One of the questions submitted in my ‘Ask Me Anything‘ form was this: “What are your best tips for time management given you do/achieve so much?” The simplest answer is that I don’t manage time. There is a long answer too, here it is.
Over the years, I think I’ve read every time management book going. I’d earnestly try to integrate and incorporate all the tips, hacks and tools. Yet, no matter what, it always felt as though time was slipping through my fingers so I’d push myself harder and harder. I’d always just have this heavy feeling that I sucked at this adulting malarkey. Inevitably, I’d oscillate between burnout and cranking it out.
The Turning Point
It was during one of the many (and one of my last, thank goodness) burnt-out-peeling-myself-off-the-floor times that I realised it’d been one time, too many. That there were lessons to learn and learn them, I must. Journaling has always been something that’s helped me express myself and get to the bottom of things so I began by journaling on why I was here, on the floor, again and again. During this, I had the idea of getting two blank pieces of paper. On one I listed the things which lit me up and the other was a list of things which dampened me down.
Energy Management
That list was eye-opening, to say the least. In all of my attempted time management wizardry, I hadn’t at all considered my energy. Once I started looking at my days and ways through the lens of energy, everything changed. And, when I say everything, I mean my ev-ery-thing. There are two resources which helped me to understand that energy is a finite but renewable resource. Learning about The Spoon Theory was incredibly useful, as was learning about the seven different types of rest. With those held in mind, I started toying with what life might look and feel like with those underpinning its structure.
What follows, is a list of things which currently work for me. We’re all different and what works for one doesn’t necessarily work for another. This is quite A LIST but I didn’t do it all at once. Gradually, over time, I tinkered with different approaches with one key thing in mind:
That they’d bring out the best in me and that they’d be the best for me.
1. Don’t Be Afraid To Make Courageous Changes
Our actions speak louder than our words. Being a mum, I knew I had a pair of eyes learning from my every move and the burn-out cycle wasn’t something I was keen for our daughter to learn. That became such a motivator – looking into the future and seeing her in this cycle and wanting more for her. This helped me to see and want more for myself. With that came changes aplenty.
With changes come chaos. There’s always that point where it unsettles the settled, creates ripples in its wake, and you wonder if you’re making the right decision, after all. Having that motivating factor helped hugely. I’d keep coming back to it time and time again when leaving my job, saying no to things I’d always said yes to, and all else, felt overwhelming.
2. Re-Purpose Time
We can’t manage time, it’ll surely pass no matter what. It’s what we do within that time that is something we have control over. Having made my lit-up/dampened-down lists, I knew social media needed to go. That gave me such a big wedge of time that I could then re-purpose and, most importantly, it cut loose something which drained a lot of my energy. We all have things like that. Things we do habitually which don’t serve us that we can cut out and then use the time we’d have spent on those activities elsewhere. Even if it’s doing the food shop, some of us love it but a lot of us hate it, by doing it online we can have it delivered to our door, for example.
3. Automate Like a Ninja
Technology can be really cool. The advances in it mean we have inventions like RoboVacs and RoboMops, electrical blinds, smart switches, and tools like Zapier, Alexa and IFTTT. The apps we use, can usually work together to alleviate and automate administrative burdens on our day-to-day. I’m 100% here for it. Over a while, I’ve built automated systems and processes for all sorts of things; finances, workflows, client onboarding, standard operating procedures, product distribution, blog promotion, etc.
It’s not laziness either. We don’t consider it lazy to use a kettle to boil some water instead of doing so in a pan over a built fire. We’ll send emails instead of letters. Our lives have already adapted as we’ve adopted more and more technology (think refrigerator, television, dishwasher, automobiles…). The key is to look for the tasks you loathe and find ways to automate those, freeing up much-needed energy. Once in place, the time and energy saving is substantial.
If you get stuck for inspiration, there are Reddit threads and Google Searches to help with that. You can even use Chat GPT as an instruction manual by asking it to guide you through setting up an automation for XYZ.
Energy Management Over Time Management, Every Time Share on X4. Honour Your Ebb and Flow
We’re cyclical beings, we’ll have ebbs and flows, and ups and downs. When we work in and around those natural cycles of ours, we not only up the ante in terms of productivity but we feel more rested as a result.
