I have sold on EBay before and sometimes ran my EBay store for several consecutive years. I have often witnessed how it can take over people's lives and become an endless hours business.

I am reopening my EBay store but this time I have other aspects of my life I am not prepared to give up to become a good EBay seller again and one will be my time management around how I sell on EBay. 

I will give 20 hours a week to selling o EBay...and no more than 20 hours.

This is my 20 hour a week EBay selling plan.

I will attend to EBay emails efficiently several ties a day and learn to not waffle...to get straight to the point with my reply an save all questions and answered and store them so I can reply to similar questions with an easy cut and paste action. Yes those answers will also be i  the listing...however there will always be those who do not read the listing.

I have worked out in advance, how many hours I can give to eBay, without taking away from other things I need/want to do. Then I worked out 'official work hours for the project.'

I'm have planned for Monday and Thursday morning to pack and post and I can fit the trip to the post office in with shopping. In the afternoon I will clean up, clear out and sort stock.  That should give me a house clean and some exercise as I plan to list home items I no longer use along with my art stock.

Evenings will be the time I list items in EBay. I will use Turbo Lister if I want to schedule listings or plan them ahead of time.  That gives me 5 days free for writing my novel, blogs, also reading and painting, plus other exercise and family activities.  other things. Not quite as much time as I want...but ...I'll work it.

The Secret will be, to not allow others to make me do EBay chores any day other than Monday and Thursday..My choice-not theirs. Work for yourself not everyone elses' time plan. :-).  I know there will be pressure applied from others to post , list and extensively discuss EBay sales seven days a week. I am my own boss and I need to maintain a work ethic not only to the customer but to my worker - me.

Do not make a part time job become a full time job unless it is though your own choice.

Here is a workshop run by EBay on Time Management for EBay Sellers.

I love being self-employed.
How could I not?  That is a picture of today's office, above. My side bar features the art work I have enjoyed working n and can offer for sale to my clients and my links above take you to my other websites I enjoy creating and filling with relevant material for their subject names.  As I work in the creative arts, my work is a passion rather than a chore?  What is work to you?  I would love to read your comments.

There is nothing new about the 20%/80% rule also called the Pareto principle.  It is named after the Italian economist Vilfredo Pareto, who observed in 1906 that 80% of the land in Italy was owned by 20% of the population; he developed the principle by observing that 20% of the pea pods in his garden contained 80% of the peas.

Here is how the 80%/20% rule applies to business.

80% of your profits come from 20% of your customers.
80% of your complaints come from 20% of your customers.
80% of your profits come from 20% of the time you spend.
80% of your sales come from 20% of your products.
80% of your sales are made by 20% of your sales staff.

You can effectively improve your life and business by focusing on the most effective areas and eliminating, ignoring, automating, delegating or re-training the rest, as appropriate.
Time management is the most important thing to have an understanding of if you are going to be successfully self-employed.
I am a great believer in playing the 80/20 rule of accepting that 20% of anything I do will give me 80% satisfaction or successful result and 80% of what I do will only ever bring me a 20% result.  Periodically I will feel overwhelmed with work and not feel I am getting enough result for all the work I do.  This is NORMAL with all business.

When that happens it is very important to take a break from what you are doing.  You don't necessarily need to stop work in order to take a break and be able to focus clearly, you can do some of the more routine tasks that require less intense thinking.  I did this by taking a week to prepare my art fridge magnets and art post cards ready for a sales launch on EBay in spring time and while I did this I was able to look at the 20% of what I do that is giving me the reward I want and decide on how I will slot that into my daily work to never be neglected.  Once that is done, I look at the remaining 80% of everything, not from a point of view of where I will time plan it in, but how I will do something entirely different in it's place or an amended, improved or experimental version of these things. 

 Here is how I successfully apply this time management rule to my own life, this week.
I have revamped all ten of my websites. The most popular with readers and Google search, required very little work.  The least popular websites were dumped, domain name and all and re-birthed with a new domain name and a new look and focus, one that suits my current direction and reader interest. This blog had previously had no clear direction. Blogger Muse I called it. It was where I mused about any subject I felt like.  I have now decided to keep it to "Blogging about the Arts and a Creative Life taking over what had been a very popular function of my Kathy Shell artist blog and allow my Kathy Shell artist website to focus more on my own art work.  So I am applying a successful formula I have learned that suits both my readers and myself and one that will encourage the painter in me, to this website which had previously be one of me medium rated owns.  That is an example of applying the 80/20 rule. You do continue doing the 80%. Just do it better. Work smarter not harder. 

Time management 20%/80% Rule.

KEEP 20%
1/ I kept the best 20% of what you do.

Revamp and Improve 20%
2/ I revamped and improved the next best 60% of what I do.

Remove 20%
3/ I threw out, ALL of the bottom 20% of what I do and cleared for myself 20% more time which is mine to choose to use for any purpose I wish.  Don't rush to fill this time with anything...enjoy some leisure and allow it to fill with things that lead you to goals of your own choosing.  

