Three Secrets to a Productive, Stress-free Day
Has Running Your Own Business…Run You Down?
I was recently at an event where I ran into another entrepreneur that I had not seen in a while. I asked her how she has been and it was obvious that she was exhausted, overwhelmed and overcommitted. She couldn’t wait until the current holiday season was over so she could, (hopefully) take a break. She put up a good front, but she had family issues, business concerns and personal health problems. Sound familiar?
One of the major challenges to running your own business is managing your time and your priorities. There is no clocking in or clocking out. There is no boss to tell you what to do or where to focus your energy. There are no externally imposed deadlines. It is incredibly easy for the solo-preneur to work all the time, while still trying to keep up all the same commitments on the side. So just what is the secret to managing time effectively when there is no predetermined schedule?
Begin Your Week with a Plan
First of all you can’t really manage time because it is, well, time. You can’t corral it. You can’t stop it or speed it up. But you can manage your activities. The problem most people have is that they try to manage their activities by keeping track of information and priorities in their mind. The brain is not designed to hold on to and maintain a list of everything that you need to accomplish. It is easily distracted. The brain is designed to be used as a problem solving organ. Here’s how to create a productive, focused and stress-free day:
Each Sunday afternoon I spend some time creating my calendar for the next week. I have it on a whiteboard that I keep in a very visible place. I put all my appointments, client calls, speaking engagements etc. on it. This is something that I can quickly see each morning over my coffee that keeps me on track. Next, I schedule my days into blocks of time where I will work on specific projects or activities. It might be writing the next blog post or creating a proposal for a training event.
Begin Your Day with a Plan
Once I have my week outlined into priorities, I can focus each day on the predetermined schedule for that day. There is something incredibly compelling about a schedule that is written down. It is powerful. It keeps you accountable, even if you are the only one who sees it. It also means that when I experience other demands on my time, I have something to measure it against. Is it something that I need to move to the front of the line? Can it wait? Can someone else do it just as well? When your day is unscheduled, any new demand or distraction even can take precedence over that empty space in your calendar.
Decide who you want to be as well as what you want to do.
I’ve found that this is often the forgotten piece in so many checklists. We often spend time recognizing what we want to do, but don’t spend any time centering ourselves in who we want to be. I begin each day answering the questions: Who do I want to be? and How do I want to feel?. Then I align my mindset with that before I tackling my day tasks. Depending on your day the answer may vary: A loving and caring Mom. A confident efficient entrepreneur. A knowledgeable and helpful teacher. You get the idea.
Why Creating a Plan Works
One thing that we know about the brain is that the brain is drawn toward congruity and completion. This is why it is important to have a plan or a goal for the day. Our brain will then want to align our daily activities with those goals. It is drawn toward activities where completion is a given. Wonder why you find yourself emptying the dishwasher when the plan was to contact three possible clients or write 1,000 words on the book? It’s not just procrastination. We can easily see the end of emptying the dishwasher or sorting the mail. Other tasks are not so clearly defined. This is why having a system for identifying tasks, setting priorities and creating blocks of time is so important. It sets up the brain to move toward completion of a task.
Learning to direct your energy and structure your activities is a necessary part of living an intentional life. It is how dreams become reality and goals are achieved. A goal is simply a dream with a plan.
