Time Management Skills

By Jason Drohn • Apr 25th, 2007 • Category: business building 101

Oftentimes, one of the hardest things we can do, is get everything done.  With so many demands on our time, there’s just simply not enough hours in day.  This is especially true if you go to school and work or have your own business.  One of the basic skills, that every young entrepreneur needs is good time management skills.

The following are some areas that should be focused on to maintain a good schedule.

  1. Prioritize - Not every task is a crucial as the next.  Weigh some more heavily than others.  If you have a class assignment, it might be weighted more heavily than a project you’ve been working on.
  2. Schedule weekly reviews - This includes going through your to do list and seeing what you’ve done in the previous week and how you could do it better.
  3. Develop blocks of time - rather than make all your phone calls throughout the day, scheduled one hour for them and sit down with a list of people to contact.  This will help alleviate wasted minutes through out the day.
  4. Have alternative places - this includes having a coffee shop or library to work at.  Somewhere free of distractions where you won’t be constantly nagged by your feed reader.
  5. Dead time - Use your downtime to catch up on the little things such as reading a book, working through an idea, or planning a project.
  6. Lists - Have current to do lists, daily and weekly planners, and the long-term planner.  Each of these should be updated consistently.
  7. Set goals - if you don’t know where you’re going, how are you going to get their?

Lately, I’ve been under an incredible time crunch.  So I figured these thoughts would help you as well.  I’m particularly fond of the goal setting, though.  I feel everybody should set goals for themselves, their businesses, and their life.  In time management, goal setting is crucial.

Not only is there just 24 hours a day, but there are only seven days in a week.  Two of those days should be devoted to family or free time, and the other five are usually committed to business.  Even bloggers take a couple days off.  Time management is absolutely crucial to their success.

One of the things I’ve gone through over the past month or so, is working way too much.  Not only has work suffered from being in too deep, but free time has become way more stressful.  Too much to do, not enough hours in the day - leads to a pretty boring entrepreneur.

So I hope these tips offer a thought of what it takes to pull off successful time management.  It is probably one of the most crucial things which we do on a day-to-day basis, but it is rarely addressed.

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Jason Drohn is a blogger, business owner and consultant concerned with helping others build their businesses. So far, he has founded Tech Solution, Axiium, JDsBlog, and a host of other properties both on and off the web.
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5 Responses »

  1. Joshua Dorkin on April 25th, 2007 at 2:41 pm:

    Jason - Thanks for this post. I wish I knew what dead time was . . . ahh . . . it would be nice!

  2. Scott on April 25th, 2007 at 3:07 pm:

    GTD FTW
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Getting_Things_Done

    I am only 1/3 through the book…. I keep putting it off. :)

  3. Eliot on April 25th, 2007 at 3:43 pm:

    Point 2, “Schedule weekly reviews” really chimes with me. I recently had the opportunity of taking a month of my usual contracting work as a programmer so I could work on my own projects.

    One of the most valuable tools I used to make the most of my time was to ask myself the following questions every week:
    - What’s been easy?
    - What’s been hard?
    - What’s made me money?
    - What’s lost me money?

    And then, based on the results of those questions, I could work out where I needed to focus my efforts, where my strengths were, and what I should work on to improve my business.

  4. Jason Drohn on April 26th, 2007 at 8:59 am:

    Hey Josh! Me too. You try to make the most out of time spent in the car or waiting between appointments. That is the problem I have been having - cramming all the work you can into 10 or so hours each day..

    Scott - Thanks for the reference! I will have to check it out :0)

    Eliot - That is a great point! I am so glad you brought it up. In fact, I am going to write about it tomorrow I think, so stay tuned. My response is a little long for the comment line!

    You have a great point though. Being real with yourself is oftentimes the best way to hone your objectives!

  5. Evan Carmichael on April 26th, 2007 at 1:13 pm:

    Another great post Jason! I made it one of our Young Entrepreneur Links of the Day!

    Cheers!

    Evan.

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