Tweet

Scheduling for Success

Written by: Tamara Hancock

Article Overview: Working from home you face many challenges. The first challenge to overcome is to set your schedule, and keep it. While that sounds easy enough, how do you set a schedule and more importantly, how do you stick to it?

Scheduling for Success

“How do you do it?”

I get asked this question daily by everyone from friends, to colleagues, to perfect strangers. When most people find out that I work from home, with children – they are impressed. When I let them know that I typically work around 40 hours per week – they are amazed. When they find out that I have five children…well, that’s when they are blown away. Inevitably, the next phrase I hear – “Wow, you are my hero…”

There is absolutely nothing heroic about what I do from day to day. My time used to control me. I was tired, stressed out, and wondering what exactly about working from home was good for me and my family. After some time however, it became apparent to me that balancing family, home, and career simply comes down to one simple word. Are you ready? Schedules. I now know every minute of the day, what I am doing, and when I am doing it. Sound complicated? Not really, once you take a step back and look at your day, you’ll realize you already live by a schedule for the most part.

So how do you create a schedule? I will share with you what I did. And no, it isn’t an overnight process, but anything that is really worth it never is. But, you can trust me, follow these few simple steps, and you are well on your way to being organized – with your time anyway.
Before you can create a working schedule for yourself, you need to define the times you spend during the day doing certain tasks. The easiest and most practical first step to defining this time is to create your family schedule. Why? Because this is the schedule you already keep, without realizing it.

First, figure out what you do in a typical day for your family. Don’t make any special effort to be scheduled or organized, just live your day the way you normally do, and take notes. What do you do through out the day? When do you do it? Are there typical things you do every day around the same time? If it helps, keep a notebook, and for the next few days jot down when you – and your kids – do certain things. For example, if your kids are anything like mine, you can set the clock by the time they wake up in the morning. For me, it’s 6:30 AM. After they wake up, a chain of events is put into place…diaper changes, change of clothes, get dressed, and breakfast. Take a note of the time, when did you complete this chain of events? For me, it’s around 7:30 AM. Track all repeating daily events, include nap time, lunch time, play time, and dinner.

Keep your notebook with you for the next few days; you’ll be amazed at the similarities from day to day. Once you locate the similarities, you are going to start creating your schedule. I entered mine into an excel spreadsheet and color coded family events in green. For example, the block of time from 6:30 AM to 8:00 AM on my family schedule is blocked out in green. I know that every morning from 6:30 to 8:00, the kids and I are getting ready to start our day.

Next, you need to analyze the time you devote to your career. Repeat the same steps from above, only this time through, pay close attention to the tasks you complete each day to run your business. Don’t necessarily pay attention to the times you do them, but rather WHAT you do. The whole purpose of working at home is to fit your career around your family, not the other way around. Look at your workload, what is it that you do? Are there client calls to be made? Do you spend a large amount of time returning emails, and written correspondence? Do you have your list? Good.

With the list in hand that you just created, look at the blocks of time in your schedule that are now reserved for family time. Do you see large blocks of time between events? On my schedule, between 8 AM and 10:15 AM there is a large block of time that does not have a daily repeated event. Now is the time to fill in your career duties. Let’s look at scheduling time to make client phone calls. With your schedule in front of you, look for periods of time in your day when your house might be quiet enough to make a professional call. For me, it’s between 10:30 AM and 12:00 Noon – why? This is when my two year old takes a nap, and my three year old has “quiet time”. I blocked this time out on my schedule to make and receive calls. Continue through your working tasks, and identify times on your schedule that you can complete them. When can you return emails? What is a good time to research new projects? Do you see things falling into place?

Now, look at your schedule. There may be times left in there that are “free”. If that’s true, then you aren’t done yet – and if it isn’t true, you may want to take a second look at the tasks you do have scheduled. The “free” time is the most important time in your day. What is the “free” time for? This is time for your family, for your kids, for your home, and for you. We all made the choice to work from home so that we could be closer to our family. A lot of times it is difficult to draw the line between work and home, especially when they occupy the same space. This “free” time is the time you use to remind yourself why you decided to work from home in the first place. We use the time at our house to build play-dough creatures, color, and play Candy-Land. Sometimes we even go for a walk, or go to McDonalds. “Free” time is also used to clean house, go to the store, and impromptu visits to the library.

