In a business, there is time you start doubting your management especially when things go, wrong or you don’t have idea how to solve it.
Feeling overwhelmed is usually a result of either not knowing how to deal with the unknown or the prolonged avoidance of a situation that must be faced.
The longer such situations remain unattended the worse they tend to get. Most experts agree that a major reason for feeling overwhelmed is not managing time effectively.
Indeed, virtually every entrepreneur questioned for this book either implied, or outright stated, that he or she wished there were more hours in a day.
Following is a compilation of suggestions designed to help resolve poor time management practices:
- When moments of self-doubt creep in, remind yourself why you’re starting a new business challenge and what you want to achieve. Reviewing goals and ambitions can help to re-establish direction and commitment by examining what needs to be done (and not done) while also revealing incremental, manageable steps that will more easily take you where you want to go.
- Get in the habit of taking 15 or 20 minutes at the beginning and end of every day to plan ahead and focus. The key to managing time efficiently often lies in structuring the day. Without structure, a business project can easily become a tangled mess of seemingly unrelated tasks.
- Make a list of daily and weekly duties and rank them in order of importance.
- Next to each duty write down the best or only time to perform it (e.g.: some duties can only be done in the morning, others only in the evening, or on a Tuesday, etc.).
- Examine the big jobs and briefly write down the steps needed to tackle them. Often when a big job is seen as a series of stages, it becomes less daunting.
- Determine how much time is realistically needed to accomplish regular tasks and odd-job tasks.
- Lump together the tasks that can be performed at the same time (For example, going to the bank, picking up shirts from the dry cleaners, shopping for office supplies, and so on. These should be combined into one trip, which prevents having to make several trips).
- Set deadlines for task completion. This helps prevent procrastination from setting in.
- Clear all work areas of clutter. An organized work area helps instill concentration.
- Attack the most urgent priorities first. Do one task at a time and don’t stop until it’s finished. That way, at least one task will have been tackled no matter how difficult the day becomes.
- Don’t keep putting off little things. They add up.
- Learn to say no to outside requests for help. Offering a helping hand to friends, co-workers, and neighbors is kind and considerate, but there comes a time when every entrepreneur needs to focus solely on his or her own responsibilities.
- If the time allotted for a task is unrealistic, consider briefly adding more time to your day. For example, get up an hour earlier or take less of a lunch break. Adding one hour of extra time to each workday can provide the equivalent of two extra weeks a year. Just don’t make it a habit.
- If you feel extremely overwrought, discuss your situation with a partner or spouse, with a friend, with someone in the same business, or with a professional at a local business development centre. When everything is out in the open and it’s realized that the road ahead is survivable (which is usually the case), negative feelings tend to dissipate.
Final Thoughts:
As an entrepreneur, you have to accept risk challenges because are the one that will make you perfect and able to copy with different situation. You have to overcome fear of doing bad or things not working as you expected. Take more time to do analysis before doing something that will ruin your business for good.