“A plan is what, a schedule is when. It takes both a plan and a schedule to get things done.⁣⁣”

~ Peter Turla

At the end of last year, the call to simplify my business was loud and clear and I knew that if I wanted to see a boost in business growth at the same time as being able to spend less time in front of my computer, things would have to change. After working too hard in 2018 and suffering the consequences, a top priority for me in 2019 has been to master the art of getting more done in less time. In this post, I want to share with you the process I went through to find a daily schedule that not only works for me on a personal level but that allows me to manage a pretty busy workload. 

Identify key areas of work

The first step I took was to get down on paper, those key areas of work in my business that I need to work on on a daily/weekly basis. For me these were:

• My Female Business Academy (Live calls, Office hours, Creating Classes)
• 1-2-1 Coaching Clients (Sessions and between-session work)
• Other client/project work
• Audience Outreach
• Content Creation (blogs, social media, web copy, newsletters)
• Answering emails
• Professional development

Identify key areas of life

Because this exercise was for me a way to manage my time better so that I can ensure that I get adequate time to do things during the day other than work, it was important for me to make a similar list for my life (during the working week). For me these were:

• Exercise
• Breaks / Rest
• Time off
• Time to make art / other creative endeavours / read
• Spend more time with my husband and son

Plan it in

With these lists written I was better able to see how I needed to split the time I had available to me and allocate slots on my weekly calendar. It felt like the ultimate puzzle but I got there in the end. Once I had it figured out on paper, I created this weekly schedule (click the link to see exactly how I’ve fit all of the above into my schedule).

Once I had that down, I headed to my online calendar and recreated the schedule there (making sure to leave certain slots free so that people can book them via Calendly).

In order that I could squeeze everything I need to do into less time, I had to think long and hard about which things I needed to let go of. I did this by identifying those activities that have the greatest impact on my audience and clients and those that bring in the greatest revenue and then let go of all the rest.

You’ll see that the areas that have the lion’s share of time are: Content Creation and Client Work and Coaching/Outreach. Content creation and outreach form the basis of my entire business growth strategy for 2019 and client work is the necessary time needed to serve the clients I have.

I’m fully aware that for some people seeing this level of scheduling in their calendar might fill them with dread but to those people I say this:

If you don’t get organised, you risk wasting precious time and resources on things that don’t matter.

And what a crying shame that would be because life really is too short. By scheduling my days and weeks in this way, I’ve been able to allocate, not only, adequate time for my business priorities, but I’ve also managed to find plenty of time during my working day for ME, my family and my personal fulfilment above and beyond the fulfilment I get from my work.

What I love most about my schedule is that of the 11 hours between the start and end of my working day, exactly 50% of those have been allocated to working and the other 50% to resting and living. Finding this kind of balance, was exactly what I was hoping for when I began the process of crafting a schedule for my week and I didn’t plan for it to be such an even split, it just happened to turn out this way when I set about scheduling in both my life and business priorities.

So now how about you? Would you benefit from identifying your priorities and and then scheduling those in? What can you let go of that will have the time you do spend on your business bring the greatest rewards?