Time Management for Every Legal Nurse Consultant

As a Professional Legal Nurse Consultant running your own business, you will find that time often gets away from you. This being the case, you may be tempted to buy a fancy planner and start rigidly scheduling your time. This is not a good idea.

Here are our interpretations of some thoughts from Steve Pavlina, http://www.stevepavlina.com/. He believes that our concept of time is similar to our concept of money. We have a specific amount and we spend it. But that this concept is mistaken. Rather, time is independent of what we do. Whether we work or play, are asleep or awake, time keeps moving. You can spend the next ten years doing nothing and that ten years will still have passed. In other words, you cannot control time, but only how you use time. And the only time you have is this very moment.

Time is not a commodity but rather is a tool. Something to use to benefit yourself and others. So, how does this apply to your Professional Legal Nurse Consulting business? That’s easy. You have to ‘wear many hats’ as a business owner and in order to do so successfully, you must optimize your use of time. So, how?

Everyone will manage their time differently based on their personal and work needs. If you only need to work part-time, then you will have different time management needs than someone who works full-time.

So, begin simply by figuring out how much time you have to devote to your business per day, per week and per month. If you don’t know, keep a time diary for one week. As you begin and end an activity, note the time and the nature of the activity – eat, sleep, commute, phone call with mother, etc. At the end of the week, break down your days by type of activity and figure out how much time you are using on each. It might surprise you to learn that you are watching eight hours of television a week when you thought you only watched one or two.

After you have grouped the activities, look at them and find any places you can change what you do or how long it takes. This is particularly handy if you are trying to ‘make’ time for a new activity or increase time spent on an existing one. This may well mean giving up a favorite television program, or recording it to watch on the weekend.

Now, figure out where in your day your business activities can or will fall. Pencil in that information onto your calendar. Don’t worry right now if you don’t know exactly what you will do during that time. As your business grows, that time will fill up more quickly than you can even imagine.