How to create more time in your day and get more done

Constantly rushing? Feeling overwhelmed? Not enough hours in the day? Stuck in a rut of admin and boring tasks? Haven’t had a creative thought in who knows how long?

It’s time to reset your relationship with time.

I’ll preface this article with some background; I’ve learned the hard way about time management, having spent most of my professional career cramming tasks in, rushing around, juggling as many shoots & client obligations as I could and generally being super, duper busy. I worked under the assumption that being busy with shoots every day and working 7 days a week meant I was successful (LOL). In February 2016 I had a nervous breakdown, followed by a back injury (because I didn’t quite let the nervous breakdown stop me), as a decade of overworking finally burnt me and my creative spark out.

It was a huge turning point for me and frankly I’m grateful it wasn’t worse. We live in a world that celebrates waking up as early as possible and sleeping as little as possible like it’s a good thing to be exhausted. (If this is something you’re battling with, I highly recommend reading Arianna Huffington’s book Thrive). Exhaustion and stress kill creativity, and if your creative vision is how you earn your living, working yourself into the ground will end your business.

So, without further ado, here are a few tips for regaining control of your time and getting more done without sleeping less:

• Pay attention to how you spend your time – are you wasting loads of time scrolling through Instagram, Facebook or Pinterest?

• Outsource tasks that don’t add to your business and/or aren’t profitable – creating client databases, learning how to use the back end of Mailchimp, hand delivering everything to clients, cleaning and basic editing are all things that take up masses of time and could be done by someone else.

• Work on one task at a time – multi tasking makes everything take three times as long.

• Switch off distractions like email or social media notifications so you’re not flitting from one thing to another whilst you’re working on something more important.

• Set a timer and don’t stop what you’re working on until the timer goes off – this is good if your self discipline muscle needs building.

• Go to bed earlier and get up slightly earlier – even an extra 20 minutes can make a difference. (Please note, I am NOT a member of the 5am club, so you don’t have to make it that early).

• Plan ahead. Plan your week and plan each day so you have a clear task list to work through.

Learning to manage your time when you’ve not ever really thought about it before is a work in progress, remember that. None of us is doing this life thing perfectly, however by making some tweaks here & there and implementing some new strategies, we can do it a little better and most importantly enjoy it more.

Need some more help with your business strategies? That’s what I’m here for! To find out how I can help you put strategies in place for a more creative and fulfilling business, please book a free strategy call with me here.