Many new business owners have trouble juggling. You have to tend to clients, worry about finances, write copy, get traffic to your brick & mortar store and/or to your website, and on and on it goes. Business never stops, and because you never learned good time management skills, you’re exhausted trying to do it all.
And what about those days when you wake up in the morning, simply dreading something you have to do for the day? Everyone has those tasks. If you’re not utilizing good time management, you may be tackling whatever that dreaded thing is the wrong way.
Here’s a time management tip: Eat the frog first.
Mark Twain said, ““Eat a live frog first thing in the morning and nothing worse will happen to you the rest of the day.”
That precludes procrastination, so that you feel horrible all day, dreading the “idea” of the task, whatever it might be. And this will change from day to day.
Decide what the worst thing you have to do each day is, and tackle that horrible thing first. Yes, before you read your email, before you check Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest or other social sites. All of these things can be HUGE time sinks. So, ignore all of those things and decide what your “frog” is going to be each day.
Plan your day at least one day before, and schedule everything in.
Make sure your frog comes first and decide how much time you’ll spend with that task and then, add 15 minutes to half an hour for buffer time.
Then, go into your routine tasks. Yes, you have to deal with Facebook. Yes, you have to write. Yes, you have to get traffic. Decide how much time each routine task in your day takes and schedule it all in.
If you find that your schedule fills more than 8 hours a day, or even 6 hours a day if you like working less. It’s imperative that you outsource what doesn’t take your personal expertise.
Places like Elance.com or 99Copywriters.com can provide writers. If you need coding, hire someone at Rent-a-Coder . Just think about your income, and how much of it you can parcel out for help. Then, think about the tasks you like doing least and pay someone to do them for you.
It’s money well spent and good time management. Free yourself up for more important tasks, such as getting new clients to boost your income, and you’ll be a much happier person.
And sometimes, you may even be able to allow them to eat the frog, instead the frog eating you.
