The most common form of stress that managers experience is the feeling of being overwhelmed with far too much to do and having too little time to do it in. In fact, ?time poverty? is the biggest single problem facing most business managers. We simply do not have enough time to fulfil all our responsibilities.

Because of budget limitations, staff cutbacks, downsizing, and competitive pressures, individual managers are forced to take on more and more work, all of which appears to be indispensable to the smooth functioning of our company or department. Brian Tracy provides some insights into how to deal with these overwhelm.

Become An Expert The solution to this problem of work overload is for you to become an expert on time management. There is probably no other skill that you can learn that will give you a ?bigger bang for the buck? than to become extremely knowledgeable and experienced in using time management practices.

Be Open to New Ideas The most foolish manager of all is either the manager who feels that he has no time to learn about time management or, even worse, the manager who, while being overwhelmed with work, feels that he already knows all that he needs to know about the subject.

Never Stop Learning The fact is that you can study time management and take time management courses for your entire business life and you will still never learn everything you need to know to get the most out of yourself while doing your job in the most efficient way.

The Keys to Time Management The two indispensable keys to time management are:

1. the ability to set priorities; and
2. the ability to concentrate single-mindedly on one thing at a time.

Since there is never enough time to do everything that needs to be done, you must be continually setting priorities on your activities. Perhaps the very best question that you can memorize and repeat, over and over, is, ?what is the most valuable use of my time right now??

The Best Question of All: This question, ?what is the most valuable use of my time right now?? will do more to keep you on track, hour by hour, than any other single question in the list of time management strategies.

Start With Your Top Tasks The natural tendency for all of us is to major in minors and to give in to the temptation to clear up small things first. After all, small things are easier and they are often more fun than the big, important things that represent the most valuable use of your time.

However, the self-discipline of organizing your work and focusing on your highest value tasks is the starting point of getting your time under control and lowering your stress levels.

Action Exercises Here are two things you can do immediately to get your time under control.

First, make a decision today to become an expert on time management. Read the books, listen to the audio programs, and take a time management course. Then, practice, practice, practice every day until you master time management skills.

Second, set clear priorities on your work each day, before you begin. Then, discipline yourself to start on your most important task and stay at that until it is complete. This will relieve much of your stress immediately.

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Starting a business requires determination and managing that business is another thing entirely. You are not ready to start your own business until you have given some thought to managing it. A business is an ongoing activity that doesn’t run itself. As the business owner, you will have to set goals, determine how to reach those goals and make all the necessary decisions.

You will have to purchase or make your product, price it, advertise it and sell it. You will have to keep records, and determine costs. You will have to control inventory, make the right buying decisions and keep costs down. You will have to hire, train and motivate employees now or as you grow. Begin your business journey with a vision. Set one big, challenging goal and visualize how it can be achieved. Keep in mind that failure is not an option.

Good management is the key to success and good management starts with setting goals. Set goals for yourself for the accomplishment of the many tasks necessary in starting and managing your business successfully. Be specific. Write down the goals in measurable terms of performance. Break major business goals down into sub-goals, showing what you expect to achieve in the next two to three months, the next six months, the next year, and the next five years.

Develop a plan in clear detail and prepare in earnest. Plan the action you must take to attain the goals. While the effort required to reach each sub-goal should be great enough to challenge you, it should not be so great or unreasonable as to discourage you. Do not plan to reach too many goals all at one time. Establish priorities. Clarify exactly what your goal is and set a deadline for each milestone. Acquire critical knowledge and skills. Identify the possible obstacles and difficulties.

Determine the resources you would need. That means include vital people, groups, and organizations that you can link up with. Write the plan down in detail including the activity, timetable and milestones. Make the big leap of faith. Push forward; press on despite any initial obstacle. Be flexible. One must remember that a plan is only a guide. Improvise as needed.

?Dream lofty dreams, and as you dream, so shall you become. Your vision is your promise of what you shall one day be; your ideal is the prophecy of what you shall one day unveil.? - James Allen

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How would you like to operate the perfect business? This means..

1. You are your own boss!
2. You don?t need any customers!
3. You don?t need employees!
4. You can operate from home, work, vacation or anywhere else in the world as long as you have an Internet connection.
5. You never have to worry about job security, harassment or any other employment-related anxiety.
6. You never need to worry about employer payroll, strikes, theft, rent increases, health inspectors, lease problems, being sued, etc?
7. You don?t need to do any cold calling.
8. You decide which days you wish to work.
9. You make the decision to take a vacation at a moment?s notice.

