Analyzing Your Time - Work Smarter Not Harder
How well are you managing your time?
Do you end the day wishing for more hours? If this describe you, there are ways to get more from your day without having to need more hours.

Time management is a very important skill for anyone working in a flex-based environment. For mobile workers it can be the difference between sanity and insanity.

Creating and keeping a schedule will require some effort initially but once you get into this routine, it will become second nature to make plans and stay organized. You will need to breakdown your activities based upon Work and Home/Chores.

If you analyze the time spent doing various activities over a period of one or two weeks, you will see patterns developing. Those patterns are what you need to track. They will be either time wasters or maximum use of time.

Work

* Telephone calls and dealing with email can be two of the biggest time wasters we have.

* Keep all calls short and on topic. It’s not the time for socializing and catching up on gossip.

* Have separate email accounts for work and personal use. Leave reading the personal email until you are not on “the clock”.

Working in a remote environment it can be very easy to get side tracked and forget what your original purpose was.

* Make sure you stay focused and if you have to, use a timer.
* Set time limits for how long you have to work on a specific task.
Don’t set unreasonable limits, as you will frustrate yourself.

Keep favourite sites and search engines bookmarked. This will save valuable time. Save information in a text file that lists different sites and what information is found there.

Save your reading/writing/training for times when you know that you will not have to worry about interruptions. Nothing is worse than trying to learn something new and having the phone ringing from co-workers asking questions or looking for information.
Chores
Your first priority, especially when working from your home office is your job. Save chores for after work hours or for break times. If you allow yourself to get caught up in household chores, you will not get any work done.

Don’t forget you still need regular breaks and time to eat. It is too easy to get caught up in work and miss meals or not take a break and you will pay for that later.

Organizing your day to include regular breaks and scheduling your work tasks will enable you to work much smarter and it will also be lesss stressful.

This piece is courtesy of Catherine Roseberry.