By Tina Hilton of Clerical Advantage

The survey results are in.  We didn’t get nearly as many responses as I had hoped, but I’m going to view the few responses we did get as a ’slice’ of the Home Office Warrior population.  Click on this link to view the results.

http://www.kwiksurveys.com/results-overview.php?surveyID=5489&mode=4

If we were to go by the results of this survey Home Office Warriors tend to check their e-mail constantly and spend one to two hours a day reading and replying to it.  That’s 5-10 hours a week. 

They are a social network connected bunch, with Twitter getting the nod from almost all of them.  They don’t check their messages on social networks as often as e-mail but they do still conclude that they spend another one to two hours a day reading and replying to it.

Most of us blog, and the majority have more than one blog that they maintain. The average time spent on blogging was  hard to determine, but the largest part of respondents fell somewhere between one to six hours a week.  

A large portion of us don’t send out newsletters., but the ones that do average another one or two hours a week doing so.  We’re an organized bunch using some form of system to manage our contacts. We spend a couple of hours a week invoicing and billing and we’re lucky enough to have clients that pay us on time reducing the need to send late notices for the most part.  As  a group we’re familiar with press releases and have sent them in the past, but  most of us aren’t actively doing so now.  We spend a couple of hours a week writing and submitting articles and 38% of us make over $100 dollars an hour.

Half of us that took the survey were virtual assistants, of the other half, everyone is aware of what a VA is, but none use one on a regular basis. 

Wow. Looking at those numbers one can assume that just these tasks I included on the survey are eating up an average of 24 hours a week for the home office entrepreneur.  That’s an entire day folks.  And it’s costing over $2400 dollars for those warriors making $100+ an hour. Do you know if these activities are honestly bringing in an equal Return On Investment?   In most cases that answer is going to be a big  ‘NO’.   And if that’s the case, we’re in need of a better way to manage the time spent on them. 

Beginning with e-mail. 

It may seem that it takes just a second or two to check that latest e-mail when your new mail indicator goes off, but in reality it often leads to being distracted from the work we were involved in.   One way to keep that from happening is to turn off the new mail indicator and  schedule reading and answering e-mail into your day.  Utilize a tool like Awayfind  to alert you to any e-mail that might need immediate attention and let the rest wait for your designated ‘email time’.

For social networking,  using something like friendfeed  allows you to subscribe to feeds from many different sources like Twitter, Digg, Flickr, blogs and others, bringing them all together in one place.  This is yet another area where one will need to set limits on when they read/respond and how long they will spend doing so.  I know from personal experience that the more people you follow on Twitter, the more time you can spend happily reading updates and responding.  The saying, “Everything in moderation” holds true for social networking too.

The blogging aspect is a bit harder to control.  After all, if you’re writing original posts the way I do, it’s all about the creative muse and when she ( or he) chooses to smile upon you.  I try to do most of my blogging either in the morning  before I begin working on client projects or late, late at night.  I’ve identified these times as time that I seem to be able to relax enough to harness the muse.  Also at these times of day I can concentrate on the writing. If I find myself hit by inspiration at other times of the day, in order to make sure I ignore possible distractions I put the iPod headphones on to block out the world.

The same applies for your article and newsletter writing as well.

Of course, another way to help with your time management issues is to outsource to a virtual assistant, even if you’re not comfortable having them write or blog for you, there are plenty of other tasks that they can take off your hands to free up more time for you to spend on items that are a better return on investment. 

Of course our little survey is just a tiny sampling of not just the home office entrepreneurs out there, but also of the tasks and projects that pull our attention and time away from the true purpose of your business, whether that purpose is making money or interacting and helping others.