Planning and Overcoming Time Management Obstacles: Part 1
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Planning and time management can be the biggest challenges to starting a business and being a successful entrepreneur. Learning to overcome these obstacles can be the key to managing and leading a successful business.
What are time management obstacles and what causes them? Many things cause time management obstacles including:
1. Perfectionism – Many people use perfectionism as a crutch, a way to stay busy doing what they know how to do and to let the rest slide. For example, you’re a skilled writer but detest accounting, which means you spend days on a sales letter and your books are in such shambles that you are unsure who owes you what or how much money you’re making or losing.
2. Procrastination – This happens for a number of reasons. If you’re facing burnout, then you’ll likely feel like avoiding anything related to your business. However, if you’re facing a task you don’t want to do it’s much easier to procrastinate.
3. An inability to say no – Guess what…not only should you not be doing everything – you can’t! And if you try to, something’s going to give. You’re not going to be able to devote your full attention to your business-related tasks, they’ll suffer and your bottom line will suffer.
4. Lack of planning – It’s easy to become caught up in tasks like
- Social networking
- Phone calls
- Checking stats and website analytics (This is important but you don’t need to obsessively watch the numbers)
- Surfing the net, reading blogs and industry information
One quick email check can turn into a full hour of back and forth email correspondence and before you know it, your entire schedule is off for the day. Planning, and sticking to your plan, helps you stay on track. In part two of this article series, we’ll talk about how to overcome these obstacles.