As a morning person, I’m at my most creative first thing. As the day draws on, that energy ebbs and is more aligned with administrative tasks, meetings, pottering about, and household chores. That’s the flow I build my day around. The mornings are typically set aside for creativity so I can get into flow state – whether that be for myself or my clients – and the afternoons are for the more monotonous tasks.
In addition, I’m more revved up after the weekend than I am towards the end of the week. I’ll make sure Thursdays and Fridays are more flexible days than the others. Working in this way has done wonders for my output of work and in upping my energetic baseline.
5. Create A Mindful Schedule
Using a calendar to relieve my mental load has been game-changing. Rather than try to store birthdays, term times, and tasks in my head, they all get poured into my calendar. Every last drop. If it’s someone’s birthday then that’s plugged in as a recurring annual event but so too is a reminder a few weeks before to get them a card and gift. Everything that’s required of me, is captured – even the school runs. This gives me a sense of what’s coming up, what I might need to save some energy for, and where I might need to slow down in other areas.
What has helped, being a freelancer, is having a term time and a holiday schedule. There’s no way I can expect the same of myself during the holidays as I do during term time. On shorter holidays like half-term, I’ll take the week off work.
For longer holidays, I’m mindful of wanting to be present and make family memories, as well as needing to keep some professional balls in the air. When I’m taking on a new project that has a deadline, like writing a book, I’ll always work around the holidays. It’s a non-negotiable for me. I don’t take on any new clients or new client project work during holidays. Recurring client work (where I’m on a monthly retainer) is done first thing in the mornings so that we can have days out and then I’ll get back to it in the evening. It has taken years to find what works and what doesn’t.
6. Make Sure It Loves You Back
That list of things that light me up has influenced my decision-making, to no end. When taking on new clients, there’s a consideration if I’m a good fit for them and if they’re a good fit for me.
Writing projects are always passion projects nowadays because I find they’re the ones which love me back. There has to be an excitement for it, a buoyancy, a zest, that I can draw on for motivation and that balances the mental and creative expenditure.
This feels to me a lot like having boundaries. I’m intentionally choosing where to place my energy so that the work can get the best of me but I can also get the best of it. There’s always a conversation about boundaries with new clients; here are mine, tell me yours, let’s find a rhythm within them.
You’ll know if an activity, body of work, or task loves you back because of how you feel afterwards. There’s a difference between feeling satisfied and unfulfilled, motivated and demotivated, topped-up and drained-dry, full of purpose or full of ‘shoulds’. Pay attention to the things which light you up and those which dampen you down. Here’s a free printable for you to capture those things.
7. Redefine ‘success’
Societally, we applaud things which don’t always align with what, we personally, might define as success, and the messaging and interpretation can get wonky. Without even realising it, we internalise a great deal of what’s external to us. It helps to get clear on what ‘success’ truly means to you because sometimes we inadvertently compare where we are with a version of success that’s been influenced onto us. We don’t match-up and feel like a failure, unnecessarily.
For me, how I view success has changed significantly in the past ten years. Nowadays, it is having autonomy, freedom, and connecting with my favourite people, regularly. Yes, it’ll be absolutely blinkin’ lovely when the BBC or Paramount commissions our children’s TV programme but not if it’s at the risk of the rest of it.
8. One Thing At A Time
Being creative and having lots of ideas is an absolute blessing but it can also be a distraction. I’ve learned (the hard way) to commit to one project at a time before beginning a new one. This way, I can channel the energy into one place rather than have it disbursed all over the place. I work hard to be present in everything I do whether that’s writing, client work, emptying the dishwasher, wave-jumping, singing in the car, doing the laundry, whatever it is, I’m all-in.
Because I understand now the importance of the seven types of rest, there are times when I’m all-out. Having space to be all-out is so crucially important, that I can’t stress it enough. We’re not machines. And, even if we were, there’d be a maintenance schedule. Pockets of time where nothing is needed of you is where you recuperate, replenish and recalibrate. Create them.
As I write this, I feel so darned grateful and lucky to be in a place where I have such autonomy. It’s not been a happy accident but a series of (sometimes difficult) decisions and repeated recognition and re-alignment when I’ve gone off-piste that got me here. A buck-ton of self-permission slips too.
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