A Brief Guide to Time Management

Time management is the process of planning and controlling how much time
to spend on specific activities. Good time management enables an individual
to complete more in a shorter period of time, lowers stress, and leads
to career success.

Benefits of Time Management

The ability to manage your time effectively is important. Good time

management leads to improved efficiency and productivity, less stress, and
more success in life. Here are some benefits of managing time effectively:

1. Stress relief
Making and following a task schedule reduces anxiety. As you check off items
on your “to-do” list, you can see that you are making tangible progress. This
helps you avoid feeling stressed out with worry about whether you’re getting
things done.

2. More time

Good time management gives you extra time to spend in your daily life.
People who can time-manage effectively enjoy having more time to spend on
hobbies or other personal pursuits.

3. More opportunities

Managing time well leads to more opportunities and less time wasted on
trivial activities. Good time management skills are key qualities that employers
look for. The ability to prioritize and schedule work is extremely desirable for
any organization.

4. Ability to realize goals

Individuals who practice good time management are able to better achieve
goals and objectives, and do so in a shorter length of time.

List of Tips for Effective Time Management

After considering the benefits of time management, let’s look at some ways to
manage time effectively:

 
 

1. Set goals correctly

Set goals that are achievable and measurable. Use the SMART method when
setting goals. In essence, make sure the goals you set
are Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant, and Timely.

2. Prioritize wisely

Prioritize tasks based on importance and urgency. For example, look at your
daily tasks and determine which are:

 Important and urgent: Do these tasks right away.

 Important but not urgent: Decide when to do these tasks.
 Urgent but not important: Delegate these tasks if possible.
 Not urgent and not important: Set these aside to do later.

 
3. Set a time limit to complete a task

Setting time constraints for completing tasks helps you be more focused and
efficient. Making the small extra effort to decide on how much time you need
to allot for each task can also help you recognize potential problems before
they arise. That way you can make plans for dealing with them.

For example, assume you need to write up five reviews in time for a meeting.
However, you realize that you’ll only be able to get four of them done in the
time remaining before the meeting. If you become aware of this fact well in
advance, you may be able to easily delegate writing up one of the reviews to
someone else. However, if you hadn’t bothered to do a time check on your
tasks beforehand, you might have ended up not realizing your time problem
until just an hour before the meeting. At that point, it might be considerably
more difficult to find someone to delegate one of the reviews to, and more
difficult for them to fit the task into their day, too.

4. Take a break between tasks

When doing a lot of tasks without a break, it is harder to stay focused and
motivated. Allow some downtime between tasks to clear your head and
refresh yourself. Consider grabbing a brief nap, going for a short walk, or
meditating.

5. Organize yourself

Utilize your calendar for more long-term time management. Write down the
deadlines for projects, or for tasks that are part of completing the overall
project. Think about which days might be best to dedicate to specific tasks.
For example, you might need to plan a meeting to discuss cash flow on a day
when you know the company CFO is available.

 
6. Remove non-essential tasks/activities

It is important to remove excess activities or tasks. Determine what is

significant and what deserves your time. Removing non-essential
tasks/activities frees up more of your time to be spent on genuinely important
things.

7. Plan ahead

Make sure you start every day with a clear idea of what you need to do – what
needs to get done THAT DAY. Consider making it a habit to, at the end of
each workday, go ahead and write out your “to-do” list for the next workday.
That way you can hit the ground running the next morning.

Implications of Poor Time Management

Let’s also consider the consequences of poor time management.

1. Poor workflow

The inability to plan ahead and stick to goals means poor efficiency. For
example, if there are several important tasks to complete, an effective plan
would be to complete related tasks together or sequentially. However, if you
don’t plan ahead, you could end up having to jump back and forth, or
backtrack, in doing your work. That translates to reduced efficiency and lower
productivity.

2. Wasted time
 Poor time management results in wasted time. For example, by talking to
friends on social media while doing an assignment, you are distracting
yourself and wasting time.

3. Loss of control

By not knowing what the next task is, you suffer from loss of control of your
life. That can contribute to higher stress levels and anxiety.

4. Poor quality of work

Poor time management typically makes the quality of your work suffer. For
example, having to rush to complete tasks at the last minute usually
compromises quality.

5. Poor reputation

If clients or your employer cannot rely on you to complete tasks in a timely

manner, their expectations and perceptions of you are adversely affected. If a
client cannot rely on you to get something done on time, they will likely take
their business elsewhere.

Computer Repair Business Secrets for Getting Better Clients

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By ComputerConsultingKit
ITworld | NOVEMBER 3, 2008
ComputerRepairHQ.com – Want better clients for your computer repair business? If you
want to build a strong company based on lasting relationships, you need to narrow
down your industry focus and become a true expert at what you do.

Many that own a computer repair business struggle to replicate their successful clients.
Often, they are not taking the time to identify their best clients or use a focused
marketing plan. To approach this the right way, you need a consistent plan to qualify all
leads and prospects, and weed out the problematic small businesses before they
become clients.

