3 Ways to Organize Your Entrepreneur Life (& Brain)
Welcome back vibe tribe! We’re halfway through the week and I hope its not kicking your ass too much :)
If you’re a solopreneuer, work from home, or if you have a whole side hustle you’re trying to get off the ground, it’s important that you make the most of the very little time you have. If you’re like me you have literally 9000 things on your task list at any given time, and it’s not going anywhere. But with just a few organizational shifts you can manage your day in a way that works best for you and unfortunately does not involve Netflix or snacks or sleep, but they’re still great tips.
If you’re not doing these 3 things right now to organize your time and your brain better, you should be:
Batching emails
Batching emails increases your productivity because you can’t prioritize what you don’t see. There is no email on earth that requires your attention the second it hits your inbox. so check it once before you get started, answer the ones you can, flag the ones you can’t, and then check and answer emails again at the end of your work day. Oh and if you flag an email try to remember to go back to it. I’m always flagging emails and then forgetting about them because I answer the question in my head, and I think I answered the email. Also a best practice for me when it comes to emails is only answering them Mon-Fri whether I’m working on the weekend or not. When you’re self employed or work from home people often believe you are available to them 24/7/365 and that’s usually because we make it seem that way when we answer emails at 11 o clock at night or during Sunday brunch time. Just because you have a flexible schedule doesn’t make you a robot. You’re a business, not a concierge. get in the habit of only responding to emails during regular business hours, Monday through Friday wherever you live, I promise everyone will survive.
Move the needle
Pick 3 main projects or tasks every day to work on before you attempt anything else. and then time block those tasks so that you actually have time to get them done. Having a never ending task list can leave you feeling like you just never get anything accomplished, and when that happens, it leaves room for you to kind of doubt yourself and your abilities, shut down, and start putting stuff off that really should be done sooner than later. But if you keep your to do list short, you are more likely to get those things done. Checking stuff off of my to do list is actually a motivational tool for me. I absolutely hate letting the day get away from me, so when I have just 2 or 3 things to focus on, I actually feel more accomplished at the end of the day, even if there were 20 other things that I could have done. There’s only so many hours in a day that you can dedicate to others, and trust me, you have more than enough time to complete any one task. Just like those emails, there is nothing work-related on this earth that is so important that it validates running around like a chicken with its head cut off to get it done. If a new client request or task presents itself to you throughout the day, add it to your queue, and get it done at a mutually convenient time.
Schedule downtime
Pick 1-2 days of the week to be your downtime days. If you’re a full time entrepreneur, a freelancer or even if you have a job and you’re working on a side hustle, having a full blown “weekend” or scheduling a day where you do absolutely nothing related to work is almost impossible. If it’s hard for you to completely detach from work, then at the very least you should have days in your schedule where you don’t do as much as you would during a full work day. On those days you can choose to not work with clients face-to-face or only work a few hours in the morning, something like that. The key here is to avoid mentally burning yourself out by making sure there is some downtime in your schedule where you can do other things besides stare at a computer.
Thats it for today! I hope you take some of these tools and use them to help make your days and weeks go by a tad bit smoother. If you try any, come on back and let me know how its working out for you!
Kelley Raye | Branding Photographer + Creative Business Coach | Atlanta - Los Angeles