What a month it was last month! It seemed that everything was against me, my head was a complete shed and, if it weren’t for my planners, I think I might have given up for lack of interest....
My last post was all about organising your day. This month I’m excited to be writing on a topic that is close to my heart. Organising your business.
Between me and my husband, we have our fingers in many pies. A complete recipe for disaster when you throw special needs into the mix.....
So.........
How do I do it I hear you ask....
Organisation and planning (with a side of chocolate and wine.....)!
Some would say that I must have a military background but nothing could be further from the truth. It’s called survival - plain and simple. Without organisation and planning, my life would completely fall apart.
Where business is concerned, there are many aspects to consider:
1. Advertising
2. Planning
3. Accounts
4. Workload
5. Materials
6. Manufacture
7. Distribution
The list is endless.
Now, with my main business, a lot of these things are taken care of for me by the company that I am in partnership with but, I still have to actually get customers and do my accounts.
Alongside my main business, I am also starting up an Etsy shop which will actually mean that most of those items will actually now have to feature in my planning. Not to mention that I have my own blog and that I’m on the PR team for Organise Happy!
So, the method that works for me is block planning.
I’m a pen and paper girl at heart so my filofax and organise happy inserts feature highly in this endeavour.
My method is simple.
Firstly I will go though my diary and block out everything that is scheduled and firm, including travelling/preparation time where necessary. (colour coding features heavily....) These are my time critical items.
Next I will block out family/me-time - this is essential so that business does not take over your life.
Once all these are in the diary and, yes, it includes things like walking the dogs, school runs, cooking meals/meal prep, what is left is time available for business.
Now, as I’m sure you are aware (not wishing to teach you to suck eggs), some things are daily, some weekly, and some monthly (I’m going to ignore less frequent activities for the moment).
What I do next is allocate time to the daily tasks first, then I will fit in the weekly tasks. Time left is for anything that is done on a monthly schedule. These things, for me, are generally much more flexible as to when they are completed within the month.
I find that having a list of activities is really helpful. That way, when I’m planning out my month/week/day, I can check off items as I add them and this helps me not to forget things. I used to rely on my memory, it worked for a while but, it didn’t leave much space in my head for other things. Did you know that you only have so many memory slots? Once you reach capacity, a new item will force out an existing item to make room for itself. Now, this works fine when you don’t have to remember too many things but, this really isn’t realistic for most people and certainly not for me anymore!
Everything must be written down. Everything must be planned/scheduled. By taking the time to do this activity (and yes you must plan in planning time) you can then also deal with the things that crop up unannounced.
The Organise Happy planner pages work really well for the way that I plan. The monthly page is sectioned into 5 columns meaning that you can organise your business/family life/ every aspect of your month. You can organise it by family member, by category, by time of day and, more importantly, by business activity - the options are endless.
The weekly sheets are neatly sectioned into hourly slots which, again, works very well for my business. Very rarely do I complete a customer appointment in less than an hour. An hour is a
really useful amount of time plus, when you colour code like me, my page ends up looking really pretty! By planning out my business activities I have found that I am much less likely to procrastinate and get distracted. I know that I have a fixed period of time during which I can focus on a specific activity before moving onto the next item.
Having a To Do list also means that I can cross things off so, even when it feels like I haven’t achieved much, I have a physical and very visual reminder of what I have actually accomplished. This also gives me a record to refer back to when assessing activity and goals.
I hope that you have found this useful and I would love to hear about how you organise your business.
Until next time,
Stay focused,
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