It’s been awhile since I wrote something for my fellow (or aspiring) small business owners. That’s on purpose since I’ve felt a little scattered lately. How can I give you suggestions for how to do it when I’m not feeling it myself? Then I realized that’s my lesson – it is guaranteed there will be “eh” days where you will need help to stay focused. How you deal with them is your choice. You can get past them, I promise.
My whines can be divided into two categories: the Shiny Object Syndrome and The Jessie Spano Breakdown. As I figure out my path to greatness, there are so many things catching my attention. Do I want to focus on my blog? If so, what should I write about on my blog? I need pictures! Should I make stuff for kids? Oh, I should make a bouquet with buttons. Should I do jewelry? What about purses? If I make purses, should I do casual purses or just formal ones? See where this goes? It gets overwhelming fast. Which brings me to my next problem – THERE IS SO MUCH STUFF TO DO! I need to keep the web site pretty. And to make product. And to balance the books. And to develop my Etsy page. And to keep my office clean. And to order supplies. And to go to networking events. And. And. And…
Ok, so maybe I just have one problem – focusing on what to do and how to get it done. Over the last few weeks I’ve stumbled on to a few good articles and ideas that seem to be working for me. Hopefully something will work for you, too.
Your Daily Checklist for Your Blogging Business
This article includes great reminders for how to tackle your social media without losing the whole day keeping them updated. Along these lines, may I also suggest HootSuite and Pingraphy to schedule out your posts so you don’t have to come back to it.
Calendars!
My name is Maggie and I have an addiction to calendars. I (OMG, this is ridiculous) have 4 different calendars I’m working off of right now.
- Google calendar for appointments for the business, myself, and scheduled exercise (Which brings me to lesson 2.B – making time to exercise, take lunch breaks, or otherwise walk away from the work will keep you more on task in the long run.)
- Weekly calendar for to-do lists
- Monthly calendar (in same paper diary as #2) scheduling out blog posts
- Separate, tiny paper calendar to mark off what dates are booked for future clients, including the days I need to dedicate to working on their products.
This is way, way too much, but it currently works for me. Hopefully I’ll get everything in to one (or two) places in 2013, but I really do like having some things on paper and others accessible via computer and phone. Figure out what will work for you and stick with it! I found this blog editorial calendar workbook template on Pinterest this week. If I didn’t track this 14 different ways already, I would definitely create this for myself!
Time Trackers
Since it is so easy to get sidetracked, I’ve started using a time tracker on my phone. There are a bunch of apps, but I like this one because you can set up different projects and still just have to click a couple of buttons to have the timer start. I think this is going to help me figure out how much time to dedicate to different projects in future contracts.
When it comes to writing for the blog, I sometimes use a kitchen timer to keep me from spending too much time on a post. I could rewrite forever!
I hope these tricks help you out, but I’d also love to hear anything you’d recommend. I’m sure I could use it!