If you are a sales person, these might be the customers who still order from you, but very infrequently.  Perhaps you could ask them to call you when they wish to order...knowing there is a risk if you do not give them courtesy follow ups each month that they might never give that once every six months order. Chances are your income is dependent on those occasional orders as well as your mainstay frequently ordering customers.  But consider this..,If you have 20% or even 80% more time available, you could seek out new costumes and service them rather than the 80% of your customers who were only bringing in 20% of your sales orders.  Now from these new customers, you will find that 50% of them will bring in 80% of your income...so once more...after periods of time...apply the 20%/80% rule again. 

Can you see how this can be applied to anything?

I apply it the rule to housework.  20% of the effort brings me 80% of the results and rarely do I give housework a 100% effort as it is not my priority, however I do want to have a reasonable looking home I can live with and be happy in without it consuming too much of my time.  Imagine the place is a mess and someone is coming...Throw open doors and windows to air the place, run around with a bin and thow the rubbish in it. Push the clutter into a pile or other bin and throw an attractive cloth over it. Brush and damp dust. Smooth floors are easier to clean than carpets. fluff and straighten the soft furnishings.  make yourself a coffee or tea. Pick some flowers and arrange them while you sip a relaxing cuppa.  Put the flowers in front of the pretty cove covered clutter...go freshen yourself up...you are ready for visitors, in half an hour, time I have.  To have properly tidy and clean the room would lounge room would take me several hours and I don't always have that time to spare..  

Create your own variations of the 20%80% rule.
It is totally flexible and in your own control as is your definition of what is a successful outcome.  Remember success is not just how much money you earn or what you weigh, or any other definition giver to you by others, it is what satisfaction you receive from any given activity and this will change and fluctuate with time and this is why we also need to change and fluctuate in how we respond.  That is why I love applying this rule.  I also know, I can never see how to apply it when I am highly stressed or over worked.  The great successes I have achieved, the ones that have lead me to multiple personal goal achievement have come when i take a break from intense 'doing,' and relax a little. Find out that life still goes on when i stop doing something that no longer rewards me...even when I think I need to do it.  Only by stopping doing something can I clearly see where it fits within my busy life. 

I would LOVE to hear your comments.

Pop over and look at my Rose Perfumed Life blog...it is one of my new experimental babies I created with the 20% of my time I feed up. It is to promote my new EBay store and save it to favorites as it opens in September 2011 to further downsize my possessions and market my art - art prints and achieve more of my travel and creative goals while offering customers great value.

Have creative fun with your own version of the 20%/80% rule and share it with others if it helps you. 
You may share this blog post as long as you do so in entirety with full links back to this Blogger Muse website and credit Kathy Shell as the author. 

  "Wisdom is the power to put our time and our knowledge to the proper use" Thomas John Watson (1874-1956), founder of IBM

Sometimes when we are overwhelmed and there seems to be too much to do, and it all seems urgent, it is a time to stop, take a break, rest, relax, do some leisure, pleasure activities, then in a state of relaxation, we begin to reformulate our goal, our priorities.

It is when I am rested I can best see how I can apply the tools of time management to my many tasks and accomplish more by working more effectively, not harder, at what I want to do.

By asking yourself  "What is the best use of my time right now?" and doing the task that best fills your time at that particular moment you will increase your overall efficiency.

Did you know that sometimes the answer to the great time management question: - ‘What is the best use of my time ~ NOW?' -  Is to do NOTHING.

Only 611 words written of my novel in 3 days.
That is way below my target to write a 22,000 word chapter 6 over 2 weeks. 

I'm feeling too guilty to write well though.  Reg has gone to bed in the caravan looking miserable.
Playing house where it is a constant clean up job is not a good way to keep him happy.

I guess non stop hanging washing on a line for 2 days and not being allowed to sleep in his house yet until I am sure it is mice free, could do that to a man` making him look sad.

So I am heading to bed early and will do another big clean up job tomorrow.  The novel will have to wait until I have cleaned all the way though the home.

It is hard to focus on writing in a mouse plague situation, unless perhaps I write a country mouse plague into my novel :-). Now that's a good possibility. lol.

This as  good time to ask, 'What is the Best Use of My Time? 

There is no  peaceful harmony in life if we are unable to manage our time well so I will post time management ideas here and welcome ideas of your own.  Good Time Management allows for creativity rest and play as well as work. We gain contentment along with productivity and even health benefits, in our life if we can balance out our life activities though great time management.  
I would love to hear of any great time management ideas of yours and I will share some of mine in this blog.

The BEST management tool I ever learned was to ask the right question and you get the right answer.

Ask "What does it need not what more can I do" and only do what is needed, don't fiddle n fuss and overwork a project.

The best time management question when faced with too much to do is; "What’s the best use of my time NOW."

Enjoy life and make it count :-)  
Cheers Kathy

Yes you can talk to your guests at the dinner table and your phone will tell you when the steaks are cooked.

OMG! My smart phone is totally outsmarting me. Now we have  iGrill.

lol, it's all too much for me, I want to run back 10 years before the IT revolution of phones that are smarter than me.  Soon I will need to employ a 10 year old to show me how to do everything.

Hey I only want the apt that turns my smart phone back to a plain ordinary phone so I can understand how to use it. lol :-)