Interested? If you think this is what you have being looking for, and you are a bookworm, posses a computer, and a high-speed Internet connection and willing to spend the first year without pay, you have the willingness to read and study and sacrifice a few bucks, drop us a mail at kayode.muyibi[at]gmail.com and eolutosin[at]gmail.com.We are actually looking for two people, who want a share of this same ride.

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I agreed totally with Deolu that Visibility is more important that Abillity. Irrespective of your training, skills, education and experience, if you’re not seen in the right way by the right people, over and over again, you will lose business to lower-quality competitors who are more visible. This applies to you if you are working in an organisation.

I had an experience that changed my life. I was involved in some projects at one time and executed the tasks very well without any interaction with the management. Someone laid claim to the glory. I later found this out but I had myself to blame. Why? I used to work behind the scene but I have since learnt that you need visibility to climb the corporate ladder.

The boss will only recommend for promotion the employees that are visible to him in the company. This comes down to how the boss perceives you. You need to a personal brand. Your brand is how people perceive you. Branding is everything and that is why you need to work on your brand. To get off on the right foot, follow these steps:

1. Write down what you want people to expect of you (you may need to identify a role model and note how people feel about that person).
2. Write down the things you have done so far that have made you successful and the things that have cost you fortune
3. Think about the aspects of your personality, background and approach to your work that best fit your prospect expectations
4. Which characteristics can you work into your Personal Brand that will suggest the factors that have made you successful?
5. Which things should definitely NOT go into your brand?

Focus on carving a niche for yourself in a specific area. You need to be know for something. Determine what this is and brand yourself accordingly. This will help you to narrow down the scope of who you are or what you do thereby packaging yourself as a specialist in a smaller, more precise range of services. Without specializing, you will just be another anonymous service provider, with no reason for prospects to choose you over anyone else.

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Can you find someone who will buy your idea? Usually, when people first come up with an idea for their business they assume they could then sell their idea to everyone, everywhere. The trick here is to try and find the groups of people or businesses that will buy from you, and work out WHY they will buy your product or service.

What need are you fulfilling and how will they benefit from buying from you? There are many sources of information that can help you discover whether there is a market for your business idea. Some of it can be very general but some of it can be very specific, and a lot of this research information can be free.

Make a note to contact the Small Business Directory in your area and find out what information might be available on the market you hope to supply. If they don?t have direct access to relevant information, they usually know where it can be found. You might also need to do a search on-line. You would be surprised that you would get more information than you presently need.

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The main reasons for starting a business are usually personal. No one else can tell you why to start a business, you have to decide yourself. People start their businesses for all sorts of reasons:

• I?m sure I could make more money running my own business
• I?m fed up working this hard for someone else
• I have a great idea
• I?ve been trying to find a job for too long now
• A friend has asked me to go into business with them
• I?m worried about my future prospects in my current job
• I want to have more time to do what I want to do

Does any of this seem familiar? It is not enough to think that running your business has to be better than what you are doing just now, you have to know why you want to start your business. When you know, you can keep checking back to see if the plan you are writing, or the business you are running, is still helping you address the reasons you started in business.

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The prospect of increased wealth, freedom and job satisfaction have led many people to start in business for themselves. Many have failed, however, because they did not clearly identify their personal and business goals. Write down your specific goals and aspirations on paper. This will help you to think about them clearly.

Each method of business start-up has its pros and cons. It is essential for you to know your own aims, strengths and weaknesses in order to decide which is the most suitable start-up method for you. Perhaps, spare 10 minutes to try an online personality test. You might be surprised by what you discover about yourself and your business partners.

It can be pretty scary when you start to think about all the things you have to know about and be able to do to start a business, but it doesn?t have to be! What I will done in this write-up is to help you think through the process of starting your business in a logical and structured way. That way you can focus on one thing at a time and gradually work your way through all of the important stuff you need to know about.

There are three main stages in setting up a business and each stage needs you to approach it in a slightly different way. These stages are:

• Think: Gathering the information you need to help you decide to write the business
• Plan: Writing the business plan
• Do: Turning the business plan into action, and making it happen

You are allowed to think anything you like! Do not allow yourself to be restricted in what you think about. You can do anything you want (at the moment), no matter how large or small, logical or illogical, ambitious or modest. Forcing yourself to be a bit more positive in your thinking at this stage will really pay dividends later!

