When I first started my own business, I floundered trying to figure out how to be productive. After all, I had spent much of my work life having my activities dictated by supervisors. Obviously, one of the appeals of entrepreneurship is that I do in fact now set my own schedule and determine my own work activities! But instead of being happy about that, I was frustrated at all the distractions hurtling my way that I wasn’t managing well, and anxious that I wasn’t getting enough done, or wasn’t getting the right things done.
After all, there are many things I need to fit into my schedule in order to keep my business running, and part of my learning curve as a new entrepreneur has been figuring out what those things are. I devised ever longer lists of activities I hoped would grow my business. Yet, even with to do lists, I still wasn’t content with my progress, and felt that important tasks were slipping through the cracks due to distractions, or poor time management, or perhaps just through poor prioritization. Or perhaps because I just didn’t know what the heck I was doing!
Mostly I felt I was spinning my wheels.
Finally the messages of the business books and blogs I was reading sunk in, and I stepped back and thought about strategy.
I’ve written about this before, but it bears repeating. Mitch Joel
talks about tactics - in my case my to-do list - being useless without a strategy. I needed to ask myself
why I would do any of the tasks on my to-do list, and which piece of my overall strategy each item supported. So I sat down and thought about my business strategy, and prioritized broad business goals. Then I listed categories of tasks under each goal, and I made sure that every task I dreamed up to do fit somewhere into that strategy and supported at least one of those goals.
Even that wasn’t enough. It doesn’t do to merely write up a strategy; I must implement it. So I have devised a daily schedule for myself. I have even set up reminders. And I am trying to stick to my schedule. I may make daily decisions about flexing parts of the schedule here or there depending on my client commitments or appointments, but I am finding it tremendously useful to have thought through a plan for my day which is based upon my business strategy, rather than the whim du jour. Here’s how it works.
Obviously work for my clients takes priority, and having lots of client work is the point of the whole exercise. So when I have client work to do, I devote large chunks of time to it, and fit other tasks in as I may. That said, these are the tasks I make sure I work into my schedule.
Social Media
I set aside some time each day for LinkedIn, Twitter and my RSS feed. I check in on LinkedIn, see if there are any group discussions I want to contribute to. I skim through my various Twitter feeds, click on interesting links, and retweet things I find useful. I skim through the blogs in my RSS feed, and comment on or tweet blogs posts, as seems appropriate. The business strategy here is three-fold. First, it’s educational for me; it helps me keep abreast of the trends in my industry. Next, I am building on-line relationships with people in my field from whom I can learn and whom I can perhaps assist. And finally, I am developing my “brand” as a skilled paralegal who is an expert in her field. However, I could spend all day on these things, so I set a time limit to it – I try to keep it to an hour (90 non-consecutive minutes max).
Writing
I set aside time for writing projects. I am always working on articles related to the legal industry and/or paralegal work. I make them available for download on my website, and I plan to pursue publication avenues for some of them in the future. The business strategy behind this is twofold: I want to continue to learn and keep my skills sharp, and the research required by writing articles accomplishes this. And second, writing articles helps me in that above-mentioned “brand development.”
Marketing
Do you remember that line from the movie Glengarry Glen Ross, “Always Be Closing”? The business strategy here is “Always Be Marketing.” I can’t afford to take a break from this. I need to find ways to reach new markets, and to stay on the radar of potential clients. I always have a few marketing projects going, whether it’s tweaking my website, developing new marketing materials, executing a direct mail campaign, building my marketing database, in person networking with former colleagues or potential clients, or studying marketing books. I need to be relentless in my marketing efforts in order to keep business coming in the door.
The Rest of It
Recently I have begun scheduling regular time for writing posts for my two blogs, because I’ve realized that was the only way I would fit it in. It is my hope that this will help me post a bit more consistently in the future. I also set aside time most days for a little work-out, and this happens whether I have client work or not. No one is going to keep me healthy but me!
Add in errands, meal preparation, and reading my various business books and magazines, plus some cooking magazines and the occasional novel (this usually happens in the evenings when my brain is too weary to “work” any more), and my days are very full! That’s a good thing!
But the best thing of all is that when I regularly review my strategy for growing my business and the activities needed to support that strategy, and then stick to a schedule for chipping away at these activities, I accomplish more, and I hope the things I accomplish are actually pushing my business strategy forward!
What are your time management strategies? Feel free to share them in the comments.
