively have evaporated without trace. Time, although free, is valuable and it is irreplaceable: every second is unique and should be treated as an important asset. You will only manage to save time if you plan and employ your own personal time management strategy. We all have different demands being made upon our time, so managing to save time will be achieved in different ways by each of us. There is, however, one sure way anyone working at home online can manage to save time and that is by modifying the way we treat our email.

The trouble with working online is that your email is always just a click or two away at any time during your working day. If you were running an offline business from home, your day would be centered away from your computer and you would have to make a conscious decision about when and how often to check your email. When you are already sitting at your pc and connected to the Internet, it is just too easy to forget all about time management techniques and develop bad email habits. If you use the following time management strategy, you will maintain control of your working hours and find that you can easily get more done in less time.

1. Set an email schedule for yourself. Make it a rule only to check your inbox two or three times a day and set a strict time limit (ten or fifteen minutes per session is about right) on how long you spend dealing with email.

2. Don’t check your email as soon as you power up your computer at the start of any work session. You will be at your most alert and creative during the first hour of work. Use this time to complete more complicated or difficult tasks.

3. Don’t have your email alert permanently on to notify you as soon as an email hits your mailbox. This will serve to distract you while you are working and tempt you to abandon the schedule you have planned.

4. Deal with each email as soon as you read it. Flagging an email and going back to it to send your reply makes double the work. The only time you should permit yourself to do this is if you need to do some research before you reply.

5. Use your bookmark function. You are bound to get emails that contain a link to a website. Maybe you have subscribed to interesting online news letters or they could be offers of useful ebooks or tools. The time you have allocated to your email session should be used solely for reading and replying to emails. Bookmark any of the sites that appear worthy of further investigation and schedule time for a visit. This is the most dangerous part of dealing with emails: all commercial emails will have a “hook” with which to catch you, drag you into a black hole and make your time disappear. You must be alert to this so that you can unhook yourself and visit these websites at a time you decide is best for your schedule.

Developing good time management techniques is not difficult. You do, however, need to be constantly on your guard against temptations which might make you forget your time management strategy. Developing good habits and curing bad ones is the foundation of effective time management techniques.

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