I currently have a stack of important, but not necessarily urgent, work to do and am trying to figure out the best way to get it all done.
I’ve been in business as a solopreneur for nearly two years and am now keen to use my two years’ worth of data, experience and client feedback to review my services. My husband has also recently joined the business so there is increased capacity and a greater need to systematise our work.
It’s definitely time to prepare the business for the next phase.
Now, I’m an ‘ideas person’, so I know what I want to do. No problem there. I just need to find time to action it all, while making sure the client work is not neglected and that I am continuing to respond to new requests for work.
And I also have a life outside of the business.
Needless to say, taking an entire month off to action all of my strategic work is not an option.
My inherently ‘all or nothing’ brain doesn’t like the idea of doing creative, important work in small chunks. I would love to check into a hotel for a week and work on this 16 hours a day until I emerge with all the plans, content and material I need to go forward. On the other hand, neglecting my clients, family and friends would make me miserable.
So, squeezing in the work in little bits of time is the way to go.
I also know that I need to stop procrastinating and just make a start.
There will always be more pressing, billable work that will take me away from my strategic work, so I just need to start plugging away at it until it’s done. Also, if I don’t make the time, no matter how scattered across my schedule, I won’t be able to start bringing my ideas to life and using my skills to help others, which is why I started this business in the first place.
With all of that in mind, here are some of the things I will try over the next few months:
1. Go ‘macro’ to ‘micro’.
Now, this feels good and natural to me – organic, if you will. By first going ‘macro’ I mean that I will first list out the categories or streams of work I need to do and envision each one as a project. Then I will go more ‘micro’, which means that I will continue to break down each project until I have a list of tasks that I can squeeze into 30-, 60- or 90-minute slots.
2. Semi-schedule in the work.
I will try to find a few blocks of time in my diary to action some of the tasks from my list. I will do my best to protect this time but since my business motto is ‘client work comes first’, I already know that I will sometimes need to shift things around to make this work. So, my focus will be on meeting a certain number of hours of strategic work each week, but not necessarily at the exact time I scheduled to do them.
3. Maintain a running list of tasks.
This is a continuation of step 1. Once I’ve established my master list of tasks, I will need to keep it updated. This way, when a client meeting is cancelled or delayed and I have an extra hour to play with, I can just grab my list and pick something to progress.
4. Set deadlines and invest extra effort to catch up, when needed.
Because this work is not urgent and is largely self-imposed, there really are no hard deadlines, which is precisely why I need to set some ‘artificial’ deadlines for myself. To do this, I will take my task list and map things out over a few months, similar to a Gantt chart, and see how I can fit it in alongside known work and a buffer for any surprises.
This will help me stay on track as I’ll have a date I’m working towards and something that should be achieved by that date, provided I meet my weekly quota of strategic work hours. It will also indicate when I need to make up lost time in the evenings or weekends to avoid significant delays.
5. Tell others I am working on this.
Well, this is the selfish point of this post, but I do hope it gives you ideas about how you could tackle your own strategic work. For me, writing about this publicly creates a bit of external pressure…at least in my mind because, let’s be honest, you have your own life to worry about and my productivity doesn’t really affect you.
In any case, I’ll have a go at these tactics and then report back. If you have any other tips you’d like to share, feel free to send me a message.
Thanks for taking the time to read the post.