Posts Tagged ‘Time Management’
Time Management – Phone Calls at Work
How to keep personal phones calls from interrupting your business
If you depend on the phone for business, you need to find a way to keep the lines clear for business. If not, you can find yourself getting annoyed, frustrated and less productive. Take note of how many calls a day you take or make that are related to your business. Then write down the amount of personal phone calls you get that interrupt your business calls and work day. This will give you an idea of the importance of the calls and how much time you spend on each.
The one thing that you have to do is figure out a plan that will help you keep your calls in order. You don’t want to be interrupted when you are trying to talk to a potential client and have the beep of call waiting make the prospect lose focus on your conversation. Interruptions are considered something that is ‘not necessary now’. Of course you want to know immediately if you have a death in the family or if something bad has happened but there are certain things that you should not bother with at work.
It is important to figure out what is getting in your way and stop it. Most of the time, people find out that friends and family may be causing a dip in productivity – especially when you work in a home office as I do. Ignoring the problem will not help you at all.
One day I had a relative call during a training session with a client and I had forgotten to turn off call waiting (my practice during important calls). Lucky it was a good and patient client. My relative called my office line, home phone, cell phone and then the office line again. At this point I excused myself a moment and took the call only to ask her “Are you dying, is Mom in the hospital? If not I am talking with a client which is why I did not pick up any of the phone lines and you need to leave me a message.” She apologized when we talked later that night and it has never been a problem since.
Some options?
- Having two different phone lines may be the right answer if you want to ensure you receive personal calls.
- You might want to answer personal calls only on your cell phone and the business calls managed by your office line.
- If you are working away from a desk you may want to have two cell phones on you at all times. Then one would be used for work only and the other would be for your personal calls to be handled.
If two phones are not an option you may just want to keep your cell phone off during the day so that you are not bothered with personal calls. This may be the best way to handle the problem of being bothered when you are trying to make or receive calls.
Remember running a successful business is one thing that you do not want to forget about. Make certain you are putting enough time into your clients and business and not talking on the personal line all the time. Some tips to help you manage these types of call or interruptions are:
- Mark off certain times of the day for your personal time. You might want to make all the calls that you need to for business in the morning or before two in the afternoon so that you are not being bothered with other things.
- Let people know your schedule so that they are not calling during the important times. This is going to help eliminate the problem calls that you are getting so you will not have to stress over it.
- Use Voice Mail or let the machine get the calls that can wait.
- Use Caller ID to help you make the choice of a call that can wait or not. Turn it off during very important calls where the beep can be distracting.
- If you have a problem caller – tell them otherwise they will never change their calling habits.
Learning to manage your time is one of the most efficient ways to make your career soar. You want to be able to have time to work on your business as well as give your family and friends time too. The only thing that you can really do to rectify the situation is make time for both. Figure out a plan of action that is going to work best for you and never let either one interfere with the other.
What tips to you employ to make certain you can connect with family and run your business?
Staying Productive: The Magic of Checklists
What do emergency room physicians, airline pilots, and kindergarten classes all have in common? They all use checklists to make sure they’re doing the right things at the right time. While they’re not sexy or fashionable, checklists are the backbone of many a successful business. Here are some ways checklists can help entrepreneurs keep their businesses running smoothly and productively:
- Checklists provide a guideline for outsourcing or delegating.
Want to outsource slideshow creation to a contractor? Send them the details with your “slideshow creation” checklist, and they’ll know exactly what you want them to do, in order. - Checklists make it easy to replicate best practices.
Once you’ve pinpointed the exact way to create killer sales pages, you can document that and do it over and over again. Brilliance! - Checklists save time by eliminating the “what’s next?” stage.
You know when you finish one thing and have to stop and think, “What the do I do next?” Or “What did I forget?” Well, with a good checklist you won’t have to do that anymore. You’ll know. - Checklists ensure that everyone is on the same page.
When you’re collaborating with partners, assistants or virtual assistants, it’s easy to lose sight of who’s responsible for what and when. Checklists make it easy to assign tasks and remind yourself the proper order of execution.
Not all checklists are created equal, though. Research has shown there are a few key ingredients for making good checklists:
- Keep it to one page. Longer checklists are intimidating and make it easy for people to get lost. Or they’ll avoid using the checklist because it’s just too darned long.
- Be specific. Especially if you’re outsourcing or delegating, you have to leave no room for ambiguity.
- Test it out. Once you’ve created what you think is a great checklist, give it a go. See if you’ve left anything out or put too much in. Then refine it and test it again.
- Have someone else test it. Of course, you know what you mean by “add graphic to web page,” but will someone else? Give it to someone else to test and see what they come up with, where they get stuck, and what works well.
- Use it! Checklists don’t do any good if they’re languishing on your hard drive. Use them – and if you find yourself NOT using them, ask why. Is it too complex? Too self-explanatory? Too simple? Then use that information to create a better checklist.
While checklists won’t solve all of your productivity issues, they are a fantastic way to simplify complex information and provide guidance for outsourcing. They can be a bit time-intensive to create, but the time that you’ll save on the back end will be well worth the effort.
The Power of To-Do Lists
I really enjoyed reading the book, Write It Down Make It Happen: Knowing What You Want And Getting It by Henriette M. Klauser, Ph.D. The premise of the book is simple: By writing down your goals and desires, you are much more likely to make those dreams a reality.
How much more likely? Research shows that people who write down their goals are about twice as likely to achieve them as those who do not. And if you count those who write down their goals but don’t quite meet them, they still get a lot closer than they would have if they hadn’t written them down in the first place. Therefore, you can see the strong case for committing to your goals in writing.
