Sometimes, it is easy to manage your time when you run a home-based business. You set your work hours, choose a planning and organizing system either on your computer or smartphone or on paper and use it religiously, and there you go. Often, things are not that simple though. Your work time becomes riddled with interruptions and your non-work time also gets invaded by work-related interruptions. What is a home-based professional to do about all of these interruptions – the emails, phone calls, and even mail and package deliveries that seem like small things but can really eat into your productive work time or dedicated non-work time?
The key to for dealing with interruptions effectively is realizing that you have control over whether or not you respond to that ringing phone or that dinging that tells you that “you’ve got mail”. You can let those calls go to voice mail, and those emails can sit in your inbox for a few hours while you attend to things that must get done. When you schedule your tasks for each work day, make certain to block off time to concentrate on important tasks where you are at risk for losing momentum or failing to complete the task if you are interrupted. Once you have distraction free zones blocked off in your schedule, be certain to schedule other times for returning phone calls and emails as well as opening and dealing with business related postal mail. If you are truly waiting for an urgent call or email, try handling as many smaller tasks as you can while you wait instead of tackling something major if at all possible. That way when the urgent communication comes, you can jump right in and attend to it immediately.
Some people fear that not answering phone and email connections immediately all of the time could make customers unhappy. This is simply not true. Your clients and contacts will still feel well served when phone calls and emails are returned within a few hours or at least the same day. More importantly, if a call goes to voice mail, you can usually get an idea of what the caller needs so you can prepare yourself with any needed information before you return the call. What the customer gets in that case is exactly the information they need when you call them instead of you in person answering the phone and saying that you will call them back once you have thought about a solution to their problem or have located the information that they need – it seems a little different if you think about it that way, doesn’t it? Taking control of whether and when to answer phone, email, text, and other messages does not harm anyone. It does help you to use your time more effectively, and effective time management is something that can help you and your home based business to be successful.
Photo by dorne on morguefile.com.