As a home based business owner, have you ever struggled with choosing and setting your priorities? Have you given up on time management? The life of a home business owner and entrepreneur is complex.
Of course home based business owners also struggle with time management issues.
On any particular day home business owners have to deal with marketing, sales, human resources, financial management, customer service, increasing profits, systems, and strategic planning.
It is true each of the areas need attention.
So how in the world can a business owner stay focused and make sure that he/she is working on the right thing at any particular point of time? You are a busy person and you work extended working hours.
You can imagine how it can consume most of your time.
Whether you like it or not, most likely this happens when you attempt to run a business properly.
After all, there are probably many things that you want to do with your time, such as spending time with your family, going out with your friends, reading books, play with your children, or what not.
Taking care of your home business can take up all of your time.
Time management skill is also a must for a home business owner.
The key to becoming more effective in time management lies in developing the ability to ask good questions.
The best question is a question that cannot be answered with a simple yes or no answer but has to be explained.
The following are some questions to help home based business owners to become focused:

• What does the business need from me today? Based on my answer, what needs to change? What information do I need? What is my logical next step?
• What do I need from the business? How can I go about creating that? Who do I know that has experience dealing with this issue that I can get support from?
• Will this task take longer than 2 minutes to complete? If yes, defer until later.
  If not, do it now.
  
• Is this something I need to deal with now or can it wait? If it can wait, when would be the best time to schedule it to be worked on?
• Am I prioritizing my tasks based on my comfort zone or what the business needs to succeed?

One thing, as we all know, all time management gurus tell us to set your priorities.
There is probably nothing more important than setting your priorities, since they will set the stage for just how much time you will spend on each area of your life.
You must clarify in your mind exactly what you want in life, and determine to spend more time on those things that you feel are most important.
Things that matter most must never be at the mercy of things that matter least.
If your home business is the most important to you, then it is only right that you use most of your time on it.
But if it is not, you should begin to scale back on the time you spend on it.
Remember- you own your home business; it does not own you.
When you are in business for yourself, time is as precious a commodity as money.
Everyone knows you can make twice the income by working twice the number of hours, putting forth twice the amount of effort.
The secret to true success in home based business is making the time you currently invest in your business twice as productive.