Time management is such a tricky topic for me because I have continued in my misinterpretation about how long things take to complete - for decades! Although I fit a lot into my schedules and am a 'busy' (more on that later) person, I have often felt a mild disappointment at what I manage to achieve in a given day or week.
So....with many years of pursuing the best time management tools, and given it's still the Summer juggle at the time of writing, here are my current thoughts on how to juggle time so that we get to achieve what we want or at least feel that we're making the most of micro business life.
Our time is limited - as Oliver Burkeman says in his book, 'Four Thousand Weeks', the sooner we grapple with the idea that our time is severely limited, the quicker we feel the relief of pressure that we have t, or should, pack so much in. That said, as micro business owners, there's much to do. So start with accepting exactly how many realistic hours you really have in a week o achieve what you want. Include sleep, eating leisurely, exercise and time to socialise over a coffee as well as your work and other life commitments. This reality check takes us neatly to point no.2 and helps us understand that simply making a longer 'to do' list won't cut it.
Prioritising - this, for me, has been key over recent years as I battle my inner 'I'm sure I can fit this in' voice. Busyness is not productivity & doesn't get us any closer to our end goals. Now that you understand how few hours you really have in the week to work or undertake tasks, it's vital to prioritise what you will put into those hours. What is truly important to you and your business for example. What will ultimately make the biggest difference to your micro business life if you managed it. You will likely be left with a leftover list of stuff that needs doing that you don't appear to have time for, this takes us to point no.3.
Delegate, digitise or drop - instead of being driven by frustrating tech, now might be a good time to put yourself back in the driving seat and adopt some digital solutions for your business. are you spending too many hours on email or is there a long winded process to your booking system? Can you take photos of your receipts so that the pop into your accounting software without a glitch. Are there tasks that aren't actually that important to customers that you can actually phase out or ask someone else to complete? Adopt a 'Spring clean' approach to your assumed 'necessary tasks' and see what you can clean out or polish up.
Be a driver not a passenger - this is a tough one, but how is your relationship with your phone? Have you done a little audit of how many hours a week you spend scrolling and checking? You may have the notion that you have to be on your phone for work, but do you? First up, think about what activities you do on your phone that add to your priority list of tasks. This time can be productive and time limited (use the stopwatch facility!). Then think about some idle inspiration, after all who doesn't want to watch sausage dogs or be inspired to paint the bathroom pink for some light relief! But again, time this as specific leisure time. Finally, consider your notification settings. Which notifications do you really need to fulfil your priority list? For example you might keep your online orders or bookings 'ping' but do you definitely need every DM or post 'like' from your socials? Will it break your business if you decide to check in with socials a few times a day instead. This discipline will help your journey to driving the use of your mobile compared to your mobile driving you.
Create goals but stay present - goals can be great and, you'll already know, I'm a fan of visions. But a muddle can crop up where we can start to live 'over there' in the future or with our eyes only on the finishing line. While potentially motivating, it can also have the effect of keeping us firmly on a hamster wheel without enough thought. Lists can creep longer, schedules can overfill with 'stuff' and you might find your time management gets wonky. How about setting the goal or goals and keeping them visible (on the office wall?) but then remembering that the only important thing today, is today. This helps us nibble away at our goals successfully without overblown ideas about what we can achieve by next week or allowing us to rush things in order to get to the next item on the list. Each day you can ask yourself, are these tasks I hope to achieve getting me to where I really want to be?
Bonus tip - there's one last tip I wanted to share. Remember that life goes in waves. Sometimes we're in 'hard time' when you're peddling hard for a deadline, driving hard to meet a financial goal, or got lots of projects running together. Be mindful that this needs to be a temporary situation that will come to an end and you can get back to a softer time when things are ticking along well and in a balanced way. Check in with yourself that life isn't all hard but that there are gentle balances and undulations of hard and soft time across your year. Balance is your magic weapon.
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