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Make time for what matters

11th Oct 2017
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I like to think I'm highly organised. I've always made time to fit various projects and hobbies around my "real job", last year adding some voluntary work and a few bookkeeping exams into the mix. This year I've admittedly let the saxophone practice slip, but I did start a business, oh and have a baby. 

As my side project business has been taking off and I've gone from wondering whether it can really generate a regular income to wondering how on earth I'll ever do all the work I've taken on, I've been thinking about time and how to be most productive. My clients are small businesses, predominantly startups - many of which, like my own practice, are side projects running along side their founders' real lives. They don't have all the time in the world to spend on their businesses, so if they want to be a success, they need to make time and they need to be productive.  

I've always thought that if something really matters, you have to make time for it to make sure it happens. I didn't want to go on about my baby, this post isn't about having a baby - although having one certainly challenges your beliefs about how many hours there are in the day, but the truth is, no matter who we are, we all have 24 hours in the day. No more. No less. What's important is how you use that time. Time management techniques have helped me and I thought it would be helpful to share some of my top tips, for both my clients and peers. 

Something I've found helpful is setting monthly, weekly and daily goals. Finding five minutes each morning to write down the three main things I want to achieve in the day keeps me focused and helps me work towards long term goals. A good old to-do list helps with this too, but when you've got 20 things on a list it can be hard to know where to start - it can also lead to a fire-fighting mentality rather than working towards achieving long term goals. Picking just three keeps you focused and stops procrastination. Critically today I'd like to finish this blog post and chase up some outstanding information for a tax return, then I have a client meeting this afternoon. 

I also find it helps to schedule time to do the things that matter. I find having an appointment with myself gives me a much better chance of finding time for something important than hoping to get everything else done and still have a free hour at the end of the day. It was certainly easier to carve out time in my day for different tasks pre-baby. I could use the walk to work to listen to audiobooks about things I wanted to learn about, exercise before I started work, and study for exams in the evenings. I've certainly had to reassess when the windows in my day occur, but those windows are still there, and I think no matter what our personal lives look like, we all have them. Productivity is about making a choice to make your calls to clients while the baby takes a nap rather than scrolling through Instagram for half an hour. 

Outsource. If there's something that someone else can do for you, get them to do it. A fellow mum I met at a networking event told me she'd recently taken on a personal assistant, and whether you employ somebody part time or engage a virtual PA, freeing up your time from admin gives you more time to do what you love and most importantly, to be productive. Something I'd say to my clients is that the same goes for bookkeeping. Nobody sets up a business because they want to spend their days raising invoices (unless they're a bookkeeper of course), outsourcing processes that aren't your speciality gives you time to work on what really matters, your business. 

So there it is. We're all suffering from only having 24 hours in our days, even Richard Branson, you just need to employ some clever tricks to make the most of those 24 hours. My top tips are to:

  • Set goals 
  • Schedule 
  • Outsource, outsource, outsource

And be flexible. Things change. Sometimes your computer will break, you won't be able to get hold of a client, or your baby won't sleep, and if things don't work out today you can try again tomorrow. But making time to do the things you love is good because it gives you enthusiasm and energy for other things in life, and you never know, you might just wake up one morning and find that your fun little side project startup has become a thriving business. 

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