Time, she's a tricky mistress, isn't she?

Many of our clients had a fraught relationship with time as they started working with us.?Never enough to go around, working ‘til the wee hours, or that dreaded “Sunday afternoon catch up” session that never quite got them caught up but just MAYBE helped take the edge off Monday morning.

Sound familiar? Then, throw any curve ball into the mix – staff calling in sick, kids sick and off school, sudden urgent call out, and PHEW game on, up comes the stress levels and off you move to that comfortable home base, survival mode. Yep, we feel you.

There’s not a magic bullet for time.?Every one has 168 hours in a week, but our weeks all take different shapes and so it’s important to find the groove that works best for what you have available for each pillar of your life (and the collision that often happens between them!).

Working with us can create wonders for your mindset and your business, but even we can’t engineer more of the gold that is time.

What we can do, and you can work to doing at anytime, too, is to change your relationship with time, away from survival mode and into a more constructive place. Mindset matters, and shifting out of time poverty mode, could be just the change you’ve been needing to make. And it’s easy – you can start any time. Just choose to!

Below are our favourite time changing tools that you can start using anytime you feel ready

Know your #bigrocks

We wear many hats, business is just one of them. What are the most important things to you? Make time for those every week – what matters most, book that in first, then fit the other stuff in and around it.

This includes the stuff which you might think of as indulgent or a luxury.?You can’t pour from an empty cup friends. Remember that post holiday glow you had? That’s because you had time to rest, recharge and do the stuff which you love.?Make time for that every week, and that’s where you’ll find energy and resilience you didn’t even know you had, because you’ll have a full cup.?

The Big Rocks concept comes from Stephen Covey in his book 7 Habits of Highly Effective people, or you can find videos which showcase the concept on youtube.?

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Know your #chronotype

Chronotypes, most simply, are the ways our bodies are geared to work in a day. Your grandmother might have explained them as either being an early bird or a night owl. Turns out, this is a real thing.

So, if the magic happens in the morning for you, get to bed earlier, get up when the alarm goes, and get the heavy lifting done before everyone else starts their day.

If you’re a night owl, get dinner prepped earlier in the day or week (or delegate it) and get the lifting done while the twilight settles in, or after the kids are down.

If you’re somewhere in the middle, schedule meetings as it works (do the hard ones when you have the highest energy, keep the easy ones for your post lunch slump)

With a few tweaks, changing how you structure your day, and moving with the flow of your energy rather than against it, will make for an easier day , with more getting done!

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Know your minimum viable day

When the sh*t hits the fan, know what’s essential and what can wait. If you aren’t a surgeon, check yourself – is it really life or death if you do that today?

A lot of our urgency comes from the expectations we set on ourselves, and if living in a global pandemic is teaching us anything, it’s that we’re all human and have things going on. Odds are, if you explain to a client what’s going on and when you can get to that work / get back to them, they will understand.

If nothing else could get done today, what are the 1 or 2 things that really matter?

And yes, if you have a team, over time, with great systems, support and training, it means you can step in, step up and support each other – the work being shared, with a team who know what goes around comes around, and that they can do the same when they are sick / need the time, will still get done , because they care, and they know how to.?

*yes, this bit takes time, and a bit of planning, and this is the foundation of our Success Boss programme, which kicks off this spring, if you need some help with this. ?

Create a system that works for you for planning

We’re all unique, so what works for one, might not work for you.?And don’t let the word “system” be too overwhelming. A system can be a diary. A system can be an hour spent at the end of the week reflecting on goals, looking ahead to the week ahead, and prebooking in time to work on those goals.?A system can be as simple or as elaborate as you’d like it to be.

Just make sure it works for you.

There are a ton of planners out there that make this easier, you can use apps like Trello, you can get advanced on how you use outlook – there will be a way that works for you, keep trialling, refining and being curious and you’ll find something that works for your reality.

Most importantly, don’t make the system more important than what you’re trying to achieve – if you spend more time in the system ticking the box than doing the things that move your business along? That’s a different sort of busy!

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Keen for more insights on making the most of the time available to you to be more #effective in your business?

Check out our upcoming workshop this Wednesday we’re I’ll be going deeper on these and a few other tips to help you make the most of which ever of the 168 hours you have in your week for business mode.?Let’s do this! ?