How to Simplify TIME as a Business Owner

As a business owner (as a person, really) time can get COMPLICATED fast. In this episode, I'm going to share a handful of the ways I simplify time in my own business. These are tools, ideas, and strategies that have served me well and have also served countless other business owners like you. It's all about helping time work WITH us and for us rather than fighting it. Ready to simplify? Listen on!




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Transcript

Hello, hello, I'm so happy to be with you here on the uncomplicated Business Podcast. I'm Sarah, you know all this already. And today we're going to talk time. One of my favorite things to do is help people simplify this whole time thing, I just actually finished a conversation with a client where she was like, you know, you need to help with time, my my recent college grad, because you have a way of thinking about it and simplifying it and changing relationships with it, that's really useful. 

So that was a lovely compliment. But it's also something I've kind of had to figure out by necessity, right? For me, as a business owner, one of the most important things I've done is simplify my time simplify how I use time simplify my relationship with time, and it enables me to not fight against time, it is what enables me to feel like I have more time to not always be pressed to feel like I have time to fit all the things I need to fit with room to spare. And that is both strategy and mindset driven. 

So today, what I want to talk to you about is how I've simplified time in my own business. These are things that I do constantly and think about constantly. They are things that communicate with friends and clients and neighbors and whoever will listen constantly. And so I you know, I just want them to be tools that you have to, because we don't need time to be so flippin complicated all the time. So I have a little mini list. And some of them are like literal strategies, some of them are ideas, and then some of them won't feel like they're about time, but they are. 

Okay, so otherwise, before we jump anywhere else, group coaching just started. It's so super fun. I'm thrilled to have a new set of people working together and getting into group coaching, the next round of group coaching will kick off in the fall. If you are interested in thinking about that you are welcome to come talk to me about it whenever you're ready. If you're not in my Facebook group, it's called uncomplicated business for teachers helpers and givers. It is an amazing place to be, we're always doing something, and please come join us. And if you find this resource, this podcast in particular useful, it would be a huge help. If you could subscribe or share or you know, give it to people you think will love it. 

This is how other people will benefit from this too. And really what I want is to be able to help all the people. So that really is my ask of you. And in all of your feedback and support is endlessly appreciated. Please know that. So time, all right, I'm gonna they're not in any particular order other than the order that I happen to lay them out first. I was talking to a friend about this the other day. And one of the things she said to me like how do you manage to show up every day like I see you on Facebook every day. And I don't understand when you do it. And what I realized a long time ago is I'm not great at scheduling ahead on Facebook, except one kind of thing. I schedule ahead, a question for my group every day. And it goes out in the morning. And it's really about helping people think about what they're doing at work. It's like a connection question. It's just a way to have conversation. I love them. 

People love them, I get lots of feedback on them. And that's the only thing I ever schedule ahead. The rest of the time, I rely on what I think of what as time pockets. They're like pants pockets, or like the most wonderful pockets in a dress right where you like, put something on and you're like trying it out in the store and you're like, oh my gosh, and it has pockets, it's the perfect time pockets are those little pockets of time between things. Like today, I am recording this podcast in a time bucket. I have a little bit of time between when my client ended at 11. And we ended a little late, we ended about five after Korea to do some scheduling things. 

And my next call, which is at 1130 which is in about 15 minutes. So I hopped on here, I was like okay, I have a little pocket of time. I'm gonna jump over and do this. I kind of knew ahead of time that I was looking for a pocket of time to record this podcast today. That's what I'm doing. I often have, you know, five minutes or 10 minutes where I'm waiting for a kid at the orthodontist or I am sitting on the couch and just sort of scrolling around or I'm waiting for water to boil. I mean I feel like I spent an endless amount of time waiting for water to boil in my house. So often in those little pockets. I'll ask a question on Facebook or I'll record a video for tick tock and they take like 30 seconds or I'll do something else. I'll write myself a note about something I want to share. And then I sent it off and I move on. That is not a problem. This is for everybody. 

But I think what happens is I treat some of the things that I do like showing up on Facebook or LinkedIn or wherever, as required things just like I think about brushing my teeth, like I don't skip brushing my teeth, I don't skip doing this. And just like only my teeth and tooth brushing, brushing my teeth only takes two minutes. A lot of the things on my to do list only take two minutes, like writing a post for Facebook. 

So I show up, I think, Oh, I have two minutes right now, here's a pocket of time for me, like literally, I think like pants pockets, it's so funny that I can fit this thing I'm doing into this little pocket. And then I do it and move on. There is a certain amount of discipline here, I understand that. My list of things that I'm trying to cram into a pocket and any given day is very short. Like today it is this podcast, that's what I needed a pocket of time for. The other thing that I need a pocket of time for is a dog walk. So I know kind of where that's going to fall later in the day, about three o'clock. That's those are the things I'm trying to like find a space for. That's it. 

The next thing is a mindset he kind of thing and it is this, I don't ever expect to get all the things done. That is a simplifier in time, because I if I get halfway through the list, great, I got halfway through the list. If I get three quarters of the way through the list, great, I got three quarters of the way through the list. If I finish everything on the list, I think I'm like super woman, because I don't expect to get there. It is not how I set myself up in thinking about time, I think, Okay, I have a pretty short list, I should be able to do most of these things today. And then when something goes haywire, or somebody needs to change meaning or somebody wants something different, or I get an opportunity to do something unexpected, or somebody has questions and they need help with something sooner, I'm not freaking out and trying to cram in things from my to do list that don't fit anymore. So I don't ever create a list with the expectation of getting everything done. And that simplifies my time. Because it loosens my grip on it. 

