Task Lists
One commonly proffered piece of advice is to create a task list. I like to do this in a spreadsheet like Excel so I can have columns that categorize and prioritize each task. I even include columns for start and end dates. Then, when I change categories or priorities, I just click on “sort” and the list re-sorts itself.

This also helps in the initial brain-storming phase. I can just type in all my tasks as I think of them and organize them later.

Time Blocking
This is a strategy I just recently learned about. Basically, you write down all the types of tasks you do and then schedule large blocks of time to accomplish these types of tasks. For example, you may make telephone calls from 9am to 10am, then switch to writing letters from 10am to 12pm. Break for lunch and then work on administrative tasks from 1pm to 2pm. You get the idea.

The theory behind time blocking is that when you concentrate on one type of task for a set amount of time you are able to “get into the zone” and accomplish much more is less time.

Ruthlessly File Things in the Circular File
Another way to manage the large amounts of unimportant e-mail and snail mail we get is to “file” them as soon as we get them. When the mail arrives, quickly organize it into three piles: Urgent, Can Wait and Trash. You can do the same with your email, too.

Setting Your Priorities
When faced with several projects, one way to get them done is to ask yourself, “Which one of these is both easy and quick to accomplish, and will give me a great return on my time invested?” This helps you tackle the high yield projects first.

Well, that’s about it for this week. I hope you were able to get some good ideas from all the articles this month on how to better manage your office.

Managing the Office with Personal Techniques is a post from Women's Business Gallery

First, let me tell you that you can still get things done if you aren’t motivated — it’s just more of a challenge to get started. If your motivation seems to be on vacation, tackle your to-do list in smaller chunks. Just start, with a goal to work on that task for a set amount of time. You may surprise yourself by finding the motivation in the act of doing.

Most time management advice advocates creating a schedule and sticking to it. However, if unforeseen things come up, this can really screw with your mind. It can also drain all the motivation out of you. You start to think, “What’s the point?” So, here’s an idea that can help: Create two to-do lists. On the first you list the things you HAVE to do. On the second, you list the things you’d LIKE to do.

This is just another way to prioritize, but because the lists can be physically separated, it can help you ease your discomfort around your to-do list.

Oh! And be sure to work in some fun every day. All work and no play …. You don’t want to turn into Jack Nicholson in The Shining do you?

Another psychological trick you can play to help you with motivation: use a highlighter to “cross out” accomplished tasks. Crossing out has a negative connotation and highlighting, a positive one. Also, the to-do list looks cleaner and less cluttered without the crossed out text. Better yet, you can tell at a glance how much you have accomplished in the day!

Motivation’s Effect on Time Management is a post from Women's Business Gallery

There are plenty of reasons people procrastinate:

• Feeling overwhelmed
• Dislike of the task
• Mis-alignment of task and person

I’d like to talk a little about each one and provide some tips and advice for overcoming them.

Feeling Overwhelmed

Sometimes, when a task seems so big and overwhelming, you can feel so daunted that it is easier just not to start. You may not know where to start. Or you may feel like nothing you do toward that goal seems to get you anywhere. One way to overcome this challenge is to break the larger task into smaller, easier to handle tasks. Give each mini-task a deadline, so that you can still feel accomplishment. And be realistic about how quickly the tasks can be completed. If you are still getting behind, you can always re-evaluate the time you’ve allotted and give your self more time.

Dislike of the task

For me, cleaning the floors and dusting the house are the things I procrastinate the most because of this reason. I really don’t like cleaning. One way to overcome this challenge is to delegate the task to someone who does it better than you and, possibly, even enjoys the task. Another is to take a look at the task and see if it really needs to be done. If not, take it off your schedule. (Boy, I wish I could do that to cleaning!)

Mis-Alignment of Task and Person

Sometimes you’ve set yourself a task that you may not be good at. Other times you set yourself a task that goes against your core self. If the above two reasons aren’t behind your procrastination, this one probably is. Take a look at the task. Ask yourself how you feel about it. Does the task make you feel negative emotions such as anger, discomfort or fear? If so, you really need to take a look at why you feel the task needs to be done and done by you.

For example, when I was in my 20s, I had moved to a new city and was having trouble finding a job. I found one that was — you’ll love this — on the cleaning staff of a local hotel. The very thought of going to the interview made my stomach hurt. But I needed the money so I went. The interview consisted of donning a uniform and following a member the staff as she showed me how to clean the rooms. It was dreadful! I had an allergic reaction to the cleaning solutions and felt like climbing out of my skin. At the end of the shift, I turned in the uniform and said no thanks — I didn’t even take payment for my work!

