This thread is intended for all those "multiple hat wearing, computer consulting, small business owners". Other opinions are totally welcome.
Recently my time management problems have been scratching at my skin quite furiously. It seems like i'm going through my day wondering "who am I going to need to let down today so that I can get what I need to get done, done?" At the end of the week I just try and disconnect so that I can enjoy the 2 days off.
I want that "I really accomplished a ton today, I wish everyday was like this" feeling.
Hat One: I act as a level two help desk to a Small 25 user company. I am also designing a Quoting program for them that is pretty much an endless project. They email me or call my cell phone with sometimes simple, and sometimes 1 to 2 hour requests. I'm failing to work on the quoting software. It's been a very long project and I would call myself an intermediate programmer. The items I have left to do are complex and require a lot of time. I spend a lot of time learning and therefore cannot charge the client for that time. How do you guys charge for 'learning' time?
Hat Two: I work for my Dad's software company. Most of my time is spent maintaining 9 servers. Updates, Renewals, Repairs, Certificates, Active Directory, Exchange. There are two other network techs in the company that share some of the responsibility for the higher end tasks, but they are full time programmers. This hat keeps me very busy. I've been asked to learn VMWare VI3 from them. Which eats time like it's free! I'm able to work at a lower rate and receive income from training time, which is nice. Each day seems to be something new. I work very hard learning and don't really produce any results, which leads to a lot frustrates. I work in the same office as my Dad, I use it as my base of operations. This makes interuptions a little more frequent but the setting and internet speed is very nice.
Hat Three: I'm a paid-on-call fire fighter. I work across the street from the fire station so when we get a call I usually go. We get anywhere from 0 to 10 calls in a given week. Not a huge interuption as the average call is only 45 min long. I recently applied for a Lieutenants position which will be adding ~5 hours a week to my already pretty busy schedule. Every Tuesday night we have training which starts at 18:00 and goes until late.
Hat Four: I just bought my first house and and am gutting and remodeling the bathroom, then the kitchen. Enough said ,we all know what house projects are like.
Hat Five: My Mom, bless her heart, gives all her quilting friends my phone number and when they are problem with their dial-up connection running AOL 3.0 on their windows 95 machine that's 12 years old they come flocking. :) Some of these jobs are horrible messes, but for some reason I really enjoy them. I think it's because it's what I know. I spent so much time trying to fix problems, usually these problems are something I've seen before and can accomplish them. This is my 'Home-user/very small business' hat. Lower level fixes.
Hat Six: Accountant. Wow.....wow. Book keeping is so tough for all these companies/clients! I've been using Quickbooks which is great for my timesheets, but at the end of the day I just seem drained and it's the last thing I want to do. I get lazy, then I get backed up, then I have to end up guessing and it takes almost 2 whole days to catch up on the time sheets! When I don't work, I don't get paid. Huge loss here.
I've tried a couple of different ideas, so i'm out looking for more.
I tried locking everything out except one company a day and getting the littler stuff at the end of the day. That failed because I would get important calls from the other companies that really couldn't wait...Or maybe that's where my downfall is? I'm not sure.
So i'm interested how you guys manage this kind of stuff. I know i'm not the only one out there struggling with this. How do you guys manage all this stuff and go home on Friday feeling successful about the week?
Thanks!!!
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Three points.
1. I think I'd drop the fire fighting for starters. That's just an extra thing that takes time, often at unsocial hours.
2. Drop the accounting. The accounting is easy to subcontract, and often you can find very cheap companies to do this and what's more, those companies then have the responsibility to do it right, without mistakes, not you.
3. Don't start any new projects in your house until you have finished the ones you already started.
I will take a guess here and say that you are charging below the Market Rate for your time. Charging different rates for different activities is fine if your day is empty and you are trying to fill it, but in your case you need to charge a "fair" rate for your services. Anything below that rate needs to be ditched - with the exception of existing customers perhaps who are very loyal and are good payers.
Quilting referrals: are you doing this partially to add value to your mum's "social cred"? If you take on too much of this work at low rates then you will eventually upset someone for not being able to deliver, which may have a knock-on effect on your mum's aforementioned social cred - are you doing this at "fair market rate"?
Fire fighting is a hobby. If that statement is false then you know what to do - don't do it. The money you gain from this activity can easily be lost in loyal clients going elsewhere because you cannot meet deadlines. Conversely, you can make up the financial loss of not fire-fighting by spending the time doing chargeable work that is within your core competencies.
Accounting: I tend to invoice once a month, because I find it a (necessary) chore, the exception is where someone wants something expensive which would cause cash-flow problems - which would be invoiced and paid for up-front, or where you have a new client who there's a danger might not pay. Making it a fixed activity in your calendar, and moving it up the priority list is a good idea. Practice saying this phrase "I can't do x job today because I am doing my monthly invoicing."
Clients who negotiate and/or argue about money: I have learnt a hard lesson on this one, the lesson is "do not deal with people who do not appear to appreciate the service you provide them with".
Hats 3, 4, 5 need to go. Do the remodel on the weekends, no more helping your Mom's friends, don't do the firefighting.
Get something that tracks your time quickly-start a task, punch the clock, end a task, punch the clock. I use Outlook's task module (weak, but sufficient). Then once a month generate invoices.
Timeslice and prioritize. Level 1, 2, 3-switch tasks every 2 hours no matter what, don't get distracted from the current task unless it's a level 1 (people are gonna die or the business is gonna go under-server meltdowns, dead critical services, lost or messed up financial transactions, credit card processing, for example)
Cut off the change requests on the software project-it's called a requirements freeze, same as a code freeze.You need to get the project done more than you need to make it perfect.
Get someone else to code the complicated stuff. You may need to charge/pay more, but it will get done faster and better.