You don't have to hold so tight. This is an allowance kind of thing, which is why it's a mindset kind of thing. It is very much about being aware of the abundance of time not to sound too squishy to you. But this idea that like I will have more time tomorrow, time starts over, I will live to fight another date, so to speak, and be able to do those things another time. In or you know, I'll take 20 minutes later and do them or I'll you know, as my kids are getting ready for bed, I'll take 10 minutes and do the thing. That's fine. But mostly I can put things down and pick them up again later. Not everybody is a really hard shift. Because not everybody feels like they can do that. Most of the things we do are possible that way, we just have to think about them differently. And that's a big shift. So this is often something that we coach about. 

Because it's like well, but that thing can't wait. It's like well, but why not? And if you put it down and pick it back up, what what what are the potential problems? What are the things that could go wrong and why? Right? So this expectation, though, subtracting this expectation of getting 100% Thing of the things done, 100% of the time really simplifies how you look at time and how you use it. And it is maybe the most important thing that you could do right now. Right? Just try it. It feels funny, I promise, but you'll get there. The third thing is, I am really cognizant of doing ahead, what and when I am when it's easy to do things ahead. So like if it's really simple for me to write things ahead, like the questions that are in my Facebook group that I talked about earlier, I do them if it's really easy for me to write ahead, like I made a list of ways to talk about the course I'm selling the selling for weirdos course, I made a list of 80 things I could say about it. It's a crazy list. It's hysterical. But I found once I started writing, like it's not for you, if I had like 10 of those and I had like 10 It's for you.

 If so I just started writing them all out. I have that ahead. Now, it's easier for me to go pull an idea because I have a list. But if it's not something easy for me to do ahead, I don't. So I understand like people batch content people batch tiktoks People batch podcasts. I do not. I really it's a struggle for me to do that because I like to have the idea in the moment and then go talk about it. 

So I find that if I try to force myself to do those because it takes me a lot longer. So I only choose to do the things ahead of time, if they're easy to do ahead of time. If I think it's gonna go fast, I do it, if I think it's gonna take me twice as long, because I'm trying to force myself to do it ahead, and I'll do it. It's weird. But we all have things that we're like, oh, gosh, I should just do that ahead of time and I never seem to manage. Okay, well, maybe we can just accept that it's not a do ahead thing for you. Like simplifies time, right? It's like, oh, I don't do that ahead. I just do it when it shows up. Oh, it's great. I don't feel so bad anymore. I don't feel like I'm so pressured, I don't feel like I'm trying to find three hours to write 10 posts, like, Look, I just take five minutes when I have them, and write the post and move on with my day. 

There are for everybody things that it's more useful to do ahead and is simpler, and things that it is not. So take a look at the things that you're doing, and decide which are which I don't like to write emails at a time. I rarely scheduled at my scheduled one last week, because I happen to have a good idea, but it wasn't quite finished. And so I scheduled the email so that I had time to finish it the next day. So there you go. But, you know, don't force it is the thing here. That's one of the ways we simplify time. Two more really quick ones. 

The first is to ask yourself, what's working? I know, that doesn't sound like it has anything to do with time. But it does. Because here's why. When you constantly on a daily basis, on a regular basis, ask yourself what's working right now? What happens is that you take things off the list that were on the list that you thought were broken in or not. This happened to me with a client yesterday. She said, Oh my gosh, I have to find time to do this thing. And I was like, Why do you have to do that? And she was like, Well, I'm not sure if it's working. And I said, How do you know it's not working? And we started talking about it. I said, Well, what's working about it? And she said, Well, this is going well. And this is going well. And this is going well.

 And this is and she stopped talking and then she went Hmm, I guess I don't have to do anything with it. And she literally crossed it off her list. Here's the thing, our brains love to manufacture and help us find all the flaws. And that gives us more things to do. When we pause and think like oh, hey, what's working, our brains have to look around and be like, well, that thing that I have on the list that I was going to do today, actually, it's fine. Because it's working. So I don't need to touch that. And it comes right off list and look at all the time you saved. So much simpler, working on anything and everything from a place of what's going well simplifies time, because there's less garbage stuff created that doesn't need to be fixed. 

Like there's less fixing things that we broke ourselves, like we didn't creatively set fire things to things just so we could go get the fire extinguisher out. If we know what's working. I know you're like mad and want to hear that. But truth. And the last one is this boundaries. I know, I know, I'm gonna take two minutes right here, because that's all I have. So one of the things I think about all the time are stop signs and hard stops. So I often write a post or a recorded podcast like I'm doing right now, or set a time to make a phone call or whatever set a time limit on something I'm trying to do that backs up into something else, where I can only give myself 25 minutes to do this, I only give myself 20 minutes to do this. And then I run into a stop sign and I have to be done.

 That for me creates a time boundary. That's what it's like an artificial time boundary. But it's a time boundary. The other thing that I do is I stop when my kids come in the door in the afternoon. They come in right about four o'clock, I stop, I might come back to work. But at four o'clock I stopped. So there is a boundary there that allows me to have a conversation with them get dinner for whoever's got a five o'clock practice because somebody does get in the car, go do the things. And then when I go drop them off at the thing, I might have a little pocket of time where I then finish something or start something or pick up that thing I put down.

 But I use these little boundaries, these like artificial ones that I create for myself to to make sure that the things that I really want time with my kids time to help them do things time to think time to process time to create exist. So what are the time boundaries you need? How can you use time to help you versus pressure you? How can you use time in your favor rather than fight it? And that really is the key question here. 

So hopefully there's something here today in this In this podcast that's useful for you. I'd love to hear about it. If there is, feel free to reach out to me all the ways LinkedIn, Facebook, in my Facebook group in my email on my website, whatever, come on, come join the thing if you want to join my email list and get all the fun emails I send, you can do that on my website too. But if you have questions, reach out and ask I'm ready for coaching. If you're ready for coaching, there's always room for you. And I will talk to you soon