Now that’s an obvious mis-alignment between task and person, but I hope you get my point. Mis-alignment can be blatant, and it can be subtle. But, if you can’t explain your procrastination by the first two reasons, look hard at the task to find where this third reason may lie.

Procrastination: The Time Management Killer is a post from Women's Business Gallery

Well, none of that got done, because when I went to go write this post, I couldn’t access the website! Erg. One of the plugins had a conflict and basically broke everything. I had to spend the entire weekend re-building the website. And, as you can see, I haven’t finished.

So, what does all this have to do with time managment? Everything.

You see, if I had hired a virtual assistant, my VA would have caught the problem earlier and would have started working on fixing it. That way I wouldn’t have to do the fixing and I would have had plenty of time to work on my business, rather than in it.

Delegating tasks that don’t necessarily build your business, but maintain it, is a very good time management technique. And you don’t have to hire one full-time. You can even hire a high-school or college kid to do some of this work for you for next to nothing. It’s a win-win situation. They get work experience, as well as additional funds, you get to free up your time to do more important things.

So, like the title of this post says — do as I say (hire one or more assitants, virtual or otherwise, to do the tasks that need to be done but you don’t need to be doing) and not as I do (do everything myself)!

Here are some resources to help you find virtual assistants:

Craig’s List
Don’t underestimate the power of Craig’s List. You can find almost anything you want there, and you can find it locally.

International Virtual Assistants Association
This organization has a member directory that can help you find a VA.

Star VA
This is a VA company that specializes in helping Internet marketers.

And, of course, you can always use Google! In addition to the key words “virtual assistant,” type in key words that are related to what you want your VA to do.

Enter your search terms

Submit search form

Do As I Say Not As I Do is a post from Women's Business Gallery

Time Logging
When you do a time log, it is kind of like making a schedule, but in reverse. You take a scheduler — it can be a grid you’ve made for the week or it could be your Day Planner, and instead of writing in things that you are planning to do, you write down things as you do them. At the end of every hour, jot yourself a quick note about how you actually spent your time for that hour. The note needn’t be long — one sentence or less should suffice. This gives you the most accurate view of your time, but it can be a little frustrating at first.

You want to have a good record of at least three days, a week is better. So, you may have to do this for a week or two to get accurate data. You might be surprised by how you use up time. I know that some activities take much longer to do than I imagined!

Back Time Logging
This method is not as accurate, but it can help you at least block out large chunks of time. And that may be all you need to do.

Take a black week schedule or grid and fill in blocks of time that you know you use. For example, maybe you go through your email every morning between 9am and 10am. Block that out. Then you add a block for lunch. Another block for picking the kids up from school. Another block for your weekly Bridge game. Whatever you do on a regular basis, block that in.

The Combo
Some people find it helpful to modify a planning page to facilitate tracking time. This modification is easy enough: make two columns on your schedule for each day of the week. In one column, write down what you plan on doing with your time. In the second column, make notes on what you actually did with your time. The side-by-side comparison is very telling and an excellent way to figure our where you’re not using time in the way you intend.

What Does Your Inventory Tell You?
Now that you’ve taken an inventory of your time, what does it tell you?

• Are there blocks of time you still have unaccounted for?
• Are there blocks of time that you could re-arrange for better efficiency?
• Are there blocks of time that can be delegated to someone else or otherwise eliminated?

Whatever your time habits, time tracking can help you adjust and fine-tune your time management practices. Having accurate information about your time usage patterns can serve as another important point of reference for self-monitoring.

The Time Inventory is a post from Women's Business Gallery

When it comes right down to it, time management is basically about being focused. Without focus, you can loose track of time and get almost nothing done.

There are a heck of a lot of time management techniques out there, and at least one of them is going to work for you. Most likely, more than one will work for you. For me, I’ve found that one technique works well for one area of my life, and another works well in another area. So, my advice to you is to try them all on for size. See which ones fits and in which situations.

Some techniques for managing your time include:

• Creating a schedule — logging when you will do what on a calendar and sticking to it.
• Writing down clear goals, prioritizing them and focusing on the most important goals first.
• Creating a “To Do” list and ticking things off that list as they get done.

These are the core techniques of traditional time management. And all of these can work together to help the woman entrepreneur or small business owner manage her time.

But let’s dig a little deeper. On the surface, these techniques seem straightforward. But they won’t work unless you have some other underlying skills:

• Decision making — can you make good decisions quickly and effectively?
• Critical thinking — can you discern important tasks from busy work?
• Self understanding — do you really know who you are and what you want out of your time?

