Is your management style whether self-management or managing a team the root of your time management issues? Crisis management is a management style that is consistently driven by uncontrolled external issues. This management style reacts to crisis rather than proactively predicting and planning to prevent crisis. The reason you get into a crisis management pattern is that you fail to plan, you set unrealistic time requirements on your self and others, and you’re always looking for a problem to solve. In addition, you enjoy a fast paced environment and like to have lots of things going and enjoy the pressure.

This time management tip is based on planning. When you have a well developed plan you can avoid most of the crisis that you deal with daily now. Most of your crisis are the result of external factors, so stop and evaluate what external factors can and quite possibly will impact you, and then develop a plan for the potential actions you can take to prevent or eliminate the impact of those factors.

You aren’t the only one who can handle a crisis. Once you know what can happen target key people to handle specific problems. This will help them to grow and develop so they can easily handle these problems on their own. Once they’re able to handle these crisis on their own delegate it to them. Quite often people who work solo will say they don’t have anyone to delegate to. That’s both a true and untrue statement. It is true that you never want to delegate the really important stuff in your business. It isn’t true that there isn’t anyone to delegate to. You have lots of little administrative tasks that you do everyday that someone else could be doing. That someone else could be a virtual assistant where you buy blocks of time and delegate the administrative tasks to them, it could be part-time help from young people or even retired people, or even help from your family members. There are people you can delegate non-essential non-money making work to. You just have to let go.

Use the knowledge that surrounds you. Ask key people for recommendations for avoiding the daily crisis your managing. These crises are sucking up your productive time and putting you farther and farther behind. There are people: your employees, peers, or experts ready willing and able to provide you with the help you need to make these crises go away. The most successful people make use of the knowledge that surrounds them and you should too.

Are you afraid to pay for the help you need? Are you afraid you can’t afford to pay someone to do your non-essential non-money producing tasks? Are you afraid you can’t afford to pay an expert to help you avoid the crisis you now have? Realize if you’re serious about your business and you want to succeed you can’t afford not to pay these outside people to help you free up the time you need to be productive with your money producing tasks. All these crises are keeping you from making money.

Would you like to learn more about your time behaviors? Try this Time Management Analysis and find out where your opportunities for improvement are.