Smarter Not Harder Ep. 2: What you should know before starting ANY new scheduling practice.

You’re hitting everything on the client work plus marketing plus sales outreach plus content creation plus business bookkeeping plus CEO time to-do list - but it’s all feeling kind of catch-as-catch can instead of smoothly flowing from one thing to the next.

You feel like your schedule isn’t properly in order (except every time you DO try to tweak your schedule, you always end up ditching it for some reason or other), and you’re having a hard time prioritizing your own business needs over your clients’.

Guess what - it is the scheduling that you need… but not in the super type A, uber efficient “cram everything in” way you’re expecting.

You’ve got this!

Alyssa

Love your daily life again as a work-at-home mom: https://yourunbusylife.com/ 

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Transcript

This is the Unbusy Mom, and today we’re talking about what you should know before starting ANY new scheduling practice.

You’re hitting everything on the client work plus marketing plus sales outreach plus content creation plus business bookkeeping plus CEO time to-do list - but it’s all feeling kind of scattered and catch-as-catch-can instead of smoothly flowing from one thing to the next.

You feel like maybe your schedule isn’t in order (except every time you DO try to tweak your schedule, you always end up ditching it for some reason or other), or perhaps you’ve got too much on your plate (except you don’t want to hire an OBM yet), or else you’re having a hard time prioritizing your OWN business needs over your clients’.

Guess what - you ARE on the right track. It IS the scheduling that you need… but not in the super type A, uber efficient “cram everything in” way you’re expecting.

Let’s try the unbusy version.

In other words, actually lay out in your day (and week) what time blocks you have to work when; which tasks are daily, weekly, and monthly; and then use the calendar as the container to see what fits.

(‘Cause if you CAN’T actually get to it all? Something’s got to change.)

So this is what I walked one of my clients through recently, when she was feeling behind on all her business work - don’t get me wrong, it was flourishing and she was making money - but the mentality BEHIND all that success was “oh no, I’m behind on my to-do list” and worrying that she let something slip through the cracks.

When you don’t ever need to worry about that again.

So here’s what we did: in her daily calendar, we mapped out a time of day specifically for responding to client messages in Slack (and she wasn’t allowed to open it at any other than the designated time). 

(Yes, we said she could let her clients know of her new Slack office hours.)

Then, we looked at the client projects side. Where was that fitting in? (It was taking up most of her time blocks, to be honest, so we set a firm cap on how many hours of client delivery she could do per week, and said she could adjust her “deliver by” dates if needed to compensate.)

After that, we got to her OWN marketing, ‘cause one thing she was feeling unhappy about was relying ONLY on word-of-mouth referrals and not having time to do her own marketing. Which I totally supported, so we got realistic about how much time she actually thought she’d need each week for her social media and content creation (and really, this was way less than she had been afraid of), and plopped THAT time block in.

So by the end of this, she had her content and Slack support and socials and web design projects all blocked out in her calendar - and to her delight, it was all going to fit!

(That’s the power of scheduling, and why I teach it. You’re welcome.)

Because NOW she could be confident that everything her business AND her clients needed from  her week-to-week was getting done. It was all right there in her calendar. All she had to do was go live it.

Now as I warned her, this means that you DO actually have to ADHERE to this new CEO calendar we’ve set up - ‘cause if you start opening SLACK at odd moments or going down the email rabbit hole, you won’t hit your socials and design time blocks - but as long as you do what’s on your calendar, everything’s golden.

You don’t need to worry. 

You already created the plan, and it ALL FITS.

(And believe me, that is an AWESOME feeling! To have that kind of confidence, and bone-deep assurance that you’re a good CEO, and it all works?)

Look, I’m still doing it to this day! Recently I had to move my marketing outreach time block to before supper (no reason it couldn’t go there, I just thought it “shouldn’t”), and to make THAT happen, I empowered my preteens and teens to prep the supper for me with a simple verbal run through, ingredients already set out, and cookbook turned to the right recipe.

Simple. Freed up. Everything fits.

And that’s what I want for YOU today.

So which time block is either consistently NOT getting done, or always bugging you when you sit down to it? Like it just feels off?

That’s the one you need to rejigger today. (And I’d be so happy to help you do it.)

Don’t put up with forcing yourself through a daily calendar that doesn’t even make sense for where you are now (with your client load, your number of kids in school, or your teenage food prepping stock the fridge needs).

You don’t need to live this way.

The question is, are you still going to?