There are many challenges when you have your own business and time comes in from all directions; time to get clients, time to sleep, time to chase, time to prepare, time to relax, time to celebrate, time to network and to be honest they all mean ‘need more time to …’. See my bonus point on time below.
But this all means that you have too much to do, be that work, research or just plain admin. As you can imagine my first way to overcome the challenges of working on your business is to outsource. We find what to outsource by finding what takes us too long, what we don’t like and when we can really identify those things that just put us in a bad mood or make us procrastinate far too much – outsource and get rid.
Outsource
When we set up in business we have time to do most of it as we don’t have that much client work; but when the balance tips you need to concentrate on what brings in the money. This usually equals why we set up in business; because we like to do x, y and z. However, what happens is we find lots of other things that need doing too as well as trying to fit in the family, the pet, hobbies and general taking time out! So do yourself a favour and find great people to help – sometimes you only have to ask. Ask other business owners who they use, how they cope and what their solution is. Ask for recommendations for people you can outsource too or just plain do your research! But like Nike say; Just Do It! You will never look back and wonder why it took you so long – if you get the right person – there is someone out there just for you!
Chunking – little and often
Are you an employee also and therefore time is even more limited to devote to your business? Are you limited to evenings and weekends and even pushing into taking a day’s holiday to attend exhibitions or valuable training? Building a business whilst still working is hard! Fact! But we all know if it wasn’t hard everyone would be doing it and again only a small percentage succeed enough to resign from that job and work full time in their business. If you are really limited in your time you need to be a good planner; be able to break those jobs down, chunking and then doing little and often to achieve that big action. Having lots of jobs to do is daunting but when you can make smaller ones and tick them off you can see your progress and keep going.
Prioritising
When you just have too much to do and all that happens is that you stare at your to-do-list and nothing gets done. You need the list (if you’re like me I love lists and I have lots of them but on the other side of the coin I just love ticking them off, tearing out the page and throwing it in the bin – it’s quite cathartic.) No one wants to drop any balls, so keeping them in the air is essential, so lists are ideal for this. But one way to really hit it home is to identify just three things that you are going to do that day/session/week (if really big) and work on those by putting them into the calendar, putting time aside will enable you to be reminded it needs to be done and if you can focus; get them done. I’m sure you will have heard of the book Eat That Frog by Brian Tracey – it is well known to be the go-to book about getting stuff done. It’s teaching is to get that big job done first; don’t think about all the little jobs you can do to give you time to do the big one as you will never get around to it. What usually happens is that it is never as bad as it at first appears. Start early, start on the big stuff, get it done and then the rest of the day is fab as you tick, tick, tick off those little jobs. A job well done!
Here’s the extra one
See my last blog on 5 Ways to Find Time to Work ON your Business not IN
Now go get that frog, tick off that list and tackle those challenges head on. What’s your best tactic that works – have to tried these ones and did they work or not?