Time management is about getting results, not about being busy. And to truly get the most out of your time, you need to know yourself, be able to evaluate tasks that take up your time and make decisions efficiently.

Let me go into a little more detail about what I mean.

Decision Making
Let’s say you’ve decided to work on a new infoproduct today. You’ve spent your morning outlining what will comprise your product and are ready to start compiling it. The phone rings and it is a friend of yours who just happens to be in town and would like to get together for a coffee this afternoon before she heads back out. In that moment, you need to evaluate several things and make a decision.

1) Do you want to take time away from your project, thus effecting its momentum?

2) Is this friend worth the interruption?

I can’t answer these questions for you. And, most likely you won’t even be aware that you’re asking them. Depending on who the friend is and the timing of the get together, you may decide to meet her, or you may decide that today is not a good day. But you need to make that decision and then be O.K. with it. Whatever you decide, you need to accept and not look back.

Critical Thinking
You’ve created a list of things you want to accomplish today. They include:

• Outline what you want to say in tomorrow’s teleseminar.
• Pay some bills.
• Organize your supply closet.
• Call five prospective clients.
• Work on your goal planning for the next quarter.

Can you tell which of these tasks are key to your success if done today? Which can be put off for tomorrow? Which should be struck from your list altogether? Again, the answers will be subjective. For example, if the bills aren’t due for another week, that task can be put off a day or two. Maybe your goal planning for the next quarter is really something you think you should do to fill your time, but you really don’t need to do it. You need to be able to evaluate which tasks are important for today and which are not. As a woman entrepreneur or small business owner, this skill can make or break your business!

Self Understanding
In case you didn’t notice, this skill is the core skill. Without it, you won’t be able to make effective decisions and your critical thinking results will be off. For example, if “Pay some bills” was on my list — that would be a very important task for me. My ADD can cause me to loose bills if I don’t take care of them as soon as I receive them. This is something I’ve learned about myself, and so have made adjustments to how I do things to accommodate this quirk.

Maybe you know that you are much better at giving teleseminars on the fly than off an outline. If so, you would know to cross “outline what you want to say in tomorrow’s teleseminar” off your list.

Another thing you need to know about yourself is your typical circadian rhythm. Each and every one of us has a peak time and a down time when we slow down. These natural cycles are what make up our personal circadian rhythm. When you know what time of day you will be the sharpest, you are better able to schedule tasks that require you to be alert during those times.

Basically, you need to know your own behavior patterns and your time-wasting buttons. With this understanding, you’ll make better decisions about how to use your time.

An Introduction to Time Management Concepts is a post from Women's Business Gallery

Let me back up a moment. I happen to be blessed with the best dog ever. That’s her picture here (for scale, those tiles are a square foot). We’ve been together for 13 years come March 25. She has a few health issues — epilepsy, hip dysplasia, a thyroid condition and Cushing’s disease. Early in February, she started having bloody noses. After a few days, she started sneezing blood all over the place. It was a mess.

At first, we thought it could be a growth in her nose, and nasal growths are cancerous about 99% of the time. Then we discovered she had high blood pressure, probably caused by the Cushing’s, and that was causing the bloody noses.

Then, one night, she had a seizure and had a really hard time recovering from it. I thought she had had a stroke and I was going to have to put her down.

Thank God it was just a difficult seizure.

Anyway, I’ve now had about five blood-free days and she’s back to her chipper self. Phew! One February challenge over.

Also in February, someone hacked one of the websites (The Genre Traveler), which got me all paranoid about getting hacked. So I spent most of the month safe-guarding my websites. I have about 15, and I’m not done yet.

Of course, along the way, I screwed up a couple of times. I deleted all the content from The Product Midwife and have to re-build. And the upgrade for Women’s Business Gallery didn’t take. That’s why this didn’t get posted yesterday. I couldn’t get into the dashboard! I was freaked and thought I’d been hacked. But no, the upgrade to the latest version just didn’t install properly. I uploaded a script, ran it and presto! Here I am.

The third, and final challenge for February is ironically related to this month’s topic — Time Management for Women Entrepreneurs and Small Business Owners. The first Monday of February, I started a new full-time job. It’s great. I’m having a blast and I’m further honing the skills I use to help you through the Women’s Business Gallery and The Product Midwife. The down side is, I have far less time than I used to.

But that’s O.K. It will help me put the tips and advice I’m going to offer you this month into better perspective. I hope you gain value from my posts and would love to hear from you if you do! Go ahead — send me an e-mail with your comments, suggestions, commiserations, whatever. I’m really here for you. Or, post a comment on this blog. That way all of us can benefit from your experience!

Welcome March! is a post from Women's Business Gallery