Top Tips to Slay Your Schedule
Hey all! I’m Tiffany, but everyone calls me Tiff.
I’m a Rhode Island native, Minnesota transplant who loves all things leopard and organization. For the last 12 years I’ve worked at home while having and raising my four kiddos. I’ve gone from corporate jobs, to small business team roles, virtual assistant work and even direct sales. All of that experience has given me a passion to help small business owners, entrepreneurs and work at home moms create and implement business systems to maximize their efficiency and effectiveness. I legit LOVE a good process, teaching others how to be systematic in their business, and setting up for scalability, delegation and growth!
What a crazy new time we live in today. Regardless of whether we have 1 or 3 jobs, kids or no kids...most of us are at home figuring things out. From someone who’s worked from home for 12 years, I get it...BELIEVE me! It’s more stressful than most think, even if your house is quiet (kid free) maybe you’ve got a partner who you’re juggling one office with. Or you’re distracted by the fact it’s so easy to just hop on Insta, or binge Netflix. Or maybe you’re distracted by house projects or the cleaning you’ve been neglecting.
When you’re trying to work in the space you also live in, the biggest thing that can help is a schedule. It’s so hard to focus without a plan! So when Sara asked me to write a guest post, it was easy for me to know what would be helpful right now.
A little about me as an east coaster: I’m not about fluff. I’m honest and a HUGE fan of actionable tips that are easily implemented. So here you go, my BEST tips for Slaying Your Schedule...Quarantine Style!
1
Batch That Sh*t
I’ve found the best way to analyze where tasks/actions can be batched is by tracking your time for a few days. I’ve included a Time Analysis Worksheet for you to use. Write down everything...I mean EVERYTHING for 3 days. No judging, just logging. Then use that data to see where your time sucks live and also look for similar tasks that you did throughout the day and week that could have been batched together. One great example of this is social media posting. Using a scheduling tool to batch a month’s worth of posts is WAY more efficient than posting live. Are you a podcaster? Plugging out 4 episodes in one sitting is another example of batching.
2
Theme Days
I LOVE theme days! I use theme days in both my business and our home. You can plan out meeting/call days, admin days, writing days and business development or content creation, depending on your business needs. I’ve included an Intentional Schedule Spreadsheet you can use to map out your week. It also has an example of a standard week, and even my personal week! I use my schedule to plan out what my week will look like from a high level, and then use Trello for the detailed task lists, household chores and cleaning lists. Theme days are a brain saver for me! If I’m tempted to clean the bathroom on a Friday, I know Tuesdays are my bathroom day. So I can easily say no to tasks and keep my focus on the specific action items for that day.
3
Document Your Workflows
Workflows are just the sequence in which you do a task from start to finish. Every part of your business has workflows. The way to best maximize your workflows are to WRITE THEM DOWN! Writing them down does two things. First, it allows you to see where there might be hiccups in your process. Maybe you are manually doing one part that could easily be automated. Or maybe one step is completely unnecessary. Most times, we won’t see those until we stop and pay attention to each step. Second, by documenting our processes it allows for consistency and scalability. Your client onboarding and offboarding process is a great example where a documented workflow is helpful. We want our clients to have a similar experience every time and no one should have to remember every step in every process within their business. I again use Trello as the place to document all of my workflows, but you could easily use a spreadsheet or Google Docs. One final note on workflows: once you get to the point where you want to hire an intern or assistant...BAM! Every process is written down, so getting them up to speed and working the way YOU WANT is super streamlined!
4
Delegation
Ok, let’s talk about the elephant in the room...Tiff, I’m a solopreneur, it’s ONLY ME! Yep, I get it! But in your life, not just your business, are there others around that could help? Maybe you delegate more chores and cleaning to your partner or kids. Maybe you have dad take care of bedtime one night a week so you can devote that to work. Or maybe you order in food or hire a cleaning lady to delegate the house stuff. Look at all of your responsibilities when finding areas to delegate.
I also believe many small business owners can actually afford an assistant before they think they can. There are plenty of valuable virtual assistants out there that will work hourly as little as a couple hours per week. Which, when you’re trying to build something big, just a few hours is huge! And think about it: if your hourly rate is $100, and you can delegate bookkeeping and email management for 3 hours per week at $25/hour, you’re still way ahead!
Here’s the “but”....if you don’t have good systems in place, it’s going to take a TON of time to onboard an assistant. So write down your workflows now, especially if you have some downtime.
5
Planning Time
My last tip is that you need to set aside time to plan, to analyze your systems, map out your workflows, and delegate. All this magic isn’t gonna just happen. You need to add time in your daily and weekly schedule to create and implement these new resources. Personally, I love taking one day at the beginning of each month to dive into the things that worked well the previous month, the areas of focus I need, and to choose one system I will work on. The month of April for me is all about Instagram. It’s a new platform for me, so this month I’m reading blogs about Insta, looking into scheduling apps, taking courses, etc. Maybe one month your focus is on your client process and then the next month you focus on bookkeeping. Focus is key here. You can not fix everything in a week. To scale well, processes need to be well thought out and implemented. For weekly planning, I like to plan out my week’s schedule every Sunday evening. After the kids go down, I pour a glass of wine, get out my fun pens and stickers and hash it out! Then each evening I also go through what needs to get moved or shifted as ya know...life happens.
I wanted to make sure you all had some tools you could start using today to implement these strategies. Just sign up using the button below to get all of your freebies!
You’ll get...
Time Analysis Worksheet
Use this to log every action you take for 3 days. Then analyze your time and focus sucks.
Intentional Schedule Spreadsheet
Use this to map out your weeks and months, your themes, and your daily time blocks. You can then transfer to Google Calendar if you use that platform, but this is a great tool for planning.
