One of the secrets to success in your home business is ensuring that you remain in control of all the activities necessary for it to run smoothly. It may sound simple, for example, to run an internet marketing business, but in reality it will require you to keep on top of things like email marketing campaigns, writing articles, preparing advertising, customer support, product development, and of course the financial management of your business.

So it is vital that you devise a strategy for running the business and this should revolve around efficient project management. Then within each project you must devise an organized plan of action to get it completed. This will mean setting tasks for completion at each stage of the project and you must arrange a schedule to make sure you get each task done.

In drawing up your list of tasks it is essential that everything is included but this often results in a mountainous list of things to do. So you must then decide what needs to take priority. But how do you go about defining whether a task is important or not, or whether or not it is urgent? Here are some ideas to help you in deciding:

1) What are some of the benefits that you'll get from completing the task? The more important that you feel the benefits are then the more important the task.

2) What would happen if you failed to do the task? Would there be serious consequences or would it not really matter? If it is the latter you must ask yourself whether it really needs to be done at all.

3) It is important to always have clearly defined goals and objectives. Will completing the task help you in achieving them? If so it is important, but you also need to know the degree of effect that it will have so that you can decide how urgent it is.

4) Is there a good pay-off in completing the task? If it does not have one and does not give satisfaction then is it really that important?

5) If you do not get the task done by a specific date or time will it have negative consequences for you? Time bound tasks are always likely to be the most important.

So take time in your daily routine to look at the tasks in your business and make sure that you really do need to get them all done. Your success will depend upon ensuring that you use your time in the most productive way and by doing the things that will bring the most reward.