Most people only know that they need money but don’t know how to raise the money. They just don?t know! They have already decided they might not get the funding. Do not allow yourself to make this kind of decision at this stage in your thinking. Believe in yourself and in what you want to do and the rest will be much easier.

Many people think that the key motivator for starting your own business is to get more money. This is not always the case. I know people who have taken a drop in income to run their own business because they were able to spend more time doing the things in life that they want to do. I also know people who take very little time off from their business because they get a lot of personal satisfaction from being in their business. It is usually a matter of finding the right balance between income and time off to ensure that running a business is a satisfying experience for anyone. You are the only person who can decide what the right balance is for you and your personal circumstances.

Do you have a good idea for business? It doesn?t really matter how good an idea you have, what really matters is that it is a good idea for a business. To be a good idea for a business you need to be able to supply something that people or businesses will want. Not only do you need them to want it but you also need to get them to pay you for it! Many businesses have discovered, sometimes too late, that there is a huge difference between having something that people want and having something that people are prepared to pay a fair price for.

How do you get an idea for a business? You might be lucky and already have an idea for your business. If not, you may be amazed to find out that a big proportion of the people who want to start businesses do not have an idea for their business when they start thinking about having their own business. The major stumbling block here seems to be that many people believe that the idea they need for their business has to be brand new and has never been thought of by anyone else before. If they manage to do this they will be part of a very small minority of people who start their own business!

Research has shown that there are four main sources of ideas for business:

1. Invent something new: Inventors of new products, services or processes are few and far between. Congratulations, if you have managed to come up with a brand new idea! Do not worry, however, if you do not fall into this category, there will be plenty of other opportunities to find an idea for your business.
2. Copy someone else?s idea! You could just copy another idea but you are more likely to be successful if you could improve it or find a new market for it. Have you ever seen someone doing something you thought you could do better?
3. Spot a gap in the market: Could you supply a product or service that makes life easier for someone? How often have you said ?I don?t know why no one has invented….?. Maybe you have just thought of someone who could!
4. Use your own skills or interests: If you have a particular skill or hobby this could form the basis of a new business for you. Could you create a product or service using your skills and interests that people might buy from you?

If your idea seems to fit into one of these categories, just take a minute to see if you could get another (better?) idea by thinking about some of the other categories. If you don?t have an idea yet, take a few moments to note down your thoughts about each of the categories and see if this helps you spark an initial idea for your business. You can use the first idea you come up with to think about the following question, then come back and think about it again with another idea later!

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The caller was full of excitement and I was eager to hear what he had to say. On 01 January 2007, I forwarded the text message below to all the contacts on my phone…

Don’t sit back & take what comes. Go after what you want… Get aggressive & go after opportunities. Albert Hubert said, ‘Parties who want milk should not seat themselves on a stool in the middle of the field and hope that the cow will back up to them‘. Rule Your world in 2007.

And the caller did exactly like I suggested. He went after what he wanted. He currently works in a company where he feels he is under-paid. He complained throughout last year without making any effort to change his situation. He thought it was the responsibility of his employer to make him happy. But this year, he decided to go aggressive. He went after the opportunity that came his way. Today, he has a new job. He will be picking up his offer letter later in the week.

You too can live your life the way you want it. Believe it or not, it is now very easy to rule your world. Waiting for something just around the corner is merely reacting to life. If you are going to be a difference-maker, a maximizer, you need to be assertive and proactive in your thoughts and actions. You need to make things happen ? and not just wait for them to engulf you! You need to take responsibility for your life and future.

Your decision to take charge of your life is the seed of your cusses. Don?t just sit there! Do something! You get into trouble routinely by focusing on items over which you have no control ? will this meeting be positive, will your child be safe, will people like you, will you close the sale, or will you be happy? What good is it to focus here? None. In fact, it is harmful, often resulting in worry, fear and manipulation.

You need to focus instead on those items you can control: (the roots) right attitude, right beliefs, and right commitments. By so doing, you will use your emotional energy in a positive way and actually move forward more quickly. Reactive people focus on the result. Proactive people focus on the principles.

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Are you just starting out in business or already in business? Are things not turning out the way you planned? This is the time to seek a mentor ? someone who will can show you the way, someone to teach and advise you and enable you to become a wise and effective human being. Stepping on the shoulder of a mentor helps you to avoid some mistakes and achieve success earlier than you expect.

