Schedule activities into blocks of time to save time.
Introduction
Welcome back to the Entrepreneur Mindset Podcast.
As an entrepreneur, time management is essential to your success. You really have to be able to juggle a lot of different balls and still keep everything moving forward. That means being organized and efficient with your time. Now, are you imagining a juggler with all of the balls in the air, admiring the fact that they don’t drop any of them?
Maybe what comes to mind is the time you tried to juggle oranges and they kept splatting on the kitchen floor making a mess. Let’s face it, juggling looks easier than it is, but as an entrepreneur, it’s a skill that you have to hone. The good news is that juggling looks different for everyone. Dictionary.com defines juggling as “to keep in continuous motion in the air simultaneously by tossing and catching”. It also says “to keep several objects, balls, plates, tenpins or knives in continuous motion in the air simultaneously by tossing and catching”. Now, don’t go juggling knives, but you’ll notice a word in here. It says several objects, but what exactly is several because you’re thinking about your business and you’re thinking, okay, several. I have a lot of things.
Several is defined as being “more than two, but fewer than many in number or kind”. So about three or more, right? We’ve got three or more. Now we’re getting somewhere in your business, you need to become a juggler, but that doesn’t mean having 80 plates spinning effortlessly in the air. It might mean three things that you’re balancing, and they could be nice, soft foam balls. What do your three things look like? Maybe it’s one-on-one client calls, planning your calendar and networking. Maybe right now it’s planning a launch. Staying focused on your social media consistency and reaching out to new potential clients. Whatever your balls, plates, or oranges look like, today’s episode is going to spark some ideas for how to become better as an expert juggler without the oranges splatting on the kitchen floor.
If you are ready to learn about how to become more of an expert juggler in your business, grab your pen and paper.
Being Productive
Have you ever sat down to plan the week or the month and felt that moment of overwhelm? Yeah, me too. You’re looking at what needs to be done within your business and what needs to be done outside your business just to keep life going. The personal and the professional.
And the funny thing is, is I was talking with a group of colleagues, entrepreneur colleagues this morning in our early morning coworking session, and we start at 6:00 AM and we talk for a minute or two to kind of catch up, and then we set our intentions for the 90 minutes and get to work. But today, what we were chatting about on this bright sunshiny morning, we were talking about planning for the week, and one of the business owners shared that she usually plans by the month, but recently she’s been planning by the week and feeling more accomplished and feeling like she was getting more done, and we all kind of admitted that we’d been doing similar things.
We’re feeling more accomplished. The juggling didn’t feel as hard. Now, you might be wondering, why are you telling me this story? The point of the story is that even if you’re used to juggling in a certain way, you can be open to new ways of approaching your business and how to manage your time, and that’s what today’s all about. In fact, we are going to talk about how to manage time in your business.
Some of the ideas that I share with you, you’re going to say, ah, this is awesome. I love it. I’m going to apply it today. Some of these ideas, you might think, “this is not for me”, or “I’m not at that point in my business yet”. My hope is truly that you’ll take away at least one new idea or an old idea you had forgotten about and implement it today, this week, this month.
Time Management Tips
1. One of the best ways to be more time-efficient is to batch similar tasks together.
For example, if you need to make a bunch of phone calls, do them all at once instead of spreading them out throughout the day. Or, if you need to do some research, set aside a few hours to do it all at once instead of doing it a little bit at a time.
2. Second, make a schedule for yourself.
Whether you are better at working in time blocks or task-based, create a schedule that allows you to maintain your focus and productivity. When you have a schedule you are more committed to the work you are doing, than if you sit down at your desk hoping to be productive today. This is one of the reasons that I love co-working sessions. They create a schedule, with accountability, and you get up when the session is over to take a break, which is something we’ll talk about today as well.
3. Third thing you can do is to define your goals so that you are only taking on tasks that will help you move the needle forward.
I’m using John Lee Dumas’ 100-Day Goal Journal right now to stay focused on those needle moving tasks. In his journal you set your 100 day goal, but then each day you break down what you need to get done into 3 micro goals, assess how the day has gone, what worked, and what needs to happen next. This way you aren’t getting lost on your way to that 100-day goal. You check in with your big goal and the progress you are making every 10 days so that you can adjust course, or adjust how you are juggling so that you get to that goal by day 100.
Delegate and Prioritize Tasks
1. You could hire someone to do it for you or to do it with you so that it’s not as time consuming.
2. You can also prioritize tasks that are essential to your business.
If you’re a busy entrepreneur, you may need to prioritize tasks like meeting with clients or networking, because well, meeting new people allows your business to thrive and grow to the extent that you desire simply creating new calendars, maybe not the most important task right now, whereas getting out networking might be. Now, I did say that, you know, maybe delegating tasks isn’t possible for you right now. Maybe you don’t have a team.
3. Hire a Virtual Assistant (VA)
So one of the things that you can do to juggle more effectively delegating and prioritizing is to actually start considering hiring a virtual assistant or other kind of support professional to help you with the tasks that lay outside your zone of genius. If you can spend more time on your zone of genius and less time on the time sucking tasks that have to be done but aren’t your strength, you’re going to get a whole lot further. And you can hire virtual assistants for just a few hours a week. There are so many services out there that will help you find a quality VA virtual assistant and meet your needs. And you may have to work through a few VAs to find the one that’s just right for your business. But there are so many options out there these days that there’s really no reason not to have a VA.
