In my ParentPreneur® Facebook™ Group, we begin the week with Map It Monday. Members gain some accountability and strategic guidance by sharing what they are working on to move their business forward. There are several different ways to go about prioritizing your task list. I’m sharing the method I teach my coaching students who have home-based businesses and family obligations.
Begin With The End In Mind
This week’s schedule actually begins with planning your overall 90-day strategy. Oh shit! Don’t worry if you don’t yet have a long term marketing strategy. Begin where you are and you can build from there. Here is a glimpse into my project management approach to the weekly schedule or sprint. Right now we are only talking about ONE WEEK. Don’t panic.
We map on Monday but we prioritize on Sunday evenings. [Tip] if you want to get ahead, you’ve got to maximize your time which includes sacrificing 30-60 minutes on a Sunday to jumpstart this process.
I take a look at my personal schedule, my business schedule and all the client work I have going on first. What does that look like for you?
- What are the big projects that will take more than ½ a day to get done?
- What are your work or business commitments?
- Add in your regular day job, if you have one.
- Add in school pickup and drop off times.
- Add in all your personal appointments (doctors, dentists, coffee with the girls)
- What about your partner or kids? Add in their sports, after school activities, etc.
- What meetings do you have set up this week? In person, phone or Zoom?
- Are there are big projects carried over from last week or that have a deadline by the end of the week?
Feeling overwhelmed yet? Parents who work from home and run a business are BUSY people. Add in a job with a set schedule and it all gets mashed together. Don’t worry – we can fix that.
Being Busy Is Not The Same As Being Productive
Map It Monday is when you, and maybe your team, map out the projects for the week around your other obligations and the resources available to you. This makes sure everyone is on the same page.
It doesn’t make sense to have a deadline to create a website if:
- You don’t know how to do this
- Your web developer is on vacation
- Your babysitter is sick and you have zero help
It’s easy to be busy without being productive. Prioritize your revenue generating tasks over your income stealing tasks. Client work (meetings, creating content, doing the actual work they hired you for) would be revenue generating. So are sales calls and anything in your “zone of genius”.
Income stealing tasks would be anything that you should hand off to your team, if applicable, or anything you don’t know how to do (hello, taxes?). It’s also those 20 minutes you spend flipping through Facebook when you’re in the ladies room. Oh, you spend more time than that? I won’t tell. But CUT THAT OUT. You don’t have time for that.
Anyone can fill their day with frivolous busy tasks but only those committed to the process will have completed projects by the end of the week.
Plan Out Each Day
Use time blocks for similar tasks so you can whip through them quickly.
Have a project that may take up to 2-4 hours? Block it out.
Do you need X project completed by Tuesday morning so you (or someone on your team) can hand it off to the next person on Wednesday so that the entire project is done by Friday morning?
Break down these tasks or projects into bite-sized pieces that you can work on each day.
What is one thing you can do today to keep moving forward?
Create momentum in your business by doing one to three things every day to move forward.
You’ll stay on the constant hamster wheel of nnon-productivity if you never finish anything. This may seem obvious yet I talk to people all the time who don’t schedule, don’t prioritize and don’t ever (ugh, ever) cross stuff off their list!
Think about it for awhile. You’ve got a lot going on and several balls in the air. Juggling the right things at the right time is the only way you’ll survive.
Following this strategy will help you maximize your time so that you can be efficient and serve your clients the best way possible.
If you don’t know what you should be working on or need help creating a successful marketing campaign to know exactly where to focus your time and energy, let’s chat. Schedule your free one-hour marketing consultation at www.MeetWithKelly.com when you can ask questions, get some feedback and learn more about how to work with me.
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