I can hear the rumblings.
“I’m all for more time, but I’m a creative! Structure kills my style!”
“Outsourcing?! My style is what my clients pay me for!”
Ok. I hear you. So you have a couple of options:
1. Continue to work the way you’re working now, where you’re overwhelmed with everything you have to keep up with, you have no free time, and your business isn’t moving forward like it could.
2. Implement some structure, outsource the mundane tasks that aren’t in any way proactive, and you’ll now have the time to relax and be as creative as you’d like to be.
The main reason that business owners are so stressed as they attempt to manage all they have going on in their personal and business life, is because they’re not taking advantage of one important concept: a system.
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During this time of year, people are spending a lot of time on New Year’s resolutions; I want to suggest that you do something more important:
Establish your Big Picture View (BPV).
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Minimize the number of applications that it takes to get through a workday.
Minimize the number of people and third-party vendors it takes to run your business.
Minimize the number of steps it takes to accomplish a task for your business or your personal life.
Ultimately, if you’re going to have a life, the number of moving parts in your life needs to be minimized.
In the next couple of weeks, I’m going to be sharing my experience with my new stand-up desk, but in the meantime, here’s a quick-fix for your health:
Take a break.
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I hope that you’ve had an opportunity to start reading Getting Things Done by now. It’s going to make a huge difference in how you manage all that you have to keep up with!
With those principles in mind, you’re going to want to find a good system with which to implement your efforts in task and project management.
So where should you start? Here are some basic guidelines that I used to choose my system:
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It’s 11:44 a.m, I’m just now sitting down in Starbucks to start my work day, and it hit me: I’m trying to get creative work, proactive work done at a point in the day when I’m already past my prime. Enough has already happened in my day that my mind is going in circles, I’m not very focused, and my creative drive is lacking.
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It takes time to save time. Sometimes.
Sure, the posts here on I Have a Life won’t take any more than 5 minutes to read or watch. From time to time, we’ll also post Quick Fixes, little things you can do to obtain a little more freedom in your life that won’t take any more than 2 or 3 minutes to implement.
But it struck me this week, as I was working more than usual, that sometimes it takes a little extra effort, a little extra time, to put a system into place that will save a business time later on, that will mean additional freedom for the business owner. And that’s ok.
So smile. Take a deep breath. Your life as a business owner may feel a bit chaotic now, but with a little time investment, implementing some of the concepts you learn here, you’re going to be able to say, “I have a life.”
Outsourcing or delegating can be a touchy topic. The idea of giving up control to someone else can be tough, whether it’s post-processing for a wedding photographer, office management for any entrepreneur, or even house cleaning for a stay-at-home mother. It means the task probably won’t be handled exactly the way you would handle it, and that can be discomforting. For a business owner in particular, there’s fear of a disconnect in the brand and resulting loss of income.
While there are, no doubt, risks associated with letting someone else handle a task for you, there is a simple concept that needs to be taken into consideration.
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