One of the questions I get asked all of the time is – How in the world do you do it all?
And I get it. I’m a mom of 7 kids. I’m a pastor’s wife. I’m the director or our Christian School. And as a fractional COO for my VIP clients, I help manage the day to day operations and behind the scenes management of 6 and 7 figure launches. In fact, lately, my ninja team of marketing experts has been handling 2-3 launches simultaneously per WEEK!
So what’s the secret? Read on.
Time Management Tip #1: Live By Your Calendar
For over a decade I have lived religiously by my Google Calendar. Google calendars are awesome because it is always accessible whether I am on my phone or in front of my computer. It allows you to easily make recurring appointments. And you can have multiple calendars that you can use to schedule different types of activities or appointments.
Here is how I do it….
#1 Block off personal time and family time. This is the time for exercise, morning Bible study, and prayer, lunch, and dinner with the kids, etc.
#2 Block off time to go to church. Not only do I block off the times of the actual church service times but also the time it takes to get ready to go and drive there and back!
#3 Schedule time to work “on my business”. I block off 2 blocks of 90 minutes to work on content development and strategy for my own business first thing in the morning. After the first block of time, I have a quick check-in with my team, social media, and email to make sure no fires need to be put out and then go back to the 2nd block of time.
#4 Batch work. Mondays are for client meetings for my VIP clients. Tuesdays are for teaching. I schedule coaching calls for my students as well as the FB Lives I do in my groups for Tuesdays. Wednesday and Thursday are days to work on client work or internal projects. Fridays I try to wrap up by noon to take an early weekend and spend more time with the kids.
#5 Schedule everything. Every single time I need to do something, it immediately goes on the calendar when I plan to work on that item. If it does not go on the calendar, there is close to a zero chance that it will get done. This also helps me to see immediately that every time I say “yes” to something I am saying “no” to something else. For example, before committing to something, I can check my calendar and see where it can be fit in. Since family and church time is already blocked off, if there is not any more time left on the calendar to fit something in, I have a choice. I can move something around, I can spend less time with my family, or I can let the person know that it won’t be done till the next week. Pretty much everything can be scheduled.
Time Management Tip #2: Delegate Everything.
Anything that someone else can possibly do should be delegated. Clean the house? Delegate. Cook healthy lunches and dinners? Delegate. Iron clothes? Delegate. Before we had a Christian school I learned to delegate “homeschooling” of our 7 kids by hiring a private teacher.
What was never delegated… sitting on the floor and playing with my kids!
Delegation is not just asking someone else to do your job or to do a task. For business tasks, I have a 4 step process I follow.
Step 1: Do it myself
Step 2: Create a system
Step 3: Train someone to follow my system
Step 4: Delegate once my system is mastered
What most people do is skip to step #4 without doing steps 1-3! That almost never works!
Time Management Tip #3: Extreme Focus.
Block off 2-4 sets of blocks of time per day to do focused work. While you are working during that time, log out of all of your social media accounts, your communication channels, your task management, everything. Then focus on working for a straight block of time without getting distracted with anything else.
If just getting started, you might find you can only work for 20 minutes at a time before being overcome with the temptation to “check-in”. That’s fine. Work for 20 minutes, check-in for 5 minutes, then repeat 3-6 times a day.
After doing that for a while, work in 45-minute batches before checking-in. After mastering that level, increase it to 90 minutes.
After you work for 3-4 blocks of 90 minutes a day on your deep level content creation or strategy, you will find that you are getting more done in a week than you used to do in a month (or even months).
So what are your time management tips? Let me know by leaving a comment below!