Planning and Overcoming Time Management Obstacles: Part 2

To overcome these planning and time management obstacles, consider these four steps:

1. What’s stopping you?

Look at what’s holding you up. Is it procrastination? Perfection? A lack of planning? What’s getting in your way?

2. Prioritize and set goals

Prioritizing and goal setting are two very important components of time management. Goal setting is easiest to accomplish when you set a goal that is attainable and measurable and when you break it down into smaller manageable goals.

Creating a task list is another item that, as strange as it may sound, needs to become a scheduled part of your day and your week. You’ll want to spend a bit of time prior to Monday morning creating a list of tasks and goals for the upcoming week. Keep in mind that some days may be set aside as planning days, days off or meeting days.

3. Plan and schedule your day, week and month

Make sure you have time to accomplish the goals, tasks and priorities you’ve established. Set aside the time you need by planning your days, weeks, and even your month out.

To make this process easier, and to lighten your load, there are time management tools like a PDA, desktop scheduling software and the good old fashioned paper calendar, which can help you establish and maintain time management success.

4. Get help

Finally, if you’re feeling overwhelmed, it may be time to seek outside help. Consider hiring someone to manage the tasks that seem to get in the way. Often these are the administrative tasks. You can partner with a virtual assistant to lighten the load and streamline your technology and automation. You can also hire a housekeeper if daily chores are a distraction from your business. Last but not least, hire a business coach who can help you take your business to the next level.

Overcoming your time management obstacles is easy when you are able to acknowledge what they are and why they exist. From there it’s merely a process of planning how to overcome them and using the right tools to get the job done.