The following 4 tips can help you move towards your goals of running a stable and
rewarding computer repair business.

1. Replicate Your Best Clients. You need to find more clients that resemble your
current best clients. To accomplish this, take your active client list and place it into a
spreadsheet. In the first column, enter the client name. In the next column, enter the
client’s revenue for the last 12 months. Then divide by 12 to figure out the monthly
income of each of your clients, so you can discover who your most valuable customers
currently are.

This exercise is critical because it helps you evaluate (in very objective terms) ...

a) who should get the highest levels of customer service.

b) client retention and who is worth keeping.

c) profitability and who is really paying the bills for your computer repair business each
month.

2. Put Your Clients into Categories to Find Patterns. Once you complete the
exercise detailed in tip #1 to define characteristics of your best clients, look among your
best and most active clients and customers. Figure out who falls into the micro category
(fewer than 10 systems), who falls into the Sweet Spot Clientsâ„¢ of IT consulting (10-
50 PC’s), and who is so large that you might not be able to continue servicing them
without hiring additional high-level technical staff.

This exercise helps you determine where your expertise is, so you can replicate clients
that best benefit from your unique type of services. Once you figure out commonalities
between your biggest and best clients, you can decide on a specialty which will help
fine-tune your marketing campaign, and bring you new prospects and clients with much
less effort.

3. Fine-Tune Your Industry Focus. Once you narrow down your industry focus as part
of your computer repair business plan and communicate it in all of your marketing
materials and business solutions, you will stand out as an industry expert. No matter
which industry you choose, you become a specialist focusing exclusively on a specific
industry (i.e., dental offices, accounting firms, etc.) and give yourself the opportunity to
grow and build on your skills.

4. Evaluate Your Professional Background. Once you figure out where your industry
expertise is within your computer repair business, you can use that expertise as a
springboard to build a killer marketing plan and really comprehensive solutions. When
you present your message to prospects, you will already know about their field of
business, which will be reassuring to them and help build the trust necessary for long-
term relationships that will sustain your company. Small business prospects that trust
you will be more likely to choose your firm over someone who is sending out
“generalist” marketing materials with no industry focus.

In this short article, we looked at 4 steps to build your client list for your computer repair
business. To learn more about how you can get great steady, high-paying clients, go
sign up for your free computer repair business tips now at
http://www.ComputerRepairHQ.com

Copyright (C), ComputerRepairHQ.com, All Right

We frequently hear the question:

“I’m trying to grow my business but don’t have a big budget for advertising. What can I do on a
budget?”
 We talk to computer repair business owners every day, and were previously in the business
ourselves, so we decided to compile a list of effective and inexpensive strategies for repair shops
looking to grow. One of the best things you can do to grow your business is using the Virtual
Insurance Service for CSR’s.
1. Develop partnerships with local competition. Take a look at the other repair shops in the area.
Oftentimes there are services that are unique to each of your businesses. Contact them and agree
to send each other business for the services that you’re not competing on.
2. Increase the average sale price per customer. If you can up-sell products to your customers, you
can still grow your business without doing any additional marketing. Many shops sell online backup,
antiviruses, hard drives, monitoring, etc. If you’re one of our customers you can get a great discount
with Gillware to get started selling online backup and data recovery.
3. Start selling pre-paid service packs. Ensure customer loyalty by selling them discounted pre-paid
service packages. Customers will be happier because they’ll know what they’re paying ahead of
time, and you’ll get more cash to further grow your business.
4. Use the free advertising channels. Make sure you’ve got listings on Yelp, YP.com, Craigslist,
Google Maps, Yahoo Maps, etc.
5. Trade computer services for referrals. Go to your favorite high-traffic local businesses, and trade
them an hour or two of your services for the ability to place your business cards and flyers in a
visible area.
6. Participate in local events. Go to local events where business owners will be present. Your city’s
chamber of commerce will put on events like this often. Meet people and tell them what you offer.
Make sure you listen to them when they tell you about the problems they have on a regular basis,
and be open to the idea of expanding your services to accommodate their needs.
7. Do highly targeted Google Adwords campaigns. You can get started with adwords campaigns
with free coupons from your web host. Start with simple local search terms like “computer repair san
jose”, and use exact matches. Make sure you can track which customers came from your adwords
campaigns.
8. Use Facebook advertising. You can do local facebook advertising in your zip code or city. Make
sure you change the age demographics, and any other criteria you think will bring you your target
customers. More filters are better, you want the “right” customers. We recommend
using Kuhcoon for your automating your facebook advertising efforts.
9. Get a car magnet. Advertising your business while you drive. Car magnets can cost less than $20.
10. Participate in computer repair shop communities. You don’t have to figure everything out on
your own. There are plenty of communities where ideas are plentiful, and you can steal them. Check
out the ACRBO, Technibble, ASCII, and CompTIA for lively repair communities.