So your working from home now. Great Congratulations! It is not a transition that many make very easily. People (certainly who are coming from being an employee) are used to having a bit of structure in their day and when making the transition (unless you have been responsible for your time management previously) tend to struggle here, and there really is no need to. It can be very easy to sit in your office and think that you are busy and that you are getting plenty of work done... I mean you feel busy, you look busy... you must be busy right? Yet at the end of the day when someone says, so who was your day, what did you get accomplished? You quite often find it a hard one to answer you can literally spend a whole day doing nothing and feel (at the time) that you are getting a truck load done. Unfortunately when you are working for yourself you start to realise (when its time to pay the bills) that you really haven't got that much done but how can that be? You have been so busy. I can tell you that it has happened to us all. So I want to introduce you to a concept that you may or you may not have heard of. It is that of a default calendar. It is a very simple concept that can be implemented and set up in a matter of minutes.

So what is it? Well it is really simple... map out your week into blocks of time. You work for yourself now, no one is going to tell you when you can and when you can't have lunch go to the bathroom... whatever, however because you work for yourself doesn't mean you get to slack off, which is what some people think (not you of course) Start at what ever time of the day you choose and start on Monday, if you know that every day from 0800-1000 hours you are going to be doing a certain task then put it in. Don't get to hung up on what you are going to do in your allotted time, for now lets just allot it. Depending on what business you are involved with there may well be weekly team calls or webinars that are a regular fixture, it makes sense then to add those to your default calendar.

At first it may seem a little strange blocking out time slots for no apparent reason, and to be fair to an employee it would be. There is a reason for this, in fact there are a number of reasons for this the biggest is that it allows you the time you need to get the things done that you have to do... to put that into context think of this work expands to fill the time allowed for it meaning simply that a 5 minute job can in fact take you 2 hours if you allow it to. If that is the time you have allotted to do it, it will take that long. The same works in reverse you can get a 2 hour job done in an hour and a half if that is the only time you have available to do it in. I remember as an apprentice Mechanic in the Air Force and my Senior NCO was trying to teach me a lesson in time management (and something else) and he informed me (at 1100hrs) that the vehicle that I had to work on had to be ready to go on a run down country by 1500hrs. The didn't believe the job could be completed in the allotted time frame, and as a result I actually dragged my feet for an hour... until it was made clear to me that it was going no matter how late I had to stay to finish it (it was Friday) So after dragging my feet for an hour I realised that if it was going to be done I had to work through lunch! Long story short it was completed, it was set out, and it was done. Your Default Calendar can help you do the same.

Now with your allotted time slots start thinking of tasks that must be completed during the week, think about how long each of those tasks should take and then take 15 minutes of them and put them into your time blocks. To get you thinking perhaps you could be thinking about 'Team, Distribution, Production, Marketing, Finance, Demand' these are actually the core elements of your and any business. Become masterful in these and your success is guaranteed (you will only be as successful as your weakest  element) You will also want to think about continued education (may be within your elements)  and personal development.

Decide what works best for you with your time, work it around the things you want to get done during the week, most of all STICK to it!! This is truly the way that you can stay on top of what it is that you are looking to get done... If people want your time (and they will) make an appointment for them, because of course when you create your default calendar you will set appointment times (it doesn't matter if you have none to start, you will have them right?)

OK so a simple why of actively (yet passively) managing your time.

About the Author

Andrew Hawkes is an Entrepreneur that has had good times and bad, he draws on all the experiences that he has had, military and in business, to provide solid information that anyone can use and understand to improve the results in thier own life and therefore show others to imrpove thiers. He believes that anyone can make a difference in the world and that ultimately anything is possible.