Time management and overwhelm is real when you run your own business. I mean let’s be honest it is real no matter your personal and professional circumstances.
by Dee Cowburn
A week away saw me reading a couple of really valuable books to help. 4000 Weeks by Oliver Burkeman and When the Clouds Come by Drew Povey. These are the things I have learned that I hope might help me, and possibly anyone else, navigate the world of being a business owner or a busy comms professional a little more smoothly.
Time management.
Oliver Burkeman in 4000 Weeks outlines how our time is limited and when you say yes to something, you are effectively say no to lots of other things.
I tie myself in knots trying to do way too much stuff in too limited an amount of time.
Actually as Oliver points out, we think we can do it all. And scrolling and avoidance techniques, which in my case involve lots of tea, scrolling the news, arranging cushions and rearranging, making lists totally unrelated to what I am actually trying to achieve, is a strategy to avoid failure.
If we never finish or avoid something that needs doing, we don’t have to accept our limits or the fact we might not be very good at the thing that needs doing. Face up to the fact we, and our time here on Earth, is finite. Deep I know!
In order to avoid knowing our limits we just distract ourselves.
The same if you start and don’t finish lots of things. Five half read books in my case and lots of half formed ideas. He believes it is a way of not finishing something and facing potential failure. But then you don’t get the satisfaction and warm glow of success either. Imposter Syndrome has a lot to answer for.
Three key takeaways for me from his book were…
Two lists
Now this might seem obvious to the organised people. I would describe myself as chaotically organised. I know where I am at, but to an outsider it might look like chaos.
So, have an open ended list of everything that needs doing. List one. Which will be very long.
And one with just ten things on. List two.
Once you cross something off list two you can transfer something from list one.
This sounds simple and it is. But so far it has worked. I have done my accounts, booked my little girl’s party, cleaned my daughter’s room (trust me that was not an enjoyable task!), researched something I had been putting off and sorted my invoices.
Fixed time to do things in
Again, sounds simple. However, I am very good, because of my avoidance tactics listed above, at taking a while to do things. And not utilising my time to maximum effect.
So I tried it the other day. I had two hours, no kids, library on my own. I knew I needed to make that time count and pushed on. I got everything I wanted to do done and amazed myself.
Oliver says we can always find productive things to do. But where is the balance in that? Especially as a business owner. So being clear on defined hours of the day to work and keeping to this boundaries and making that time count.
It works.
Because you already have your two lists. Or if you are already super disciplined then it is a really key skill and I am jealous.
One more that jumped out.
He has a list of ten recommendations at the end of the book, but these are my favourite.
Having two projects at any one time. One work related, one non work related.
If you have more than that things don’t get finished, he says, or words like that.
You spread yourself too thin. For me, sorting my website is massive for me and it is nearly done so I am just focusing on that.
I teach yoga once a week and a monthly workshop so that is my non work related. I suppose the kids come under this banner too but that is an ongoing project :-) So I won’t count the kids in this project header!
When the Clouds Come
Drew Povey is a leadership coach. And a great human being who kindly gave me some of his time when I was starting out, along with other incredible and generous humans.
Drew was really constructive and helpful, seeing to the heart of what I needed to do immediately. He has written a book called When the Clouds Come which is about facing your fears and overcoming obstacles.
Controlling the controllables was a key takeaway for me. Once you list everything you have control over, like what you eat, choose to wear, how to spend your time, what to watch, how to exercise, among other things, it brings perspective to the uncontrollable which isn’t as big as you think.
For me this was setting up the business and securing work and what that looked like.
Well once I listed my controllables, I had huge perspective over the uncontrollables. Which were and are still scary, but manageable. This might not work for everyone, but it gave me much needed perspective. The uncontrolled stuff then accounted for 20% not the 1000% worry I gave it.
Habits. Drew said some days he would rather eat one of his own limbs than exercise (or something like that).
I can relate. Exercise is not my strong point and I make the fatal mistake of waiting to be motivated before I do any. Which is then never.
So now I channel my inner Drew drag myself out of bed and do it anyway, knowing it’s okay to hate it and not enjoy it, but that it will make for a better day and it does.
I now listen to podcasts washing up, who knew you would forget you’re doing actual housework? Because I don’t avoid doing things that I know need doing because I am in a better frame of mind because I have exercised. So I create an environment which makes those tasks more enjoyable.
This all sounds obvious. But being spelled out in a constructive supportive non-judgemental way by someone who has had difficulties and come through them actually really resonates and really helps. Accessible and doable. I like both of those words very much and like everything I access to be those two things.
So, if you need holiday reading I recommend both 4000 Weeks and When the Clouds Come. And if you don’t need holiday reading, I have given you a couple of shortcuts for free. I mean seriously who doesn’t like a list? Or two!
Dee Cowburn is owner of Dee Cowburn Communications.
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