Hi Andrew,

I’m not a particularly organised person, and I know organisation is key to running a successful business.

Andrew my question to you is – how exactly you go about setting targets, tasks and aims – long and short term?

Tim

Hey Tim!

Great question you have there and you’re totally right – time management IS really the key to running a successful online business. Branding, product sourcing, customer service and everything else are secondary after the planning and time management.

And I remember myself years ago when I was thinking – ehm, yeah – time management sounds cool but I don’t need it. I have all the plans in my head. Yeah, right…

Don’t be a fool, like I was! Read this article and start taking action, right now – set your first goal and start planning your time. Have a full time job? Even better! If you can only spend an hour or a day on your online business, you definitely don’t want to waste that time! You can’t imagine how much can be done in as little as one hour if you KNOW what you have to do and spend time in productive, measurable work (not browsing the net or checking out latest YouTube videos).

I’m not a time management expert nor have I learned this topic in depth. Don’t take my word as it is – your situation may be unique but still, I believe the main principles will stay the same. And as Tim wrote, he wants to know how exactly I am doing this, so here it goes!

There is a three part formula to achieve almost anything in your life:

1)    Set a Goal – you start by setting a goal. This is it, the beginning of everything. You need to set your goals to achieve those targets! A goal can be anything really – a sales figure, new product or a website, traffic level, conversion rate, importing deal – I mean it – literally anything!

Goals are all those little and big things you want to achieve in your business. A typical long term goal would be – make a full time living from an online shop by the end of 2010. Or a short term goal – hire a coder to customize a blog.

2)    Create a Plan – once your goal is set, you need to create a plan on how to achieve it. Just like athletes create 2 year and 4 year plans when training for next Olympics, YOU want to create plans for your business.

A plan in this case is just a list of things you need to do to reach the goal. So for the blog customization, you would write down something like this:

•    Find blogs you like, spy on competition
•    Create a list of what you want to see in your blog
•    Create project on Elance.com
•    Review proposals
•    Choose provider
•    Manage the project
•    Enjoy final result!

3)    Take Action – once you have an actionable plan in your hands, all you have to do is take action! Just do what you have to do!

I know, I know – for many people this is the hardest part and reason number one why they fail haven’t even started anything. But you’ll have to overcome yourself with this one. We don’t have that much time here, but we’ll cover personal improvement and similar topics in future articles.

That’s it – the formula is very straightforward but yet so many people fail to stay in line with it. You have to be prepared to fail, that’s just a part of our lives. Sometimes you’ll totally get sidetracked but next day you just have to get back to the plan and stick with it! Even for me, after years of doing this, sometimes it’s really difficult to stay focused – it’s not a big deal, no one is perfect.

It’s a good idea to divide all goals by time it takes to achieve them, at least that’s what I do. A classical way of doing this is to divide them in 3 groups:

•    Short term goals (weekly/daily)
•    Medium term goals (monthly/bi-monthly)
•    Long term goals (1-3 years+)

For beginners I would recommend to start with short term plans and once you’re doing well with them, move onto medium term and long term plans. Sure, you’ll always have that BIG picture in your mind; you can’t do anything without it! It’s just – it’s so much easier to set a goal for one day and create a simple, few steps action plan.

Write everything down; don’t use any electronic planning devices! Yes! Walls in my office are covered by large sheets of paper, planning boards and white boards – that’s still the best way to plan!

First of all – this way all your goals and plans are in front of you all day long. Secondly, by putting this info onto paper, by hand, it physically feels so much better when you can strike out each step and goal, one by one.

For daily action plans, I recommend using a simple, A4 size planner sheet. You can download a simple template here (yes, I use exactly the same template). Simply fill out the daily planner each evening, for the up-coming day, mentally prepare for the tasks you’ll need to take next day. Then, when each task is completed, strike it out. This helps a lot!

I could talk about this for hours but let’s leave some questions for next publications! Now, you should have a good idea on how to do a simple, basic time management to improve your daily routine! Tim, hope this answers your question in detail!