Why do you struggle with time in your business?

I hear from so many new clients and potential clients that they struggle with time management in some way. They either feel like there’s never enough time, find it hard to prioritise and manage their time, don’t have the discipline to be consistent or find they are procrastinating quite a bit and losing precious time.

Sound familiar?

You have the same amount of time in a day or a week as everyone else, so why do you really ever feel like there’s never enough time to do the things you want to do or not enough time to work on your business, focus on marketing and really grow your business?

Why are you constantly fire-fighting rather than sowing seeds for the future growth of your business?

Reasons why you feel short on time

Here are some possible reasons – see which ones resonate with you and below I have some things you can do to gain back more time.

#1 Too ambitious – now I’m all for dreaming big and having a huge vision but the downside is that you can be quite unrealistic and underestimate how long they will take and what’s involved in achieving them, ie lots and lots of hard work. Then you get impatient, frustrated and think there must be something wrong with you or with your idea. You expect to get more done and achieve more when in reality things always take longer than you think (especially if you insist on doing it all yourself).

#2 Too many commitments – whether that’s family/kids, another job, other projects or other businesses, life can very often (and sometimes very genuinely) get in the way of you spending quality time on your business. And sometimes they are an excuse for not making progress.

#3 Lack of clarity, structure or planning – often things take longer because you’re not clear on what you need to do or how to do it, so you start a task and then realise you need to learn all these other things first, plan it all out first or that you need to do something else beforehand - all of which adds more time.

#4 Procrastination – whether you get distracted by doing the washing, get sucked into social media, need to get all the small things done first or can’t start without a list, procrastination can be a thief of your precious time. Why do we procrastinate? I could talk about this for some time, but, in short, it’s either because you’re not clear about what to do, not confident about how to do it, get FOMO (fear of missing out) or feel scared about taking action.

#5 You waste time feeling confused, frustrated, unsure, lost or indecisive - pretty common in the first few years. Or you let the mind gremlins in that tell you ‘you can’t do this’, ‘it’ll never work’ or ‘you’re not good enough’ which takes up so much time and energy to fight that it can lead to paralysis and indecision.

So, what can you do to help improve your time management?

So yes there are a bunch of time management techniques – but this is more of a summary of the process I teach in my Success Made Simple digital training that helps people create a 90-day plan to work from and stay on track.

- get really clear on your goals for the next 12 months and 3 months ie set specific, measurable goals like 'get 10 people on my workshop', not vague goals like ‘grow my business’. 

- make a plan for how you will achieve your goals. Brainstorm all the ideas you have on what you can do to achieve your goals, then prioritise and put them into a coherent plan week by week, based on what needs to happen in what order.

- follow your plan so you know exactly what you need to do each week and each day.

- get really good at estimating how much time each task on your list will take. If it will take you more than 2 hours, break that task down into smaller tasks – as it can be hard to find a stretch of 2 hours to get stuck into something!

- schedule out your days across each week and base what tasks you’ll do on how much time you have available that day. If you have clients back to back all day and only have an hour first thing, be realistic about what you can and will get done in that time. Include everything like lunch, travel, admin, accounts etc.

- Stick to your schedule and plan. These are your self-imposed deadlines – treat them as so.

- Learn to say no and also learn to discern what tasks will take you closer to your goals and which won’t. Prioritise the ones that will help you achieve your goals (as well as anything else truly important).

- Get ongoing support and accountability to help you stay on track, implement your plan and stay motivated particularly on the tough days. This is essential if you struggle with time management, being productive and staying on track.

Simple but not easy. 

If you can take this list and run with it – great. Let me know how you get on.

If you have read this and think "I’ll look at it later and work through this" but kind of know you won’t or think "I really do need a system like this to get organised" but feel too busy to figure a system out, I have your back...

Look out for my brand new mentorship group, Momentum Made Simple, launching next week and starting June 3rd, or drop me an email to [email protected] and I'll send you the details.

It’s going to help you get clear and organised and build momentum with your business.

Hils x