Welcome to the Small Business Success program!
Even a journey of a thousand miles begins with a first step. The first step to becoming more successful is to evaluate where you are now, which will give you a benchmark against which you can track your progress through the Small Business Success Program and evaluate your success at the end. We'll do this by tracking your daily activities.
Tracking Your Daily Activities
First, we need to know what you actually do each day. As business people, we all wear many hats during the day (and sometimes at night, too). But what does this mean? What tasks are we actually performing and how much time do we spend on each activity?
Tracking your daily activities lets you see where your valuable time is being spent, and gives you the data you need to set goals and make the changes to your work habits that will make you more successful.
Daily Activity Tracking Tips
Use a device to record your daily activities that is constantly accessible to you, so you can record exactly what you do when you do it. Memory is fallible - and kind.
A Day-Timer or calendar, a PDA, an organizer software program, a digital recorder, or an ordinary notebook will all work to record your daily activities; choose whichever method you are already comfortable with and find the easiest to use.
I use a Day-Timer because I like the way it's organized and most of my work takes place in my office. Using a device to track your daily activities that's preformatted into days and hours saves you the time of formatting the device yourself.
Don't record unnecessary information; it's the activity and the time you spent on it that's important for our purposes. For instance, my entry related to writing this article would be only "writing Tracking Daily Activities", covering the amount of time it took to write it.
Activity Tracking Related Reading
Staying On Schedule Working At Home
Top Time Tracking Software Programs
Homework Assignment: Tracking Daily Activities
This week, record all your daily activities and the amount of time you spent on each. If you already keep daily records, continue with whatever system you're using, being sure to focus on what you actually do.
Don't distinguish between business and personal activities at this point. You need to have a complete picture of your schedule so you can more easily see where to make the changes that will make you more successful.
Share
Join us in the Small Business Canada Forum and share how you are feeling about your commitment and challenges. Is recording your daily activities difficult for you? Is focusing on activities different than the tracking you usually do? See how other business people track their daily activities and discuss your progress.
Continue on to Business Success Lesson 2
