Let me guess, when people hear that you work for yourself they assume that you have more availability than your corporate 9 – 5 friend, right? Little do they know that being your own boss often comes with more work than a standard work week, It can be really freaking hard to just turn off at the end of the night.
I get it. I’ve been my own boss for almost 15 years now. And, I’ll be honest, I didn’t know what the heck I was doing most of the time. Plus, I was only 22 years old when I got started in pursuing my dreams. There was no guidebook (or Instagram) for young twenty-somethings learning how to girl boss their way in the world.
I’ve learned a lot since then. However, I’m still fine-tuning every single day based on the workload that’s in front of me. While I’m nowhere near perfect in this industry, I’ve always been excellent at time management in regards to working for myself. This post will talk about why time management is important for entrepreneurs. Follow up with 7 tips for managing your time better as you work for yourself.
Why Is Time Management Important For Entrepreneurs
Time is one of our most valuable currencies in life. And it’s one that we start to feel the value of more heavily the older we become. Typically, as we age, we acquire more responsibilities. All of those responsibilities require a lot of time and energy to keep alive.
When you start to work for yourself, you might notice that there doesn’t seem to be enough time in your day to do it all. If you’re feeling that way, that’s a pretty big sign that you need to work on your time management skills.
One of the greatest things about being your own boss is that the person you need to answer to is you. For someone with poor time management skills, this can also be one of the hardest parts about working for yourself. I think of it as the greatest element of the job. Making and keeping promises to yourself is one of the best ways to build confidence, consistency, and reliability. All of which are vital qualities to have when running your own business.
How Does Consistency Build Confidence
When you first get started, make small attainable goals that you know you can reach. I like to urge people to make small attainable goals, because this will start to build a foundation of consistency. Sometimes, when we overshoot it with lofty dreams and big sacrifices, we aren’t able to reach said goals- which can lead to feelings of failure. This, of course, is not helpful in building confidence.
What is helpful in building confidence is making promises to yourself, and actually keeping them by following through with your actions. Doing this little by little every day will also help you get into a rhythm from which you can build larger goals overtime.
Let’s say you want to launch a blog, but you still have a full time job. You’ve already read my post about how done is better than perfect regarding your launch, so you’re not too worried about every single thing being flawless. You know you need to make a social media account for the blog, while also actually writing the blog posts themselves. All while you’re still working your full-time job.
Instead of committing to posting something every single day on social media and on your blog, you start by committing to writing one new blog post per week, and posting 3 times per week on socials.
Over the next month or so, you get into a new workflow where you fit in writing and content creation with your full-time work hours. Perhaps you check out my post on habit stacking for assistance in solidifying these new habits.
Overtime, you can build from that foundation. Meaning, writing is coming more easily to you now, and it doesn’t take you as long to write one post. Now you can write two posts a week, and maybe add a fourth post to your social media feed.
The most important thing is that you’re able to meet the goals you set first and foremost.
7 Tips On How To Manage Your Time As An Entrepreneur
This all sounds great, but the real question is how do we manage our time as entrepreneurs in the first place?! Don’t worry, I’ve got you covered.
This list of 7 tips for managing time as your own boss will hopefully help you to find more flexibility in your life, boost your confidence, and ensure you can meet your own deadlines with a bit more ease.
Small Attainable Goals
We’ve already drilled home the importance of creating small attainable goals to start. Remember, keeping promises to yourself helps to build inner trust and confidence. These are important characteristics for entrepreneurs to hone in on early on.
If you’re in a position where you’re interested in starting to monetize a side hustle, I’d suggest keeping your paying job for as long as you can to start, rather than giving it up and relying on this new venture to support you. By having a paying job to support your new venture, there’s less pressure, less stress, and a higher chance of being able to create small attainable goals.
Strong Boundaries
Boundaries are an important part of life, but especially important when you’re your own boss. You need to take a look at your boundaries around time, scheduling, and relationships to see where you need to tighten up.
This might look like moments when you’ve given yourself a goal of getting 5 posts edited by Monday, but then a fun weekend trip comes around and you decide to postpone the deadline until Wednesday. Think about yourself as a boss. Think about asking your boss for an extension on a deadline. Tell yourself (and others who are asking) no if it doesn’t work with your work schedule.
Time Schedule
Create a time schedule for your workload, and stick to it. Look at your small attainable goals at hand, and then give yourself slightly more time than you think you’ll need to finish them. Try not to give yourself just enough time, and certainly not less time than needed.
If you still have a full-time job, this will likely look like sneaking an hour into lunch time, and maybe a few hours in the evening every few days. If you know that you won’t have the energy or brain capacity to put in extra hours after your paying job, then only commit to doing that 1 – 2 days a week. Remember, you want to keep the promises to yourself.
Calendar Blocks
Calendar blocks can be so helpful in creating a really clear time boundary to yourself, and to others. This is especially if you’re sharing your calendar with someone. Rather than just knowing every Tuesday after work you’ll be putting in your entrepreneur hours from 5 – 8 pm, actually block that off in your calendar.
There’s something about writing things in the calendar that makes them a little more real, right? Like they’re actually solidified, instead of just some idea or daydream. Treat those time blocks in the calendar with the same reverence you would a date or a meeting. Even treat it as a work obligation from your full time job.
That means when some asks you to go to Taco Tuesday for happy hour, you let them know that you’re not off work until 8 pm, rather than changing your work schedule to meet your social life.
Maximize Your Time
Time is our most valuable currency. So how can we maximize our time when we’re working for ourselves? Well, one of my favorite ways to do this is saying no to video on Zomo calls. I do this so that I can go for a walk at the same time. Sure, some calls you will need to be looking at the screen for certain visuals. However, look at your call schedule to see the calls that are fine to be voice only. This is so you can get some light exercise at the same time.
Another great way to maximize your time when you work for yourself is to delegate tasks where you can. This can be challenging if money is tight, but there are a lot of affordable freelancers available on Upwork and Fiverr who can help you part time. Rather than learning how to do every single thing yourself (which takes a lot of time), it’s best to outsource where you can in order to stay in your lane of genius.
Batching
Batching is one of my favorite techniques for productivity, and one that I highly recommend to anyone working for yourself. I wrote a full post on it here, so you can read more in details of how it works.
To summarize, particular days or times are dedicated to specific tasks. Let’s go back to the example of the blogger starting a social media account. That person would likely benefit from having one day dedicated to writing only. And another day dedicated to shooting photos, another day for editing. And a final day for posting.
This can work for all sorts of entrepreneurs, and one of the true luxuries of making your own schedule. I, for instance, don’t like to have any calls scheduled for Monday. So, I block that day in my calendar, and squeeze them in only on Tuesdays. I’d rather have one full day of calls, then a few every single day.
Prioritize Replenishment
When you’re first starting your own business, or even just starting to monetize your side hustle, it’s so important to remember that you prioritize replenishment. The workload is often never ending when you work for yourself. You do a little bit of everything in every job position. However, when you keep this up without any breaks, you will burn out.
When I first started, I had to actually time block in REST to my calendar. I wasn’t the greatest at just unplugging and resting all on my own. I think a lot of new entrepreneurs can relate to this feeling. As such, I’d suggest you time block REST into your calendar, too.
Remember, your rest days don’t have to be Saturdays and Sundays. Just because that’s how the rest of the world is working. You can schedule your rest days and times according to your own life, and your own schedule. The point is that you have strong enough boundaries to not answer work calls, messages, or emails on dedicated days of the week.
While this will feel challenging at first, I promise you that it will inevitably result in you being able to show up with more vigor for work on the days you’re actually on.
You’ve got this!
xx,
K