This research is true in long-term goals like building your dream house or traveling the world – but what does all of this have to do with daily To-Do lists? Well, what is a To-Do list but a list of goals for the day? That means by writing your daily goals list on paper, you’re more than twice as likely to make significant process towards checking those items off than if you just try to fly by the seat of your pants. Here are some tips to help you create do-able, effective To-Do lists:
1. Make it reasonable
We’re all too familiar with the endless To-Do list, the one with dozens of items, more than you could accomplish in a week, let alone a day. While writing every single thing you have to do down on a list may make you feel like you’re getting your life under control, it’s actually counterproductive (when I got married I had the most complete To-Do list ever…3:45pm use washroom was one of the items!!!). Not only will critical tasks get lost in the muddle, you can become overwhelmed with the sheer volume of things you have to accomplish. It may be more attractive to just take a nap!
2. Make it specific
One of the biggest problems with To-Do lists is that people write down projects versus tasks. Anything that goes on your list should be something you can actually accomplish, such as “Call Jane about website launch plans,” instead of “Launch Website.” If you write down projects instead of tasks, you can’t ever cross them off – they just sit on your list and migrate from one day to the next which is obviously very frustrating. On the other hand, basic psychology teaches that rewards make us want to do an activity more – so every time we check off an item on our list, it motivates us to do more. You can only do that if the items are small enough to check off. However…
3. Make it important
I’ve been tempted to write down things on my list just so I can cross them off (sad, I know 
. While this gives you a little momentary boost, it doesn’t do much to move you closer to your goals. So before something makes it onto your list, ask yourself if it’s critical to the completion of your goals. If not, don’t even write it down. (Trust me, you will remember to “eat lunch” even if you don’t have it on your daily list!)
When used correctly, To-Do lists are powerful tools that can help you to accomplish more in less time. By “respecting the list” and following these three tips, you’ll have a daily To-Do list that will harness your energy and help you blast closer toward your biggest goals.
Have you any other tips to complete your To-Do lists?
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Can you Handle being Busy?
The past few weeks have been very busy for me as I complete client work but also prepare to head to a conference for nearly one week. It has made me appreciate the systems and processes I have setup for my business. These systems help when interruptions, new contacts and other things not written in my daily planner happen during my workday, I can easily deal with most of them and not get off task.
Staying on task for me is vital, I have many different things in my daily work that must be completed for each client. If I get backed up or behind then it is not affecting only me, but my clients.
What can get you off track? When you work from a home office, it’s a myriad of things and not just clients. For me it can be the dog, the kids, my home phone as well as contact from new clients, new requests from present clients, computer issues, internet issues … the list goes on and on.
What systems help me? The main ones are:
- New Client Inquiry procedures/info packets
- A 10 minute per hour break time
- My own business scheduled time each day
How do these help? The new client inquiry packets save me time in that I have the info ready when someone asks for it. The hourly break time allows me time to grab some laundry, a coffee, check on the dog or deal with other items that happen. Having time for my own business allows me to stay on top of my own social media tasks and blog writing and other marketing efforts for my business. This time also gives me space in my day to deal with the unexpected that may take even more time.
All of this helps keep my stress levels lower as I have time set aside to deal with the planned and the unexpected. When things are on a roll and your hours are filled every day it is important to be able to deal with new business/contact or other tasks that pop up, and deal with them in a way that does not adversely affect your day.
What is your top tips to handing the busy-times of your workday?
5 Tips to Complete your to-do List
Everyone works differently; personality plays a big part. Finding an effective way to finish your daily tasks will depend upon your personality, the tasks and you.
Whether you use a paper planner, your email calendar, online calendar or wireless phone; you probably have a method to keeping track of your tasks. If not, and you are finding that you are not completing tasks and forgetting items; then you may want to figure out a task list or to-do system.
If you have system in place, does it work well? Do you get to cross off items; or are they continually added to tomorrow’s calendar? Are items forgotten and missed completely?
You may not realize it, but simply having a to-do list does not guarantee everything will get done. You need to back up your list with a system to help you complete what is on your list.
Here are the Top 5 tips I follow to get my to-do list completed and crossed off.
- Update your List. Set aside time at the close of day to update your list for tomorrow. This way you will start your day knowing what tasks must be done. Add in new tasks as assigned and their deadline.
- Block off time to work on tasks. Most people are more productive early in the morning – so it is best to do this first thing. Even before you open your email – emails are one of the biggest procrastination machines out there! You also will fare much better if you work on the more intensive tasks first.
- Order Tasks by time and priority. This will help you manage your time by knowing what is high priority and the time required. If one task has a medium priority but will take 5 minutes and the high priority items will take 1.5 hours. List the 5 minute task first. One more crossed off. Sorting your tasks on your list will allow you to cross off more as completed. Also you can break up longer tasks into chunks of time allowing you to complete more in between.
- Spread tasks out over the week, allowing for other aspects of your work to be fit in. Meetings, client calls and other time – takers are reality; allow and plan in time for them as well.
- When this week’s list is complete; let it be. Having some free space in your daytimers. If all is done that needs to be; adding in more work will mean your list will never be completed. Not to say that if a task must be done that you don’t tackle it. More to say – it’s okay to have a finished list with an end and new work can wait until next week. Use the time for development and be happy with the accomplishments you have made.
What tricks do you use to help you complete your work? I’d love to learn your methods… maybe I can improve on mine?
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