Danielle Guerin

Archive for the ‘Business tips’ Category

Setting your priorities and sticking to them is a great step towards reducing your stress, but it won’t help much if you don’t have time to finish all the other menial tasks that are involved in running an at-home business. Items like billing, filing, ordering ink for your printer, and a million other little things that pile up over time still need to be done.

Let’s look at five methods to help you keep better track of where your time goes, and keep on top of your schedule:

Write everything down.

Famous productivity expert David Allen, author of Get It Done, recommend getting your to-dos out of your brain and onto paper. I can attest that this method works! When I’m feeling overwhelmed, I have found one of the greatest ways to de-stress is to sit down and write out everything I have to do that’s got my head spinning. Whether those are big projects, little five-minute tasks, or anything, it all goes down on paper as my brain is churning out the words. When I can actually see my thoughts on paper, I can start sorting and prioritizing (see Section 2 above).

Keep track of how long a task takes you.

It’s a common psychological trick we play on ourselves – we overestimate how long it takes to complete unpleasant tasks, and we underestimate how long we spend on pleasant items. Get real by writing down the actual time it takes you to do things like file papers, log receipts, and any other tedious task. Then you have a concrete estimate the next time you think, “Oh, that’s going to take all day!”

Minimize interruptions.

Turn off your email alert noise, put your phone ringer on mute, and clear your desktop before you jump into a task that requires concentration. Fewer interruptions and distractions allow you to get in that concentrating “sweet spot” where you’re humming along and working at a pleasant clip. That means you’ll get your work done faster and be less stressed. Constant interruptions ultimately result in needing to re-prioritize your day, over and over and over again. You can see how the stress you feel just keeps escalating without minimizing the interruptions each day.

Break down large projects.

Big projects – website overhauls, writing reports, planning marketing campaigns, creating a newsletter – can be overwhelming. When faced with a large project, break it up into tasks you can complete in one sitting, preferably in under 20 minutes. That way, instead of looking for a free afternoon to tackle the project all at once (which you’ll never get!), you just need to squeeze in 20 minutes here and there until the project is completed. I don’t know anyone who can’t find 20 minutes, but ask an entrepreneur to block out 8 hours for a project, and you’ll receive in turn a stunned glare.

Take advantage of “lost” time.

Our days are full of five minute breaks between activities. We call these “dead” time. You may be sitting in car-line at your child’s school, or in line at the pharmacy, or even waiting for a pot of water to boil. There you are, simply waiting for something to happen. Keep a notebook with a running list of tasks that can be completed in 5 minutes or less. Schedule an appointment, call a friend to set up a lunch date, clean out your voice mail, file your nails – anything that you know you need to do but don’t get around to doing.

Now when you have “dead” time, glance down at your notebook with the list of 5 minute tasks and start at the top. Work your way down the list every time you find yourself with a few free minutes. You’ll be amazed at how much you accomplish when you’re ready to go!

The power of time management can have you thinking you can do it all now! You are Superwoman! You are Superman! But, before you go leaping those tall buildings, stop and take a deep breath. There are still things beyond our control. Yes, we can do a lot, but we can’t do it all. Life sometimes gets in the way, even of the most on-task entrepreneur.  In my next post, we’ll take a look now at how to recover from situations beyond our control.

If the basics of reading and writing are learning your ABCs, the basics of work-at-home success is setting your priorities. If you don’t have a set of priorities by which to guide your business, your day, and your week, you are at the mercy of circumstance. Happenstance is for people who play the lottery; not for entrepreneurs.

You sit down at the computer to begin work on your to-do list, and the emails start coming in. Instead of having a way to rate the importance and urgency of each request and item on your list, you just respond to whatever is front and center – which is usually whatever email or phone call has come in most recently. Then the end of the day comes, and you still have as many items on your to-do list as you started with. The stress starts to mount as your business goals recede farther and farther into the distance.

So what’s the solution? Setting priorities. When you have a list of goals and priorities, you have a map for your future.

My advice is to set one or two business objectives for each quarter of the year. You may choose to launch a new product the first quarter of the year, revamp your website during the second quarter, create marketing materials for the third quarter, and develop an outsourcing strategy for the fourth quarter.

The following is my favorite process for breaking down a large objective into daily, weekly, and monthly priorities:

• Start with your quarterly objective.
• Ask yourself, what would have to happen this month to achieve this objective?
• What would have to happen this week?
• What would have to happen today?

Once you have defined what needs to happen each day, week, month, and quarter, put those items on your calendar and to-do list with a big star next to them. Now you know what has to be completed every day before you start answering phone calls or emails. No matter what the rest of the day brings, you know you have completed the things that will most move your business forward.

This small routine will help reduce your stress because you’ll no longer lie in bed, wondering what the heck you accomplished that day. Instead, you will have taken concrete steps towards achieving your most important goals. (P.S. This works great with personal goals, too!).

Now that you have your priorities set for each day, week, month, and quarter, how will you know if all that work will fit into your schedule? In our next post, we’ll take a look at how you can manage those fleeting 24 hours we all have to work within.

When you work from home, stress is everywhere. It’s in your success as you become more in demand, it’s in your lack of success as you try to figure out how to make a go of your venture. When you’re stressed out, you become less effective as your energy is sapped away from your goals and diverted to fighting fires. If you could minimize these stressors, you’d be better able to focus on your long-term business goals.

In my experience, there are nine main stress points that home-based entrepreneurs face:

1.You’re stressed because you don’t set priorities.

2.You’re stressed because you don’t manage your time efficiently.

3.You’re stressed because a lot of what you do is outside your control.

4.You’re stressed because you can’t say no.

5.You’re stressed because you don’t set boundaries for your family.

6.You’re stressed because you get sucked into the TV/e-mail/blog-reading trap.

7.You’re stressed because you don’t delegate.

8.You’re stressed because you don’t take care of yourself or your health.

9.You’re stressed because you don’t have a support system.

If you were to rate yourself on each point, you’d likely score higher on some than others. You may be a great delegator, but you’re not so good at setting boundaries. Each of us has our own strengths and weaknesses, based on our experience and personality. Even if you answer “yes” to only one of these stress points, you may suffer from more anxiety than someone who has answered “yes” to numerous stressors. Each of us responds differently to outside pressures and stress.

In upcoming posts, we’ll take a look at how you can make adjustments and get on the road to increased productivity and a more enjoyable work life. The first stop? Taking a look at your priorities.