One of the many joys in owning your own business is also one of the most detrimental to new, budding and burnt out entrepreneurs: The ever coveted idea of controlling your own schedule.
Who wouldn’t want to have complete control over the 24 hours of their day? Whether you’re a morning bird or a night owl, the idea of not having to report to someone to earn your living is a marvelous thought…and one that’s widely misconstrued.
Controlling ones time without having a true accountability system (a.k.a. your BOSS) requires an immense amount of dedication and discipline. Habits must be formed to ensure you maximize your work hours to stay on track with the day to day tasks as well as the overall health and growth of your business. You may be a night owl by nature, but your customers most likely aren’t. This may require getting up early even though you don’t have to officially check in with anyone. You may find yourself having a hard time staying away from the TV, or easily distracted into running frivolous errands you would normally be unable to do in a typical 9-5. If you’re not careful, you may find yourself volunteering to help other organizations, family or friends due to the appearance you are more available. You may even find you work well past the typical 8 hours in a day, which although is sometimes required, should still be monitored to keep a healthy balance between working and family/home life – which often lead to burn out.
What can you do to ensure you don’t fall victim to the illusion? Below are a few tips to keep in mind:
- Create a routine. This schedule can and should include open blocks of work time, but certain items such as returning phone calls, replying to non-urgent emails, running errands should be scheduled into your daily routine. Other things to schedule may include personal/professional development time, workouts, and meals.
- Just say NO. This may be difficult at first, but telling friends and family that you are not openly available will end up being one of the best things you can do in the long run. No, they will not get it at first. They will believe that you have the freedom to do what you want with your time and thus you are only being stingy and uncooperative, but eventually as they see your business flourish they will come to respect that you must use your time in a similar capacity as they do while at work. Once you set this expectation, they will leave you alone.
- Limit your volunteer and other non-essential obligations. Of course volunteering is great for the community, your resume and your soul…just don’t overdo it. Select 1 -2 causes you truly believe in. There will never be enough volunteers, so don’t guilt trip yourself into feeling your time must be spent here.
- Set Expectations. Try not to respond to messages and e-mails past your scheduled time to work. Even if you craft your responses in your “off” time, save them as drafts and send them during your normal business hours. This will set the expectation that you have official office hours and are not available 24/7 (unless your business truly calls for 24/7 availability, such as a handy man, or emergency repair). If you absolutely must respond, be sure to only respond to urgent matters. Again, you are setting expectations for your clients and workers that you have official hours of operation. Burn out is REAL. Don’t let yourself get caught up to the point of exhaustion.
- Have a dedicated work space. As much fun as it can be to relax in bed while answering e-mails or sending estimates, you should truly refrain from working in this capacity. The urge to nap, or get too relaxed and work as a slower, less productive speed will at some point over take you. Your space should be (if at all possible) off limits to others in your house hold. If space at home is hard to come by, or you find that you are distracted by chores, and Honey-Do lists, I recommend finding virtual space, or a comfortable and friendly neighborhood coffee shop with WiFi. If you find you must do this regularly, invest in some equipment for a mobile office. This may include upgrading to a light weight laptop or highly functional tablet, investing in a hot spot, purchasing a solid bag to carry files and supplies and maybe even a mini desktop printer.
There are always more things you can do to take control of our schedule, but these are definitely a good start to putting you on the right path. As I mentioned before, burn out is a real thing that happens with entrepreneurs. We may hear of the story of the man or woman who was able to do it all and survived for 5 years on 2 hours of sleep while they built their company, but unfortunately those are the rare cases. What usually happens is you get tired, burnt out and your company goes belly up or doesn’t ever grow to the capacity you have within you.
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~JMJ
