I don't have time to be an entrepreneur!

You work full time, have hobbies, enjoy socialising and look after your children. You want to be an entrepreneur. You want to start up a business but don't want to give anything up in your current lifestyle. You have done odd bits to get your business off the ground but not enough or nothing concrete. You've resided yourself to the fact that although you like the idea of being an entrepreneur it will probably never happen. You just don't have the time. Does this sound familiar?

If only you knew what to do and where to start. Well a good start would be to write everything down you need to do to get your business idea off the ground. Write down absolutely everything you can think of then re-order it in chronological order. That is the order you think everything needs to be done in.

Next write down how much time you have spare a week to dedicate to your business idea. Maybe you can dedicate 5 hours - split that time out over the week. I would suggest not to do a task in less than an hour. So 5x1 hour blocks would be one way in which you could split your time.

You could then take this further and estimate how long you expect each task to take on your entrepreneur start up list. This, in theory, would allow you to plan as far in advance as what you want.

Although this approach may not be for everyone and there is no guarantee your project would get off the ground using it there are a number of benefits. For example:

• It allows you to focus on one task at once
• It allows you to make more efficent use of your time.
• It allows you to measure your progress.
• You can review and replan as necessary.

Maybe you think your time management is fine but you're still not progressing. A useful task can be to reflect back to a typical business task. How many times did you go on a social networking site, read or reply to a text, look at unrelated emails or get side traked for any reason? Perhaps, if you answer this honestly you may feel your time management isn't as good as you first evaluated.

If you are limited for time but decide you still want to make a go of getting your business idea going time management is likely to be crucial. You will need to be focussed and remain disciplined to achieve your ambition.

If you want some information on deciding whether entrepreneurship is for you or not I would recommend clicking on the following link to read this article by The Wall Street Journal - "How to Decide if Entrepreneurship is Right for You".