Start With Your Calendar

Business is busy, am I right? Summer is over, everything is ramping up for the 4th quarter and making plans for 2012 and you’re busier than ever staying on top of it all.

So I understand if you’ve been too busy to download and read the Playing a Bigger Game Business Playbook and I’m here with immediate actions you can take to get your calendar under control so the important things get done.

Figure Out What’s On Your Calendar

Let’s start with the essential first step from David Allan’s Getting Things Done: Fill your inbox with all of your pending projects and tasks.

Yes, it’s daunting and yes it can show you that you have way too much going on if you ever want to sleep ever again.

But if you don’t know what things are taking your time, you will never be able to control your time.

Once you’ve got that long list ahead of you consider your ideal week. Let’s take a random 7 day stretch and imagine how you would ideally use your time.

Would it be researching articles, running numbers on your conversion rates and updating your website code? Or serving a small group of clients, converting high level private clients and speaking to online groups about your field?

Look back on the last few months; how have you been spending your time? Are your days structured or do you just flow with anything that pops up? What times have you been most productive? How did you manage your time?

Keep in mind that being productive doesn’t mean that you’re spending the most time working, it should mean you get more accomplished in a limited amount of time.

Many people find their productivity peaks right before a big event: vacation, the birth of a child, in the days before a major launch.  Let those times of intense productivity be proof that you can be extremely efficient with your time with the right motivation.

Isolate the Tasks that You Can Remove From Your Calendar

First, anything you don’t need to be doing can be removed without guilt. Posting on sites that give you no measurable return. Continuing to market and sell a program that your audience does not want. Updating your social media status every few minutes.

Free yourself up by not trying to do everything all by yourself. Know what doesn’t need to be done at all and then what doesn’t need to be done by you.

While I do have a longer resource on creating a calendar that works which is coming via newsletter for those who download the Playbook, I do have some tips to get you started now.

Pick one thing you want to do on a daily or weekly basis. Let’s use website posts as an example: it’s one way to communicate with your audience and provide fresh content to introduce them to your work.

Start by deciding the blocks of time you want to aim for to write for your website. Some people want an hour daily, others prefer one block of time. Now, schedule the time that you want as a weekly block beginning this week.

If your calendar is simply too packed then slot the time at the ideal time, even if it overlaps with other commitments. Don’t worry about cancelling other calls or appointments to make the exact time work BUT do not schedule over this time block moving forward.

It may take several weeks or months until your time block is open and you have this committed time but it’s worth the practice. And until that time you can adjust the time as your schedule permits.

Now that you’re seeing how you want to spend your time and creating time blocks to get the important actions done it’s time to delegate.

The most efficient way to extend your reach without cramming your calendar is to outsource.

If you’ve never worked with an assistant I’ll help you get started slowly. Set your weekly budget and create a list of tasks you want handled.

Messages:

Voice Mail
Email Spam
Travel coordination
Data Entry
Calendar Management and booking appointments
Managing contacts

Blog Management including:

format and spell check articles
posting entries
posting articles to other sites
approve blog comments

With the beginnings of a list and an idea of how much you can invest in recovering your time it’s time to get started.

If you’ve worked with an assistant in the past you may have a network to reach out to; otherwise you can begin searching for someone qualified. I haven’t had much luck with blind luck so referrals are key.

There’s so much out there about finding good assistance but the short list is to find someone who is responsive to your requests, able to communicate clearly, and technically capable of completing the tasks.

If you’ve been looking for that first system you can put into place to make your time more efficient and your business run smoother then the calendar is a great place to start.