Manage Your Business By Managing Yourself

Time gets away from you when you don't have a schedule. Money seems to always be a problem when you don't know where it's going. These issues affect both you and your work. Learn how to manage your business by managing yourself.

They say that you cannot help others up when you are on lower ground yourself. So learn these skills to keep ahead of time, rather than falling behind.
Money Management
Create a budget. It may seem as though keeping a budget is restricting to your freedom. The opposite is true, really. When you have a budget and stick to it you are free to do more things. Here are some of the benefits of keeping a budget.
- You are free to spend money on extras when you know you have it
- You can take vacations because the money has been set aside
- Your mind is at ease when you know you can pay monthly bills
- You have enough funds to pay for Christmas gifts at the end of the year, when money might otherwise have been low
How do you set up a budget? There are so many techniques to use. One is a traditional way, called the envelope method. You calculate how much money you need for certain things, take it out of the bank, stuff the cash into envelopes, and just use that cash for each category. So if you spend $500 in groceries each month, you put that amount of cash in an envelope and take it to the store with you, using only the money in there throughout the month. If you never spend more, you always know where your money is going.
Your Goal
The main goal is always to save more than you spend. So begin looking at what you can cut out this next month. Can you pay less for groceries or go out to eat half of the time? This way you can begin saving for something big, like a trip.
You should constantly save for a rainy day. You never know when disaster will hit, so make sure that you are as prepared as you can be. Set aside income in your 401-K automatically, especially if your company matches it. Set aside money in a CD account or in a regular saving account that you can easily pull out of. At the same time, make sure to never take from these accounts unless you would almost die otherwise.
Time Management
Something that many people need to learn is good time management. The planning fallacy is when you plan a certain amount of time for a project, and go over that time allowance. This is so common among humans that you need to plan for messing up.
Schedules
So set a general schedule for yourself. Begin with making a list of what you want to do tomorrow. Write down the things that you absolutely need to accomplish, things you should accomplish, and things you want to accomplish. Be stingy with it.
If you have a long-term goal to exercise every day, this may be in the "need" section. Health is a major priority because it determines how well you can do everything else. It may fall in the "should" category on the busiest of days.
Important meetings would most likely fall in the "need" category, but reading a book may fall in the "want" category. As time goes on, your wants and needs may shift around, but this is a good place to start keeping track of when needs to be done, and to make sure that the big things get taken care of.
When you take care of money and time management in your own life, you can do so in your business affairs. Use these skills to manage your company wisely.