These set of people are everywhere around you. You only need to identify what you are looking for in a mentor. If you really desire the change you want, here are ten steps to finding that person:

1. Look at the People You Know: Look around at the people in your personal and professional life. Is there someone you admire? Someone you would like to emulate in some way? Someone who has the wisdom you need? You might need to consider that person in your choice.
2. Consider People You?ve Never Met: Research the top individuals in the businesses, organizations and trace associations of your chosen field. Find out as much as you can about them. Read biographies of people who have succeeded in your field. Identify those individuals whose values and accomplishments you most admire.
3. Select a Mentor Who is a Good Role Model: Look for someone who is not only famous or successful, but who has a reputation for character and solid principles. Look for someone you can admire and respect as well as emulate.
4. Select a Mentor Who is a Good Listener: The best mentor is one who gets to know you ? your skills and strengths and weaknesses, your individual personality and your aspirations. A good mentor should not serve as a lecturer, but as a sounding board who will help you with your struggles and help you to clarify your principles and belief.
5. Select a Mentor Who Levels With You: A good mentor doesn?t just encourage you, but will also tell you the blunt truth when you are moving in the wrong direction. It is also a good sign if your mentor is candid and open about his or her own life. Anyone who has accomplished great things has made mistakes along the way and will share those experiences freely so that you can learn from them.
6. Look for Someone Who is Unlike You in Some Important Way: Our tendency is to gravitate toward those with whom we have a lot in common. But in seeking out a mentor, it is wise to seek out people who have strengths that we lack. For example, if you are a shy and introverted person, seek out someone who is bold and gregarious. Instead of pairing up with someone who will reinforce your weaknesses, find someone who will challenge you to acquire new strengths.
7. Be Open to Finding a Mentor in Unlikely Places: We tend to think of a mentor or teacher as someone with gray hair and a well-lined face. Not necessarily! A mentor could be anyone who has something to teach you and could be the same age or even younger than you. A mentor could be someone of lower rank and social standing than you.
8. If the Person Doesn?t Know You, Approach That Person with a Brief Letter of Introduction: You might say, ?I have followed your achievements in the field of ______ and I eagerly read your book on ______. Like you, I am very concerned about the issue of _____ and I hope to make a contribution in these areas myself someday. I am looking for a mentoring relationship, and I would be grateful if you could spare thirty minutes to discuss such a possibility with me.?
9. Make Personal Contact: Don?t be shy. Ask, ?Would you be willing to mentor me?? You may think you are imposing on that person, but I have found that most people who have achieved a place of accomplishment in life are eager to share their wisdom, experience and knowledge with others. When you ask someone to be your mentor, you are truly offering them high praise.
10. Remember, You Are Never too Old to be Mentored: I have seen people who think they have reached a point where they have a lot of knowledge and experience to offer others ? but despite all that you think you know, you still have a lot to learn! That?s why you need to seek out people to mentor you!

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To survive in today’s business environment, you need to follow a new set of rules or probably define your own rules. The old way of thinking will just not make the cut amidst layoffs, bankruptcies, and the lack of job security. Believe it or not, you can take charge of your career.

You don’t have to keep worrying that your job security depends on the whims or moods of your current boss. The job of your dreams is within your reach. You can even transform your current job into that dream job. The first thing you must do to get the job of your dreams is to fire your boss and hire yourself.

To do this, you must not allow your boss control what happens in your career. You must take charge of your work life. Firing your boss is a mental exercise. You should not walk into your boss’ office tomorrow and demand a resignation. Even if you have fired your boss and hired yourself as a manager, you must appear as loyal and as dedicated as ever.

This time, you will have to determine your own value. You will be setting your own goals. You have to be in charge of selecting the skills you wish to attain. You will also have your own personal work plan. Stephen Pollan and Mark Leville shares some insights on how to undergo a process of self-examination in their book - Fire Your Boss.

1. Write your own job description. Write a brief description of your job. However, do not align yourself with a certain company, profession or specialization. Reflect on what you do each day and each week.
2. Give yourself a performance review. Find out what other people with the same job description earn. Also find out the skills that are valued in this certain field.
3. Define alternate courses. After you have done the two steps above, you will realize that there are alternate courses available to you. Brainstorm about all the other fields and occupations that would suit the job description that you created.
4. Put your plan into writing. Develop your own plan for your work life. Remember that your future plans should not hinder the alternate courses you have defined. Note down the new skills you need to acquire.

You can turn your work life around now. By firing your boss and hiring yourself as manager, you cease to depend on other people for job satisfaction. You can increase your income, spend less time at work, and have more time for your family. By finding the job of your dreams, you can have the life of your dreams.

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