It’s been a while since I have done a blog post. I recently ran into a health issue and have been kind of taking a step back and just kind of getting through that while managing and moving some other stuff forward and working my with my team. Going through this issue shed some light on a few things I want to talk about, a few lessons on better managing your time and learning to take a step back when you need it.
If you’re feeling overwhelmed with creating content on top of your long list of daily tasks to keep your business running, like managing and analyzing metrics, I have some things I would like to share to help ease that sense of defeat.
Like I said before, I went through a recent health scare and it was one of those things that when you don’t listen to the signs, the signs are get louder. Even though you don’t want to slow down, they make you slow down. I’ve been talking with a lot of business owners, the people I work one-on-one with everyday, and in talking with them I constantly hear “I’m so overwhelmed, I’m trying to create content and trying to manage my business and I don’t know what to do, I don’t know what to start with or how to make this all work. Can you help me?”
And the answer is: Of course I can!
Being that I teach a lot about productivity, I have my clients set goals for themselves that they then have to break down into smaller chunks to not only make the larger goal not seem so out of reach but to also make it achievable in a timely fashion. I test out different planners to see which ones I should recommend to my clients and I have them block out, say from this time to this time I’m going to work on this, and this time to this time I’m going to work on this. But we are so focused on goals and so focused on getting stuff done and we create these to-do lists that, even though you are chunking out your time, people end up blending creative tasks with more analysis-driven ones. I am human too so I make mistakes, and I was doing this myself. I go back and pick up the old habits and the bad habits, but it’s all good.
When I finally had no choice but to slow down and delegate out tasks to my team that help me run my business is when I realized that separating these two types of tasks is crucial to completing them. The truth is that, yes, it is possible to do both creative tasks and more analytical ones, say creating social media content versus sitting down to a meeting to discuss metrics. But since you are using two different sides of your brain to do these separate things, there has to be time set aside for each “type” rather than trying to do them simultaneously. Is it possible to do them both at the same time? Absolutely, one-hundred percent. Is it possible to do that for a long period, for long-term? No. I figured this out and didn’t even realize I was doing it. I was blending because I am very regimented, I do my schedule every morning, I have my day planned out, I have my week planned out, I have my month planned out. And yes you can do it for a period of time, but you can’t do it for a long period of time because what ends up happening is you burn out. And the reason you burn out is because you’re using that creative part of your brain which is separate than the area you use when teaching, networking, or analyzing data. When you try and blend them together, your brain gets over-taxed and it ends up showing as being tired and burned out. Completing any task in this state feels almost impossible.
So, if you’re feeling overwhelmed and you’re feeling like “Man, how am I going to do this?” I get this a lot. “Theresa, I feel like I can’t think of any content to write about, I can’t think of anything” or “I can’t look at this”. I’ve had meetings with people where, after five minutes of talking about their vision and what it is that they want to do, they are checked out. They feel so mentally taxed. Well, more than likely, they have been trying to do those two different types of activities either together.
It’s funny because I actually listened to a podcast about this yesterday and it is so fitting. I had this epiphany and then boom! That’s kind of how the universe works. I am all about planning out your day and picking your three top priorities. But the other thing I want you to do is I want you to be really aware, because if we’re aware of something, then we can fix it. If we’re not aware that we’re doing it, then we can’t fix it. Right? I want you to be aware of how you are blocking you’re time and the types of activities you need to get done in that time period.
Think about the stuff that you do that’s creative; it’s research, it’s writing posts, it’s doing video content, it’s writing emails. Anything that you need to create in your business. Then I want you to think about the activities that you do in your business that are much more analytical; doing inventory, having meetings teaching or coaching your staff. It’s coming up on holiday time and working with a lot of local businesses, that means it’s meeting time. Getting everybody ready, planning events out, anything that you need to be more analytical about, more task-focused. Think about those two types of activities and when you go to schedule out your time, you want to chunk each type of activity. You want to block time out for the creative stuff. Not that you’re doing an hour of creative, an hour of analytical, an hour of creative. If you can, schedule creative stuff half the day, there’s your chunk, and then maybe the more analytical stuff the second half of the day. The other thing that you can do, say you’re creating a lot of content, maybe you take a full day or even two to just focus on that. You’re going to create content for two days. You’re going to shoot all your videos, batch all your posts, write all your emails that you send out to your customers, research things that you need to blog about. You’re going to do all of that in a two or even three-day period. And then for the rest of that time you reserve that for the more analytical stuff; your meetings, if you’re on the floor in a store or a restaurant, looking into software, trying to run reports and analyze them. You’re looking at the numbers, settings budgets, reserving three of four days to do that.
What this does is it gives your brain time to breathe. It gives your brain time to rejuvenate. If you try and blend the two together, that’s when we get overwhelmed. It’s almost like multi-tasking on steroids. It is super, super taxing.
So, if you feel like this and you feel overwhelmed, like “oh my gosh what am I doing here?” Take a look at these two different types of activities and try and block your time better. Giving yourself a half-day, full day, or even a couple of days to do your creative work and then you reserve the rest for the analytical stuff.
The other thing I want you to do is be mindful of your energy. Your energy is your biggest asset in your business. The absolute biggest asset. And if you don’t have energy, and if you’re blending these two types of tasks together when you’re trying to complete things throughout the day, your energy is going to dwindle very fast. What we want to do is we want to conserve our energy. If you don’t have good energy, you’re tired or you’re burned out or you’re feeling overwhelmed, that is the energy that is behind anything and everything you do in your business. It’s behind how you work with your employees, your leadership team, anybody. So we want to make sure that the energy that you’re putting behind things is good, positive energy. You have the energy to complete the things you want to so that you’re not feeling tired and burned out or like you can’t even think.
Pick a time that you can be creative and block that off. I like to do it in the beginning of the day because that’s when your brain is the freshest. Then taking time to do anything that’s more analytical where you’re using that different part of your brain. You will see a difference, and I’ve noticed it myself. I have a lot more energy, I can think clearer, I can teach better when I’m not trying to blend the two together. The best thing that you can do is try to plan out your posts, and try and batch your posts together, batch your content together in the beginning of the week so that you don’t have to worry about it later on. People like to do stuff on the fly, and on the fly is not so good. Try and batch it together and this will help you to make sure that you can keep your energy up so you can get through things, be lively, and are ready to go!
