Women Lifestyle, Fashion, Health, Beauty and Personality

The fact is if you are a woman business owner, with multi-tasking as the natural aspect of business, are most likely already a multi-tasker of epic proportions. You know how to combine family, childcare and business tasks as a matter of course. Whether it’s carpooling, business errands, deliveries, or phoning clients, babysitters and arranging multiple schedules, you think in terms of multiple areas of impact most of the time.
Know this – and move on. It is part of creating business and you will have to face these issues whether it’s your first attempt or if you’ve been in business for years. Changes happen fast on the Internet and that includes changes to businesses. One day you will be amazing yourself and the next day you’ll think you’ve been beat.

When your business is in your home you have additional challenges and benefits which your multi-tasking abilities can make work for you. You can handle household chores and meal preparation in between appointments, phone consultations, or writing that new piece for your monthly newsletter. You routinely make decisions which involve multiple areas of your life more or less simultaneously.
The best way to do this is to set aside some quiet time when you will not be disturbed and really take a look at what it is you want your business to accomplish, in what time frame. Using the backward planning approach works very well.

A project plan (target list) and work chart can be a very helpful tool for the next process of breaking down each target into the associated tasks required to fulfill each objective. Using these two tools, you can create the work chart for each specific area, and then see how the various targets are related.
For instance, a new promotional pack for your business will have various components: brochure, logo, support materials, testimonial letters, perhaps a multi media presentation. Each of these items becomes a block in the project work chart, and completing portions of any one may provide materials for the others.
Once you have accomplished this you will have a clear picture of all the tasks required for each area of your business so of checking in on the larger picture as you work each day becomes a simple matter of using these tools to keep you on track.

The next step is to integrate the project work charts into a daily system of self check as you naturally group your work according to like tasks which can be accomplished in clusters of multi-tasking events. With it, you can significantly increase your progress and your business will thrive.
Once you have clearly charted targets for the business you can start to apply the multi tasking skills you aridly have to what needs to be done to make the targets happen.

Next step to optimizing your multi-tasking is to ask yourself where you do your best work. What gives you the most energy and creativity? What is the most difficult for you to tackle of the things that require your attention?
A professional counselor, in the midst of changing her business from one based on individual clients to seminars and group events met the challenge of having to think in ways unfamiliar to her by relocating her new event planning activities to her kitchen! She recognized that her most relaxing and enjoyable activity was preparing fresh foods for family and friends. When she moved her event planning to the kitchen, her natural confidence and creativity in that environment enabled her to expand her event planning thinking much more easily than she could in her office.

Learning your own personal rhythm and areas of your own natural creativity and enthusiasm and thinking in ways which allow you to tap into those parts of yourself you can greatly enhance not only the results of your work, but the sense of well being you find in your work.

Finally, as a multi-tasker, there is some danger that you can become too diversified and lose the focus and clarity of knowing what is most important in your business and in your life. By implementing target lists and project work charts as a guide to daily actions and updating them as each new target is complete you have a simple and effective system for starting each new day, and for meeting all your business objectives.
The daily action of a quick review of the target list and work chart also provides the added benefit of stimulating new ideas and inspirations to continue enhancing your multi tasking skills, keeping your work fresh, interesting and exciting.

By Julie Mark, WD