Solopreneur's Guide to Time Management

Watch the video version of this blog here: https://youtu.be/HPYB0fWf5oY

Welcome back to The Latest blog!

This week's topics will be on time management for solopreneurs. I'll be running through how to manage time in the first place, balance multiple responsibilities to ultimately maximize productivity. Next week, we'll get into some practices for expanding your mindset for what is possible for you and your business. For me, maximizing my time has gone hand in hand with expanding my mindset and I believe when fused together, both of these practices have the ability to be life changing in unexpected ways.

---

If you've been following along with me, you'd know that last week I did a deep dive on how I organize and set up my ideal daily routine using Google Calendar. I outlined my process in a YouTube video that you can go check out here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iWRYLV8iPzM

Managing your time really does come down to one element, and that is your ability to stick with a system. You may find that I take an "all encompassing" approach in building this system and that is because I don't believe being a solopreneur means that our happiness takes a back seat. No! I actually believe the opposite. Your schedule should be the closest thing to your dream reality. The reason we also want to implement the things that make you happy is because we want this schedule to stick, we want it to feel amazing, and worthy of following.

The purpose of managing our time is usually to be more efficient with it in order to achieve a goal, implement a certain habit/desirable routine, or something along these lines. Time is valuable and therefore, a system that can strategically ADD value to your life is the purpose of managing it.

If you are just starting out on your time management journey, hello! It is not an easy task to organize your life if you've never been good at it, so I encourage you to be FLEXIBLE in the beginning. This is key.

You don't want to overwhelm yourself with sticking to a timely schedule if this is something you aren't currently doing. But this is where I'd start:

• If you are somebody that has some sort of commitment or consistent activity in your weekly, monthly, or daily routine, (and I assume the majority of us do) than this is a great place to start implementing structure. Try adding an hour to either the front end or back end of that commitment to see if it sticks. If not, that's fine! This is all part of being flexible with yourself and understanding yourself enough to know what will not work for you.

• Which brings me to my next point! I want you to think back on your life and identify a time where you felt really productive, more motivated than usual, or simply like you were taking action and things felt good. This past experience is a good indicator of how you may manage your time best in the present. What was going on in your life? Were there stressors you were constantly dealing with? How were your relationships? You may find that you're able to manage your time best when other elements of your life feel surmountable, manageable, and harmonious- this is what I've found personally. If you're finding that there are stressors in your daily life currently that may be stopping your from managing your time the way you'd like, focus on making these areas more enjoyable, or simply less stressful. Eliminating these more challenging aspects of life should be priority before attempting to add on tasks and activities that are intended to bring fulfillment into your days. All of this will feel so much easier when we begin from a place of neutrality.

Beyond being flexible in the beginning, we should touch on the goal of managing your time and that is; to allow for a more desirable experience. How do we go about doing this? I've found for me that it really starts with stabilizing what exists, and maximizing from where you're at consistently. This way you're always inching closer and closer to your ideals.

Here is a practice to help you figure this out. Draw on a sheet of paper a graph that defines each day of the week, and every hour of the day. It should look a little something like this:

Make sure the hours outline the specific hours that you are up and about throughout your day. The times when you are doing.

• First begin by visually blocking out the time that defines your commitments during a given week. Be sure to include commute times, and be very realistic about when your commitments begin and when they end. You can get creative and define certain commitments by color so that you can visually compartmentalize what is happening when and which blocks of time are related. This practice will help you identify a few things: 1, how much time you have that's free, 2, how much time you have that isn't free, and 3, the potential you have to utilize the time you do have to work on your goal(s).

• Next, think deeply about the aspects of your day to day that bring you the most happiness. If you need help in making sure you are touching on all areas of your life, start by writing down: social, leisure, physical, mental, spiritual. Think deeply on each of these areas of your life and your goals as they pertain to each. Once you've written down these goals, translate how you can incorporate each one into your day, week, month or year. How often you put energy into each is completely up to you and your discernment, so figure out how often working on each goal would work best for you, then outline this in your calendar. If you are working on a monthly/yearly basis with some of your goals, I would suggest utilizing a digital calendar so that you can see ahead and write in your translated goals in the future.

Now that we've identified the elements of your life that you want to implement into this calendar, it's time to balance these responsibilities to maximize your productivity. This is the hard part! What we have to consider here is that balancing your responsibilities in the right way will in turn maximize your productivity. What is the right way? Think about your personality, the way you respond to stress, and the ways in which you feel the most actionable. This will ultimately help you make more informed decisions on what will actually work and stick for you.

• This last step is all about determining where, how, when and through what tasks you want to consistently work on and achieve the goals you've set out for yourself here. Time block in your weekly calendar the times you want to work on or implement certain tasks or activities that will get you closer to your goal for your business.

I hope you gained some form of wisdom from this blog! If you did, leave a comment- I'd love to engage with you. Thank you for reading, and I'll see you next week!