Time Budget

When you're the busy bee type, who finds themselves working from home on multiple projects and trying to live a normal family life. Time management is the key to keeping your sanity.

Whether you have multiples jobs or one job that involves working on multiple projects at the same time, you may consider creating a time budget. It's a little trick that helps me out quite a bit.

Just like how I sit down each month and write out a budget for my money, during the busy periods I sit down each day and write out a time budget. I follow similar steps and rules in this process.

• Start by determining how much time I have to work with
• Schedule the big items that I can't compromise on first (large projects, lead time sensitive, etc.)
• Limit time amounts I can spend on a project each day

By limiting time ,such as for me 45 minutes of time per day for blogging or updating my blog sites, can help improve efficiency and productivity. Putting a limit on the time I can work on a project helps me stay focus. Knowing I only have a specific time and a specific amount of time gives me a sense of urgency that keeps me motivated and helps me concentrate.

Before I would let my ADDS (or whatever) take over and I would bounce between project and project. Starting, stopping, starting, checking Facebook, forgetting what I was doing, starting. That was how my evenings would go. Now, with the self imposed time limit, I stay more focused.

Also when you are working on multiple projects, it can help moving forward by switching gears and working on a completely different project altogether.

Even if you are working on one project, you can use this time management technique. You can break up large projects into smaller tasks and dedicate blocks of time to each task. For example, when I design a plastic injection mold; I will dedicate time to work on key items, such as gates & runners, cooling, ejection, and mold base.

Of course I can't always stop and switch tasks when a buzzer goes off. Sometimes I stop a few minutes early or work a few minutes late until I come to a clean breaking point. But overall, setting a time budget can help me work through multiple tasks and stay focused and efficient.