Hat One, There should be no such thing as an "Endless Project" If it is endless because they keep changing their minds about what they want, or they keep adding extra stuff, then the problem is simple, you are not charging enough..
Hat Two, Is your Dad paying you well? If not, it is time to move on.
Hat Three, As the others have said here, you need to examine your work life and decide your priorities, if you want to be a career fire fighter, then you need to give up the computer stuff and concentrate on that.
As someone who had similar dual careers, I speak from experience, the only way to make both careers compatible is to make sure that they don't interfere with each other.
The way you could do that in your case is by not taking any fire calls during the other jobs normal working hours.
You mentioned 0-10 fire calls per week. Almost any business would decide that is too many interruptions, so maybe my advice on Hat three is a little premature. If your Dad puts up with the interruptions be happy that he pays you at all. Most businesses would understand 1-2 interruptions a month, more than that could be considered unreasonable.
Hat Four, If you are charging (and being paid) properly for your other jobs, then you should have enough money to pay professionals for the home remodeling. This is important for 2 reasons. One, you know it is being done correctly, Two, it frees you up to use your talent to make more money.
Hat Five, this is a hobby. Make sure that you are doing it after hours. You should not be helping these ladies while you are doing any other job.
Hat Six, If you are not using a pda to keep track of your time, you should get one tomorrow. Either a pda, or a pda/phone (I prefer windows mobile 5-6 where you can get free applications to help with most businesses tasks.) Also, you do all the other things because you like them. You do not like to do this stuff, so you don't. If you have all the information for billing, and just don't do it, there is nothing we can tell you to help....
The bottom line here seems to be that you need to separate hobbies from career. By doing this you will create more billable time in the career section.
I am in complete agreement with the statement "If you want something done, ask the busiest person you know to get it done" but also agree with A. Wood about the Jack of all Trades problem.
The course that has always worked for me is to channel all the time and effort that your are expending now into a very limited number of projects, tasks, jobs, etc. Start with the two or three projects that mean the most to you, do them better than you even knew you could do them and then adjust your load accordingly...when you choose your specialization, you will love what you are doing.
Good luck!
I'm coming up on almost a year now for this thread and i wanted to get it closed while I had a little bit of time.
I wish there was a way to give you all 500 points because I used a little bit of what everyone said to build something that has worked. I think the best way to describe it is with bulltet points.
So here it goes....
I found that working on just "one company" for the entire day didn't work out at all. My seamlingly unmanageable list grew into something that I didn't even want to look at anymore. When you tell the customer that needs a password change that they have to wait until Friday, and it's Wednesday, it doesn't vibe very well. I solved this problem by splitting my day up into smaller, logical, chunks.
7-7:30 triage - Going through yesterdays list, looking at new email, rewriting my to-do lists, etc.
7:30-8:00 Misc email responses that don't take much time- I feel that a lot of companies lack in the communication area. I use this time to stay in constant contact with my customers whether it's "Hey how's the wireless network going" or "Your computer shipped from Dell today and it should be here by this date". They love it and I think it's important to slot this time because it's not entirely billable.
8:00-10:00 Hat two (my dad's company) get's this time slot. They paid for a lot of my training so I return the favor by giving them priority in my day. A lot of this work is also long term projects and not usually rapid emergencies.
10:00-12:00 Hat One and my programming adventure goes here. As most programmers know when you get on a roll, it's often hard to just drop what you're doing. I planned this right before lunch and it has worked well for me. I've been able to work through the "quiet time". I'm happy to say that earlier this month we realeased a HUGE revision of the quoting software and it's running quite nicely...There is light at the end of what seemed like a never ending tunnel.
12:00-1:00 Usually lunch. If I had a small project to do, or a commitment to the fire department i would usually do it in this time.
1:00-2:00 One of the things that subcontractors will learn quickly is that when you're not working, you're not getting paid(duh). I reserved this time slot for just that. Volunteer work, (hat three)fire department, social networking, personal business, marketing, accounting, and the like. I had this constant irritation when I was working on these things in the middle of the day and the thought of "UGH I'm not making money right now" was hard to shake. Now that I have a slot of time where I work on just this stuff it's much easier to manage and in turn I get a lot more done.
2:00-3:30 - Back to Hat Two. Anything i didn't get done earlier in the morning gets done here.
3:30-5:00 - Back to Hat One and programming. There are days when I would stay at work until 10 or 11pm to get the programming stuff done, but that was ok because I got the other stuff knocked out during the middle of the day. I usually try and add in my other business here as well, side jobs, etc.
5-5:30 - Accounting and daily time sheets. I'll admit i'm still struggling with this. It's such an irritation to work all day and then journal it to the customer in a way that's understandable, but it's what pays the bills. I've never had a customer question a bill and I belive it's directly related to the amount of detail I provide in my invoices. It really is like journal.
I've found that the nicest thing about the slotted time is that I don't have to tell the customer to wait a day or two, I can tell them to wait an hour or two. They are usually very understanding.
You'll notice I didn't put Hat Four (my house) in here anywhere. It's been pretty non-existant to tell you the truth. I've come to realize that since i don't have a family or kids that it's ok to have plywood floors for a while. It's embaressing to have people over sometimes, but it all comes back to triaging your problems and taking care of the red hot items first.
Thanks again for all the suggestions. I'm available to go over this in more detail if someone is interested down the road.
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by: Arthur_WoodPosted on 2008-09-05 at 18:49:23ID: 22405172
My 2-cents worth - *stop trying to be a jack of all trades* - There are only so many hours in the day, and what you describe would require about 48/14 (48 hours per day, 14 days per week). You are describing the classic TYPE-A personality. I take it from this that you are not married, and have absolutely no social life.
AW