As a quick review, so far we have talked about time management, batching your tasks, making a schedule, and defining your goals. We talked about delegating and prioritizing, delegate, what’s not essential or what’s outside your zone of genius. And if you don’t currently have a team to delegate to consider hiring a virtual assistant and then making sure that you’re prioritizing the tasks that are essential to moving your business forward.
Take Breaks
Finally, if you are going to be an expert juggler, you need to take breaks. Can you imagine going to an event where there’s a juggler and the juggler has been juggling nonstop 24 7 for 365 days straight? What do you think is going to happen? Those plates are going to come crashing down from fatigue, both mental and physical. If they’re tossing oranges, well, they’re going to become orange juice that needs to be mopped up from the kitchen floor. Taking time off as an entrepreneur cannot be a some-day proposition. It is a necessity today. Now, before you shout at your phone saying that you need to make a profit before you take a vacation, please hear me out. I’m not suggesting an expensive vacation. I’m not actually even suggesting a vacation. What I’m suggesting is avoiding burnout that can lead to poor decision making and can negatively impact your business. Taking breaks happens in a lot of different ways.
1. Schedule breaks throughout the day.
Sure, a vacation is one way to take a break, but so is setting your phone alarm to get up and walk around for the last 10 minutes of every hour. So is taking a power nap when you feel exhausted after a long night up with a sick child or sinking into a good book for a chapter or two to clear the cobwebs away and to just give yourself a moment to breathe?
2. Learning to say no.
Taking a break might also be learning to say no. One of the biggest time management pitfalls is saying yes to everything. If you want to be successful, you need to learn to say no to some things so that you can focus on the most important goals that you have, that you’re scheduling for yourself, and that you’re batching together to be more effective. So taking a break isn’t necessarily a vacation.
3. Scheduling time for yourself.
Taking a break is also scheduling time for yourself. Make sure to schedule time for your hobbies, the things that get you interested and excited outside of work, the things that are yours. So sometimes I hear entrepreneurs, especially who, who have children in the home say, well, I don’t have time for hobbies. I’ve gotta get my kiddo to dance, to music lessons, to sports practice. And then we sit and then we drive to the next practice. Or I’ve gotta help with homework. I promise you that if you can find even 10 minutes a day to do something that you love, that’s for you alone, you are going to be a better parent. You are going to be able to be more present, more enthusiastic about doing all that driving and all of that homework help than if you don’t take time for yourself. So it’s going to help you relax, it’s going to help you recharge. It’s going to help you be more productive when you’re working, if you take time for those hobbies or those things that are interesting to you.
Action Item
Now, we’ve been talking about taking a break, and this is the point of the episode where I usually say “this week’s action item…”. Gosh, it seems a little bit counterintuitive at the, at this exact moment. So let’s do a little bit of a recap and then let’s talk about the action item, and hopefully it’ll feel like it jives with our lessons for the week.
We talked about three main ways to become an expert juggler in your business. First, we discussed the importance of time management, batch creating content, making a schedule for yourself, defining your goals. All of these things are going to help you better use your time and keep those oranges in the air instead of a sticky mess on your kitchen floor.
Second, we talked about delegating and prioritizing your tasks with the idea that separating out the essential from the non-essential tasks will help you get the important stuff done. We talked about the possibility of hiring a VA, a virtual assistant, to help you manage the tasks that are outside your zone of genius, and we talked about prioritizing what needs to be done right now to take the next steps forward in your business.
Finally, we talked about the importance of taking a break. This might be simple, a simple 10 minute stretch break or a walk around the house or building might be saying no to additional commitments, and it’s definitely scheduling time for your hobbies or developing a hobby. If you let those go by the wayside, maybe you could even take up juggling as a hobby.
Maybe now you’re thinking about juggling. I know I know kind of a bad joke, but here we are at the action item because the tendency is to work more. This week, your action item is to schedule in some breaks. Try setting a phone alarm to go off 10 minutes before the top of the hour and use those 10 minutes to grab water, to stretch, to walk around, or just stand and breathe.
Think about swimming pools. If you go to a swimming pool in the summer, that’s lifeguarded. There is an adult swim, they’ll last 10 minutes of every hour. This is so that the lifeguards can take a break. They can recover from watching the water and they can return ready to work and be effective at spotting danger and rescuing when necessary.
We need breaks to be effective and efficient. Treat those 10 minutes as a way to take care of yourself and take care of your business. You are going to return refreshed and ready to be effective with your time and energy after those 10 minutes. There you have it. Time management. In a nutshell, as a business owner, you know we’re busy juggling many different pieces to the business and personal life on top of that, and the last thing that we want is for the plates to come crashing down or the oranges to splat on the kitchen floor, because that would just be another task, cleaning up all the mess. We don’t want to do that. By delegating, prioritizing, scheduling your day, creating goals, and taking breaks, you are less likely to break the plates or splat the oranges.
Conclusions
I’d love to know as you take action this week, what has been most helpful from this week’s episode? So please, wherever you’re listening to this podcast, leave me a review. I do look at those reviews and the comments, and I’m always thinking about how I can better serve you as you build your business. So when you leave a review or a comment helps me know what to share more with you so that you can be more effective as an entrepreneur.
After all, that’s what the Coaching Hive is all about.
So I’ll see you back here next week for another episode of the Entrepreneur Mindset Podcast, where a focus on mentoring and community and implementation removes the overwhelm of building your successful and profitable business and adds in a dose of momentum.
Until next time, have a healthy, safe, and happy week.
