Time Budget

Your Time Budget – Make a Time Profit or Loss Statement

Your Time Budget

Most SME owners watch their money closely. They examine profit and loss statements, balance sheets, credit card statements, and bank balances. They measure cash flow, shop for the best interest rates, bargain for goods, and develop forecasts and budgets. Yet seldom do any of these same SME owners track and budget their time!  (Time Budget)

Top 10 Time Management Tips

As you go through each day, track your time by making an entry next to each appointment and task scheduled, recording how much time each one actually consumed. Time tracking will give you a record of exactly how you are spending your time. (Time Budget)

THE SECRET TO GETTING MORE TIME

At the end of the initial month, total all the time you plan for tasks and events. Then total all the time you actually spent accomplishing these tasks. Subtract the actual time spent from the total time allotted. The consequences will be your time profit or loss. (Your Time Budget)

Make a Time Profit or Loss Statement

This answer will give you some ideas about how you should be budgeting your time. Sooner or later, you’ll have an informed outline of how much time you waste and the amount of your time several of your varied tasks really take. (Your Time Budget)

Tracking Your Time

Enter how much time each scheduled task takes during your day. Be sure to make notes of any interruptions. Label tasks and schedules as OUT or as OUT support activities. Categorize these tasks and assignments by primary, secondary, or tertiary time. (Your Time Budget)

  • At the end of each week, use this information to
  • Evaluate what percentage of your time is spent in each area of your time.
  • See what percentage of your activities is important and what is urgent
  • Determine the ratio b/w planned and unplanned activities
  • Spot interrupters and time stealers
  • Find out how much time your normal tasks really take
  • Adjust time estimating for future tasks
  • Make decisions relating to projects, workflow, and delegation.
  • Eliminate unneeded tasks.
  • Better organize time and tasks.

Following Your Plan

A plan relieves you of responsibility and energizes you.

Eliminating Procrastination

Most people procrastinate occasionally. Some people procrastinate about almost everything, while some people procrastinate on certain projects or tasks. (Your Time Budget)

PLAN YOUR TIME

Some people believe they work better under pressure. This is almost always a fallacy. People applying this pressure to their lives most always perform below their potential.

Chronic procrastination can lead to undue stress and even depression, and often requires behavioral changes.

In order to change the habits of procrastination, you must determine why you procrastinate.

There are three major reasons for procrastination:

  1. PERFECTIONISM

Many procrastinators tend to be perfectionists. When faced with anything too challenging they can become paralyzed and shut down. (Your Time Budget)

  1. EMOTIONAL AVOIDANCE

The emotions associated with a particular chore can be overwhelming. Many people avoid the task to avoid emotion. (Your Time Budget)

  1. FEAR

Fear can be paralyzing. Fear of others’ reactions, fear of change, fear of risk, and even fear of success can immobilize some people.

If you’re procrastinating, isolate the emotions with the task. Is the fear healthy? What is your gut telling you? Possibly the task is one you should not be doing.

Here are some tips on how to stop dragging your feet:

  • Try imagining the task completed. How do you feel?
  • Talk to the person or people involved. Ask them how your procrastination is affecting them.
  • Try breaking the task down into pieces and doing a part each day.
  • Put the task on your schedule.
  • Avoid other procrastinators.
  • Start a ‘no procrastination’ program.
  • Set a deadline for every task.

Rather than trying to maintain awareness of, or remember each chore or task you must complete throughout the day.

Belief the clock to be your task manager

Most SME owners that devote their time to planning have the simplest intentions of following their plans. But phone calls, emails, employees, crises, clients, customers, and vendors all seem to disrupt even the best aspirations. (Your Time Budget)

After a brief time of observation their plans disintegrate, they become discouraged and reckless in planning time altogether. They are convinced plans simply do not work and conclude time spent planning is a waste of time.

Every plan needs protection.

How To Protect Your Plan

If you spent several hours creating your plan, why would you disrespect yourself and your time by allowing others to destroy it? (Your Time Budget)

Protecting your plan is about learning how to respect your own time. Your time is your life. Your prime time is your money. (Your Time Budget)

  • Avoid Interruptions – Do not answer your phone during certain time blocks in your plan. If you must heed these calls, at least limit them by screening with either your employees or caller ID. Do not allow email pop-ups while working at your computer.
  • Schedule Reactive Activity – Set appointments during the day when you will read and respond to emails when you will answer telephones when you will take interruptions!
  • Have a Plan B – This might be one of the greatest time-savers you will ever use. regardless of how well you plan, things happen that you will haven’t any control over, events or occurrences that suddenly provide you with unplanned time. Your appointment might not show, you could be kept waiting for an appointment, or an employee could be late. Keep productive activities available as an idea B to substitute at any given time.
  • Keep Meeting Times – Start conferences promptly and continually offer the ending time similar precise attention. Follow the meeting plans.
  • Be Prepared – Schedule time between activities to prepare for the next activity.
  • Be Realistic – Be as accurate as possible about the amount of time you allot for activities.
  • Create Expectations – Train others about what they should expect from you. Let them know a sense of urgency exists in business. Show up early, start meetings and appointments on time, get to the point, and conclude and leave on time.
  • Respect Others – Showing up late or keeping people waiting is disrespectful. Disrespecting others ‘ time is impudent. Time is the very substance of life. Keeping people waiting for appointments and meetings do not show you are important.   It shows you are impolite. If you want people to respect your time, start by respecting theirs.
  • Be Generous – Give Others Specific Time – Give people regular and specific times when you are available for impromptu meetings or conversations. Those people who might be used to ‘popping in’ throughout your day who might sometimes have important information, will continue to communicate with you especially if they know they will have their own time slot.   Be strict but give them time to adjust to your schedule. (This does not mean you should surrender to any negative time wasters.)

Image Source

This post contains the content of book Effective Time Management Strategies below is a link of a complete book  Effective Time Management Strategies