This is Part 4 of the Time Management Series! You can find part 1, part 2, part 3 here. You know what they say, the squeaky wheel gets the grease. However, this is a dangerous game when you are a mompreneur! I'll be explaining that below!
Squeaky wheels come in all shapes and sizes ... when talking about time management these are those little things that pop up unexpectedly, or walk into your office constantly, or all the things that feel like they are important but are just not getting you where you need to go! They are also activities that you plan on spending 30 minutes on, but 3 hours later you are still working on them. They can also include social commitments every weekend, if that is the time that you had planned on working on your side gig. Now, if you have a squeaky wheel on your car, you might need to have that checked out!
Notifications ... some people are better at ignoring these than I am. The constant dinging, ringing, cha-chinging on my phone is a HUGE distraction ... I mean, I loved the Cha-ching on Etsy for a long time ... but I was constantly stopping what I was doing to see what was purchased ... and it caused me to lose focus ... and it stressed me out! I was also continually seeing who texted me, why was I getting a Facebook notification, ooooohhhh someone liked my Instagram post ... While I love getting texts from friends and family ... I really don't need to know immediately. I check my phone often enough that I don't need it to beep and bing all the time! So, my phone is on do not disturb mode all the time. Don't worry, it does still go off for my alarm each morning. It has taken me time to ignore my phone, and sometimes I still leave it in another room just to force me to let it be.
In my garden, the squeaky wheel is always weeds. I am pretty sure that I could spend all day, every day pulling weeds on our property and still not get to the end of them. I do my best to pull weeds for 15-30 minutes each day ... If I ignore it completely, it becomes a huge task that physically I cannot do because of my knees and back, or if that 30 minutes becomes 3 hours then I will be laying in bed on a heating pad for the majority of the next two days. This causes all kinds of trouble in every area of my life!
Lots of social calls and activities ... I love my friends, and I love my family, and I love the boy scouts ... But I have to be very careful about taking on too many social activities, and I also must be careful about not scheduling enough! Getting out and seeing friends and family is a necessary part of keeping myself healthy mentally. Working from home can be isolating, and I need to get out. However, if you realize that you are only getting the top priority things done, and never the #2 or #3 priorities done, you may need to adjust what you have scheduled. If you are not doing any thing socially and you are also not getting the #2 and #3 things done, it could be a sign of a bigger problem, and you may need to reach out.
Now ... having said all of this ... there are other squeaky wheels in your business that may be distracting you and causing you to be much less intentional with your time. Recognizing and reducing these things may allow you more time to fit fun things in ... like spending weekends doing social activities! If you have ever browsed the Etsy forum for suggestions on improving your business more than likely you have heard the same suggestions over and over again ... Improve your SEO for Etsy, improve your SEO for google, retake your pictures, rewrite your listings, promote on social media, promote more on social media, pay attention to your stats, research the changes on social media, implement the new shiney that Etsy just put out, open your site on xyz website, read this, research that ... this list goes on an on. I will be the first to tell you that these things are all important, to an extent ... However, you should not be spending large amounts of your week doing these things. All these things should be done during a specific designated time - throughout or during a specified time each week. All these things are the weeds of your business and you can easily designate 30 minutes that turns into 3 hours on all of them or you can ignore them completely and they become a monstrous task. Schedule them, set a timer, work on them, and stop ... if you didn't get finished, there will be time the next day or week to work on them again. Do not put off the most important things in your life to work on these tasks ... because all these things are ever changing, and you will never finish.
Procrastination ... This is a hidden squeaky wheel that lives in your head. If you are consistently putting off work projects until the last minute and then racing against deadlines, procrastination is fueling your day. I do think procrastination can be a powerful fuel, however, when it is ruling your day and time, that is when it gets to be a big problem. If you are spending time sending apology emails and running late because you have been putting off doing things, then procrastination is no longer working for you. Procrastination can also make tasks bigger and longer than they are. Each minute that you think about that project, even the projects you dread doing, are moments that add time and stress to that project and those seconds and minutes add up. Lots of procrastination stems from hidden fears, and it may be beneficial if you take steps to eliminate those barriers. So, if you don't like talking on the phone, don't put your phone number on your business card, or have that phone number that says it is a voice mailbox. Switch the language on the business to say, voice mailbox versus phone number so that it instructs people what to do if they contact you that way. If text message is your thing, indicate that it is a text message number versus a phone or voicemail number. If you are constantly running late, then you will need to adjust the time you start getting ready to leave or start doing preparation tasks to get you out of the door sooner. It may mean you are not getting enough sleep if waking up is difficult, or just getting moving in the morning is hard. If you are procrastinating on business tasks, evaluate why you are putting them off, and if there is a way you can do them differently to make them more desirable. Or sometimes, just get it done. When a task you have been putting off is finally done, then you can sit back and relax for a minute, pat yourself on the back that it is done, and you no longer have the dreaded task in front of you. Eat Frogs ... that is what they say! I don't recommend actually eating frogs though, and I don't recommend letting your dog eat frogs either!
I don't know how to do this or even what I should be doing ... This is common for entrepreneurs. There are tons of things to do, and most likely you are not going to know how to do them. Google, ask questions, read ... You can join our Facebook group of amazing business women and ask a question! Just don't spend the next 4 weeks telling yourself that you are stuck and be too embarrassed to ask questions! LOTS of people have been there, and lots of people want to help you!