Finally, test your schedule out. The most important factor to making it work is to live by it. When your time is up on a certain task, you must move to the next. A schedule doesn’t work unless you live by it. I am not saying that every day is going to fall into place, and every task is going to run smoothly every day. The fact of the matter is, we live in the real world and in the real world – things happen. However, when you have a schedule to go by when these “things” happen you will know what you have coming up, and figuring out a time to manage it won’t be such a daunting task.

Like I said, I’m nobody’s hero. I just took the time to figure out what others need of me, and when I have the time to do it. I now have control over my time, it doesn’t control me - and that is an amazing feeling.

Related Articles
  Dynamics of Employee Scheduling
  Scheduling Resources For Organizations Made Amazing
  Barriers in Scheduling Employees Efficiently
  The Benefits of Calendaring and Time Management
  Schedule Your Day to Reflect Goals and Priorities - Part 3 - Understanding Your Rhythm

Article Tags: balancing family, blown away, colleagues, family schedule, few days, hero, jot, notebook, perfect strangers, phrase, simple steps, special effort, typical day, working from home
Referred by: http://www.wendyweiss.com



Related Forum Posts
Re: THE SECRET TO SUCCESS IS ALL IN YOUR HEAD...RIGHT NOW!!! - Success = Thinking (Head) + Heart (Feeling / Interest) + Hand (doing/ action). Success - H3 Robert
Re: Success - I study success intently, and would like to share: Here's two excellent and nearly identical success-formulas from a couple of the world's masters. FIRST FORMULA: 1. Passionate Desire 2. Clear, Definite Purpose 3. Committed Decision 4. Take Action In Faith (Bonus Secret Sauce: 5. Repeat Consistently) I made a video about this, but am not allowed to link it yet. Google "Ryze Success Steps" for it. Oh, and this is Napoleon Hill's (Master Of Success Laws)'s Formula. SECOND FORMULA: 1. Passionate Desire 2. Understand It Is Already Done (Faith) 3. Relax & Allow It To Unfold (Go about your life calmly) This one is courtesy of Abraham-Hicks (inspiration for the movie The Secret). Hope that helps!
Success Strategies - How to get the results you want now? Success Strategies and Action Steps I have used are: The Power of Choice Where you are at this present moment, is exactly perfect from the choices you have made. If you want to be somewhere else, you have to decide clearly what that is (your goal/outcome) and create action steps to achieve this. The Power of Focus The book "The Power of Focus" by Jack Canfield, Mark Victor Hansen and Les Hewitt, is one of my treasures in my Entrepreneur Library. If you focus on what you want versus what you do not want, your conscious and sub-conscious mind will direct attention to this. The movie, What the Bleep, Down the Rabbit Hole, explains this in detail about quantum physics and what we create in our lives. The Power of Commitment This is not about commitment to others. The first step is the commitment, your word, you make to yourself. Accountability and responsibility are additional success strategies and ingredients to creating the success, defined by you, that you want. The commitment to others reflects your integrity, your word and the team you work with. Co-workers, clients, yoru family, friends and community. My Success Acronyn in Success Breakthroughs(c) is: S pecific & self-directed U nlimited opportunities & possibilities C reate powerful outcomes C onsistent measureable results E xperience pwoerful transformation S olution and action-oriented S uccessful habits and outcomes Break Through to Powerful LIfestyle & Performance Choices Moira
Re: Books for the Entrepreneur - Here's one of my most recent books The 100 Absolutely Unbreakable Laws of Business Success By Brian Tracy
Re: What is your age? - Kevin, Success is the best revenge. they are telling the world that been raised by sinlge parent will not determine their success in life


Share this article with your friends. Fund someone's dream.

Leave a comment below or share on the left and you'll help support entrepreneurs in Africa through our partnership with Kiva. Over $50,000 raised and counting - Please keep sharing! Learn more.

Tweet

Newsletter

Get advice & tips from famous business
owners, new articles by entrepreneur
experts, my latest website updates, &
special sneak peaks at what's to come!

Name:
Email:

Popular Articles

Coaching Tip: Identify Your Core Values

Adapting to Technology and the Internet

How To Be Happy at Work? Acknowledge Yourself

Suggestions

Email us your ideas on how to make our
website more valuable! Thank you Sharon
from Toronto Salsa Lessons / Classes for
your suggestions to make the newsletter
look like the website and profile younger
entrepreneurs like Jennifer Lopez.