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Best of the Janes: Improving Time Management

Guest post by: Michele DeKinder-Smith

Article Overview: Improved time management skills means more time for a female business owner. She may use that time for business-related tasks, or for rest and relaxation. It also means increased efficiency and therefore greater profitability for the business. Jane Out of the Box, an authority on women entrepreneurs, reveals 5 tips all business owners may employ to improve their time management skills.

Best of the Janes: Improving Time Management

While each business owner has her own unique style, habits and characteristics, every business owner can benefit from improving her time management skills. Whether better time management helps an entrepreneur feel less overwhelmed or provides her with a stronger focus to move her company forward, it undoubtedly will contribute to her overall satisfaction.

Whether she's a Jane Dough, a Go Jane Go, a Merry Jane, an Accidental Jane or a Tenacity Jane, every female entrepreneur can benefit from the following advice:

• Find an efficient, measurable marketing system. To determine whether a marketing system is efficient, a business owner must be able to measure it. Many computer-generated marketing systems provide software that tracks how often web site visitors buy, or how often someone performing a search ends up at a particular web site. By tracking those and similar metrics, business owners can determine whether their resources are well-spent. Also, the key to marketing efficiency is to ensure that her marketing message is clear and concise, and is directed at the right audience.
• Create a filter. If a businesswoman feels overwhelmed by her workload, she may consider creating a filter, through which all projects must pass before she takes them on. For example, if it's important to a business owner that a project stretches her creativity, takes only a certain number of hours to complete, and fits in with her vacation schedule, she may decide to accept only projects that fit all 3 criteria. By doing so, she will improve her efficiency because she will be able to work smarter on projects she truly enjoys, rather than working harder on every project that comes her way.
• Set goals. Goals provide direction, so that a business owner focuses her time and energy on moving forward. This way, the time she spends on her business is effective and efficient - and productive.
• Park it. While not all entrepreneurs feel overwhelmed all of the time, an effective way to remain focused on the most important tasks at hand is to create a couple of ongoing lists of projects. The first should be a list of short-term or immediate projects, and it should be visible all the time. The second should be a list of longer-term projects, kept filed away and reviewed periodically. This way, a business owner doesn't have to worry that she'll forget about something important - it's written down - and she always has a visible reminder of the timeliest projects.
• Document systems. By writing down every single step of every single system in her business, an entrepreneur can determine where she can streamline to increase efficiency. Such documentation will reveal obsolete or repetitive steps and it will also reduce training and learning time in the case of an employee transition.

Every woman business owner defines success differently; however, improved time management means more time to strive for success, however success is defined. While entrepreneurial and personal values vary from woman to woman, everyone can benefit from increased efficiency.

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Article Tags: business efficiency, female entrepreneurs, small business time management, time management, women business owners
Referred by: http://www.MichelePW.com



Related Forum Posts
No B.S. Time Management - A great book I read on Time Management is No B.S. Time Management for Entrepreneurs by Dan Kennedy.
Your Intial Mistakes Business - Hi, When I started my business I had made a lot of mistakes initially. These helped me in learning the art of the trade and today when I look back, I feel that these mistakes were quite silly. I had made my learnings then and those learnings have helped me time and again. Some of the mistakes I made were - i. Wrong Time Management ii. Wasting money on glossy Brochures and Business cards iii. Believing what they taught me at school was 100% correct iv. Giving too much when it was not required...... I would like to find out what have been your faltering moments in Business when you had started and what/how did they help you grow. Regards
Re: UPDATES: New Campaign! New Layout! New Ideas! - We've also expanded the list for Contest and All-Time Leaders. It's great to now see David and Yinka on the All Time list and recognize the contributions they've made to the forums!
Which kind of industries are you interested in? - Ecological or E-business or Investment or Finance or Management or Non-Profit or Retailer or others.
Books that should be written - [quote:1m0dcpd7]"The Idiots Guide To Sticking With One Thing At A Time and Not Doing Something New All The Time" [/quote:1m0dcpd7] I myself am a 'constructive' procrastinator... I don't know if I'm alone in this. I have about six or seven projects I'm working on at any given time. I get one project almost done... then my interest is piqued by another project and I work on that... I get burnt out and move to another...I know I do this so I have it arranged such that once I get bored or burnt out with one project, I can step right back into project 1 - or 2 or 3, and get that a little bit more done before moving on to something else. As long as you're organized and know where all your reference material/idea sheets are when you're ready to get back to work on each project, it should be fine. I also find that by stepping away from a project - I still work on it in the recesses of my mind so that when I go back to it - it's with some good ideas that I wouldn't have had if I'd continued on with it originally. Maybe I should write a book on how to Procrastinate Constructively... I've actually thought about doing that...because most people procrastinate, don't they...and very few are ever able to stop.


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