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Stop Wasting Your Time and Start Completing Your Projects

July 12, 2012 - Last Modified: March 29, 2014 by Elke Schmitt

Many small business owners spend a lot of time in meeting after meeting, never getting anything accomplished. If you really want to stop wasting your time and start completing your projects it is important to understand what exactly project management entails.

According to Wikipedia, Project Management includes, “… Planning, organizing, securing, managing, leading and controlling resources to achieve specific goals.” By reading the definition, it’s easy to identify areas where time wasting is more likely to occur.

While you cannot manage time, since time is a finite resource, it is important to identify potential time wasters and eliminate them as much as possible.

Some examples of potential time wasters for project management are:

Meetings

Instead of having planning sessions and meetings, empower each team leader to develop a plan of action on their own. Incorporating a Wiki or some other type of cloud-based project management system can be a far more effective form of collaboration than a face-to-face meeting.

Not Having a System

Setting up a project management system that enables asynchronous collaboration is especially effective if team members are contractors, or freelancers, who reside in different time zones.

For example, creating a video message for members to see whenever they wish, allowing comments within a certain time frame, and then finalizing issues in this manner allows for far more freedom for all parties.

Using Meeting Time Well

If you must have face-to-face meetings address issues that are important to the project’s success such as risk, opportunity, and issues of confusion.

Asking each team member to give a status report is a complete waste of time during a face-to-face meeting. Tasks and status updates can be addressed by using task focused systems such as a cloud-based project management system where each member can check off completed tasks, or provide status updates in writing.

Getting Personal at Meetings

If an issue is personal, or only affects one person, the meeting is not the place to handle it either. Putting online project management tools to full use can avoid most, if not all, face-to-face meetings, but sometimes it is important to have a one-on-one meeting with certain individuals. If you must have any meetings have an agenda, and stick to it.

Reading everything you can read about project management can go really far in helping your business achieve success.

Project management involves so many issues that it is easy to get overwhelmed. You may not even realize that you are managing projects every single day.

Once you realize that you are managing projects you’ll become better organized and less reactionary in completing the projects that need to be completed to run your business. Learning Simple Project Management for Small Business from this eBook which is completely free to download without providing any data whatsoever can help you get started managing projects more effectively. You can download it and share it with your entire organization if you wish.

{ 15 Responses }

saha says:

Hi Elke..! Awesome article. Completely agree at the point of meetings. It should be responsibility of team leader to plan all the things efficiently ad effectively. Team leader should schedule all tasks efficiently. It will save time. Thanks for the article :)
Elke Schmitt says:

Thanks Rose :-) I am happy that you liked the article and hope that you can use some of the tips mentioned.
sveta says:

I think all the troubles can be eliminated by good planning or by installing a good project management tool which will control everything. I am using Comindware task managment system and I am sure that I spend all my time rather effectively because of the tool.
Aj Williams says:

Sometimes the process of planning the project takes longer than the project itself. My business does not have a traditional office so meeting face to face every day is not an option. The free suite of Google tools helps with project management . Google Hangout is really effective for communication and Google docs for document storage and sharing!
- Elke Schmitt says:
  
  Hello Aj, yes it happens sometimes that the planning takes longer than the project itself. My team also uses many of the Google tools, they are great - especially if you don´t work in the same office. Google + Dropbox + Skype make the perfect office for me!
wajahath ali says:

Yes, getting organized and maintaining a priority list is very useful which is what I do every day and the work sometimes gets so overwhelming that you cannot concentrate even on a single project properly and that why I like to maintain a vision statement about what I want to do and how I want to do.
Rose Craft says:

I smiled when I read the title. This is not only an article with good tips, even more so: it is a great kick in the ... So true! Some people are great starters, few are great 'completers' ... I love deadlines for this reason.
Jean says:

Great post. Truly, sometimes a lot of time gets wasted in steps leading up to working on a project than actually working on it. You have listed some great points. I really like the idea of addressing individual issues outside of group meetings. -Jean
Anton Koekemoer says:

Hi Elke, I believe that “The lack in planning is just planning to fail” when it comes to business. There are a lot of tools and apps available that can help you with time management - and planning accordingly. This is great when having some kind of CMS in place in the working environment.
- Elke Schmitt says:
  
  Oh yes, definitely. Good organization is the mother of success ;-) What works actually pretty well is Pivotal Tracker: It lets your team work the lean way. Every team member commits to a certain amount of tasks that he/she will do during the next "sprint" and at the end of the week the project manager can simply accept the work or not. Working like this saves a lot of time and avoids distractions.
Mariella Lombardi says:

Hi Elke, I think so many small business owners are so obsessed with having meetings all the time. They spend half the day telling their employees what they should do, instead of just sending to work already. I have seen it at my last job where our boss just liked socializing in the morning so she just organized "meetings".
- Elke Schmitt says:
  
  You are right! Having meetings just for the sake of having it because it is planned on a weekly basis is a pain....
Josh says:

This is something we've been focusing on a LOT lately. Not only keeping our meetings short and to the point but also keeping track of projects, putting deadlines on them and making sure they're followed through to the end. The biggest problem we've faced in our business has been time wasting and lack of focus so it's something that we'll do just about anything now to prevent. Thanks for the post... -josh
Dewane Mutunga says:

Elke, (Successful) Project management all boils down to efficiency. People tend to promote the concept of hard work, which is actually very important, but I'll take working smarter over working hard any day. Working smarter means finding way to save time and resources while still getting the job done. P.S. I agree with you wholeheartedly, most meetings are a waste of time. :-)
- Elke Schmitt says:
  
  Hi Dewane Thanks for this comment, I am glad that you like the article! Check out the reply that I have just sent to Mariella, where I recommended her a tool called Pivotal Tracker. It made the work in my team so much more efficient, I can really recommend it. This and a smart way of working are great time savers!

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