Need more time!
Another week whizzed by. Absolutely chocka-block with work at the moment. If I had more time I’d be reading up on time management … and a bit of stress management thrown in. I’m working really hard at planning each day and week to keep on top of everything. I think it’s working to a certain extent, the job list is long but I don’t think it’s getting any longer, which must be a good sign.
The weekend is going to be spent catching up on coursework. Got the next instalment of my management course on Tuesday so need to do some stuff for that. Hope I’ll also have time to do a bit of actual management of our business - see what an impact our busyness is having, apart from making me work flat-out. Oh yes, and mustn’t forget to fit in a bit of relaxation.
Very satisfying day
For once I’m not going to complain about not having a productive day or not getting through as much as I’d wanted. Today was a good day! I planned out my day carefully, choosing A, B and C tasks for the day (A being essential, B desirable and C nice to get done) and worked through them. I think this is the first time that this has ever happened but I got through everything on the list and even made a start on some things I had earmarked for tomorrow. How satisfying is that?
I think the secret was that I’d estimated how long each task would take and planned 4 hours of billable work. I must be getting better at this because for once things took less than I’d estimated rather than more. So, even with interruptions I still managed to get through everything. I’ll have more days like that please!
All in the planning?
Following on from my post yesterday, I actually found it very easy to do my allocated 4-hours billable work today. Why are some days easier than others I wonder? Maybe less interruptions or maybe it was all in the planning. The last thing I did yesterday afternoon was plan out what what work I would do today, with an estimate of how long it would take. Turned out to be pretty easy to achieve my goal, even with starting the day with a couple of hours of training (though I did start mightily early).
Is that going to be the secret - planning it all the day before and working at it until the 4 hours are done?
Wasting my time?
I had a bit of a revelation at the weekend. I worked out what our turnover would be if we both did 4 hours of billable work a day at our standard hourly rate. Bit of a shock because it was around three times what we are actually bringing in. That’s not good is it? Though in some ways it’s encouraging because it means that we do have the capacity to bring in much more with just the two of us working on the business.
So, what are we doing so wrong that we’re not bringing in that much? In an 8-hour working day it should surely be quite straightforward to work 4 billable hours, shouldn’t it? We always seem very busy but are we spending too much time on admin, or is it that we’re just so bad at quoting that we end up working for much less than our hourly rate? That’s what we need to work out.
Based on my findings we’ve started tracking much more closely how much of our day is spent on work that we can class as billable. So far we’re finding that in a normal working day it can be quite difficult to do the required 4 hours - quite a bit of time is spent preparing quotes for prospective clients, which we can’t charge for, and then there’s the necessary admin tasks and keeping on top of emails. Still, I’m not giving up on the 4-hour target, I think we need to work on our efficiency and make sure that we actively aim for that every day. Hopefully this will have a knock-on effect to how quickly we get things finished and our general project management (yep, back to the project management again!).
Let’s see if we can make a breakthrough!
Back into the swing of things
Poor neglected blog. I disappeared into a black hole time-wise last week as we had a visit from my parents. Just about managed to keep on top of things in between spending time with the folks and had a massive catch-up session on Friday. Back into it properly this week. I’ve had a good start to Monday - got up at 6.30 and did yoga. I’m now thinking about what’s happening today before getting started. Always good to have some kind of plan in mind for the day.
What would I like to achieve today?
–This morning–
Clear build-up of emails from the weekend
Finish of the couple of web maintenance jobs hanging over from last week
Prepare for meeting with prospect
Clear in-tray and update accounts
–This afternoon–
Meeting with prospect
Banking
–Any remaining time–
Work on FAQs for our website
Think that’s enough to keep me going.
How do you divide your work time?
How does everyone divide their time between working directly on client stuff and business development? It’s a constant battle for me. If we’re really busy then the business gets pushed to one side and all my focus goes on client projects. But it’s important to work on the business too, isn’t it? Need to make sure that our own site is kept up-to-date (even more important now that we’ve launced the redesign!), that we’re actively working on attracting new clients, and that we keep on top of the endless admin.
I guess it all comes down to time management in the end. Organising yourself so that you know that you are keeping up with the important stuff. It’s not easy though. And stupidly I can feel guilty if I’m working on our site as if it’s not ‘real work’ and I should be doing something else. That’s silly isn’t it?
My second week of brilliance
I’m at the end of the second week of my 90 days of brilliance. The highlight of my week was joining the A1 Business Forums and I already feel like I’m settling in there. I’ve stuck to my plan pretty well - I’m not always doing everything on the day that I’d planned to do it but everything on the list seems to be getting ticked off. One of my tasks for today is to plan the next 7 days. Must remember not to cram too much into each day.
The most ‘non brilliant’ thing this week is continuing problems with the bloomin’ car. I’m hoping to try a speed networking event next Friday, so fingers crossed that we’ve managed to get it fixed in time.
Pay attention to where you save
Here’s top tip for you. When working on your computer pay attention to where you save your documents. I’ve just spent ages trying to track down some work that I did for a client last week (on my time, not the client’s…). I was about to give up when I stumbled across it in a completely random place. I don’t know what I was thinking! Thank goodness I found it or I would have had to start again from scratch.
So, to save wasted hours always save your documents in a sensible place.
New article: motivation for home-workers
Another article is now in place: 10 tips for how to stay motivated when working from home. This is a particularly relevant one for me today as I haven’t been feeling brilliantly motivated. Will start tomorrow afresh having reminded myself of the techniques that work for me.
Is there anything that you do differently? A brilliant tip that could make all the difference. Leave a comment below, I’d be delighted to hear from you.
The power of lists
I’m a bit of a list obsessive, so will probably be mentioning them fairly regularly. I love my lists. It’s a time management thing and a way to keep things out of my head so I can concentrate on one thing at a time (well as much as is possible with my overactive brain). The humble list came into its own today. I’ve been finding this week quite difficult so far - been feeling quite washed out and on the verge of things getting on top of me. When I get like this the slightest thing can send me into a panic, which definitely isn’t good for productivity.
I generally like to keep my inbox as clear as possible but over the last couple of days I’d let things build up a bit and it was really beginning to bother me. So, what did I do? I made a list! I wrote down everything that needed attention … actually I typed it up in a nice neat table, with a column to tick when I’d completed it and printed it out (on scrap paper I hasten to add). With this to hand I could move the screaming emails into folders ready to be dealt with, confident that they wouldn’t get forgotten because they were on ‘the list’. With that done I could already feel my brain clearing and could start working through them. Got a few small (and not so small) tasks crossed off and everything else is patiently waiting for me to start working through the list again tomorrow.