Squeaky wheels come in all shapes and sizes ... when talking about time management these are those little things that pop up unexpectedly, or walk into your office constantly, or all the things that feel like they are important but are just not getting you where you need to go! They are also activities that you plan on spending 30 minutes on, but 3 hours later you are still working on them. They can also include social commitments every weekend, if that is the time that you had planned on working on your side gig. Now, if you have a squeaky wheel on your car, you might need to have that checked out!
Notifications ... some people are better at ignoring these than I am. The constant dinging, ringing, cha-chinging on my phone is a HUGE distraction ... I mean, I loved the Cha-ching on Etsy for a long time ... but I was constantly stopping what I was doing to see what was purchased ... and it caused me to lose focus ... and it stressed me out! I was also continually seeing who texted me, why was I getting a Facebook notification, ooooohhhh someone liked my Instagram post ... While I love getting texts from friends and family ... I really don't need to know immediately. I check my phone often enough that I don't need it to beep and bing all the time! So, my phone is on do not disturb mode all the time. Don't worry, it does still go off for my alarm each morning. It has taken me time to ignore my phone, and sometimes I still leave it in another room just to force me to let it be.In my garden, the squeaky wheel is always weeds. I am pretty sure that I could spend all day, every day pulling weeds on our property and still not get to the end of them. I do my best to pull weeds for 15-30 minutes each day ... If I ignore it completely, it becomes a huge task that physically I cannot do because of my knees and back, or if that 30 minutes becomes 3 hours then I will be laying in bed on a heating pad for the majority of the next two days. This causes all kinds of trouble in every area of my life!
Lots of social calls and activities ... I love my friends, and I love my family, and I love the boy scouts ... But I have to be very careful about taking on too many social activities, and I also must be careful about not scheduling enough! Getting out and seeing friends and family is a necessary part of keeping myself healthy mentally. Working from home can be isolating, and I need to get out. However, if you realize that you are only getting the top priority things done, and never the #2 or #3 priorities done, you may need to adjust what you have scheduled. If you are not doing any thing socially and you are also not getting the #2 and #3 things done, it could be a sign of a bigger problem, and you may need to reach out.
Now ... having said all of this ... there are other squeaky wheels in your business that may be distracting you and causing you to be much less intentional with your time. Recognizing and reducing these things may allow you more time to fit fun things in ... like spending weekends doing social activities! If you have ever browsed the Etsy forum for suggestions on improving your business more than likely you have heard the same suggestions over and over again ... Improve your SEO for Etsy, improve your SEO for google, retake your pictures, rewrite your listings, promote on social media, promote more on social media, pay attention to your stats, research the changes on social media, implement the new shiney that Etsy just put out, open your site on xyz website, read this, research that ... this list goes on an on. I will be the first to tell you that these things are all important, to an extent ... However, you should not be spending large amounts of your week doing these things. All these things should be done during a specific designated time - throughout or during a specified time each week. All these things are the weeds of your business and you can easily designate 30 minutes that turns into 3 hours on all of them or you can ignore them completely and they become a monstrous task. Schedule them, set a timer, work on them, and stop ... if you didn't get finished, there will be time the next day or week to work on them again. Do not put off the most important things in your life to work on these tasks ... because all these things are ever changing, and you will never finish.
Procrastination ... This is a hidden squeaky wheel that lives in your head. If you are consistently putting off work projects until the last minute and then racing against deadlines, procrastination is fueling your day. I do think procrastination can be a powerful fuel, however, when it is ruling your day and time, that is when it gets to be a big problem. If you are spending time sending apology emails and running late because you have been putting off doing things, then procrastination is no longer working for you. Procrastination can also make tasks bigger and longer than they are. Each minute that you think about that project, even the projects you dread doing, are moments that add time and stress to that project and those seconds and minutes add up. Lots of procrastination stems from hidden fears, and it may be beneficial if you take steps to eliminate those barriers. So, if you don't like talking on the phone, don't put your phone number on your business card, or have that phone number that says it is a voice mailbox. Switch the language on the business to say, voice mailbox versus phone number so that it instructs people what to do if they contact you that way. If text message is your thing, indicate that it is a text message number versus a phone or voicemail number. If you are constantly running late, then you will need to adjust the time you start getting ready to leave or start doing preparation tasks to get you out of the door sooner. It may mean you are not getting enough sleep if waking up is difficult, or just getting moving in the morning is hard. If you are procrastinating on business tasks, evaluate why you are putting them off, and if there is a way you can do them differently to make them more desirable. Or sometimes, just get it done. When a task you have been putting off is finally done, then you can sit back and relax for a minute, pat yourself on the back that it is done, and you no longer have the dreaded task in front of you. Eat Frogs ... that is what they say! I don't recommend actually eating frogs though, and I don't recommend letting your dog eat frogs either!
I don't know how to do this or even what I should be doing ... This is common for entrepreneurs. There are tons of things to do, and most likely you are not going to know how to do them. Google, ask questions, read ... You can join our Facebook group of amazing business women and ask a question! Just don't spend the next 4 weeks telling yourself that you are stuck and be too embarrassed to ask questions! LOTS of people have been there, and lots of people want to help you!
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