One of the biggest challenges facing small business owners is the common feeling that you are running flat out just to stand still. No matter how many hours you work to try to get caught up and ahead of your self,no matter how hard you try to keep on top of things, there always seems to be more to do than there are hours in the day.

For the owner of a small business time management is the big key to success.

Bigger businesses have teams of people to get stuff done, the owners can delegate effectively confident that other people will pick up some of the workload. But in a small business there just isn't the slack, often it will down to you as the owner to do everything and some days it will feel like it's all happening at once.

Sound familiar?

Well if you are one of the many that struggle with effective time management then you might recognise some of the other symptoms as well:

- You are getting home from work later and later

- Your weekends are no longer sacred and the odd hour of catching up is becoming a habit.

- No matter how hard you work you still have an endless list of things you feel you should be doing but never seem to get round to

- You are getting less and less time with your family and friends - which adds to your stress and making you feel awful.

It's a terrible situation to be in but sadly all too common. And I know because I've been there myself - several times!

So what can we do to help overcome this feeling to too much to do, too little time? If you don't know where all your time is going then that is where we'll start.

If you find that days and weeks just fly by without you feeling you're making any progress at all beyond just keeping your head above water then you need to start by auditing how you are currently spending your time.

A Time Audit is a simple but extremely revealing process that will show you exactly where your time goes, and once you become conscious of this you can't help but improve it.

To do an audit all you need is a notepad and an alarm / timer that you can set to go off every half hour (most mobiles have something suitable). Then all you do is, every time the alarm goes off you write down what you've been doing for the last 30 minutes. AND BE HONEST! Don't write down what you should have been doing; write what you've really done. If you're going to lie to yourself then you've bigger problems than time management...

If you can keep this up for a whole week you'll get a really clear picture of how you're currently spending your time, and from there you'll get a better idea of how you should invest it in future!