As I approach the 3rd birthday of my business I find it both frustrating and comical that I still can't stick to a personal schedule. If I were being interviewed I'd say that "my combined constant drive and creativity just refuse to let me rest. I'm always looking for the next thing to do. Also, my biggest fault is that I am just too on time." I digress...
When you feel frazzled it's hard keeping a smiling face when some sweet (albeit naive) stranger tells you how lucky you are that you "only ever have to work one day each week". For those of you on the other side of the fence, it's not all pinterest and cupcakes over here. There's a lot (and by that I mean an ungodly, unpredictably large amount) to get done behind the scenes and a lot of late nights spent on the computer. I've generally always got about 5 things I'm juggling. Sadly, I haven't been able to give any of them the attention I want recently.
We recently added to our team a wonderful, angelic, hallelujah-chourus-inspiring person and I cannot wait for her to learn all the bits and pieces and jump in. Once she starts, I will be able to spend a lot less time on administrative type things so I decided to re-work my old work schedule to better fit this new era in our business and (hopefully) be easier for me to stick to. My old schedule was great but I just didn't schedule in time for myself (or for things like... you know... lunch) so I didn't stick to it very long. I think that's the key to schedules. You've got to just be honest with yourself and not try to be superwoman (or man, let's not discriminate).
I'm happy with this new schedule. I actually scheduled in my yoga classes as well as a lunch break. I've also stopped trying to pretend like I'm not a night owl and I gave myself a lot of time in the morning to slowly wake up and get started. Emails are now checked once in the morning and once in the afternoon instead of constantly all day long. I can't wait to see how this saves me time. And editing/design is now in the afternoon which is the time of day I feel most creative. In case you'd like to see all the ins and outs of my days you can click on the photo to make it bigger and read what goes where. I hope it helps inspire you to get your own days organized. I'll check back in in a week or so and let you know how this new schedule is going. If you have a schedule of your own that you'd like to share, I'd love to hear how you section out your days.
Thank you thank you thank you for this post! I'm just starting out, but have had a fair amount of shoots that I juggle with being a full time student and having another job. Whenever I tell people about my business, they tell me that must be a fun little hobby to blow off steam, and great because it takes so little time. If only they knew the hours researching the business side I've done, the time I've spent on web design, the photo editing, the client meetings and inquiries, etc. Don't get me wrong, it has been amazing so far and I've loved every minute of it. But I wish it got more credit!
ReplyDeleteI love this! I've been trying to get a personal schedule working for myself and it's a tough thing to get in hand. To be fair though? While they're not the content of my days, I do find that pinterest and cupcakes add to the perks ;)
ReplyDeleteps - the colour + size of the text is super hard to read, I'd love if it was made a little darker because your content is really amazing :)
@Kyla, you can view it bigger if you click on the image. It will take you to flickr where you can see it's original size :)
ReplyDeleteI love this. It's neat to me to see how someone who works for themselves manages to keep everything in order. I'm hoping that my schedule changes in the next few weeks. Life is going to be so much better, but different if it does. :)
ReplyDeleteI meant the font on the blog post, but it looks amazing now! It was probably a lack of coffee :) :)
ReplyDeleteHa, I love this! So, so, so true. I've been taking a very inspiring seminar with a small group of creative entrepreneurs, and the best lesson I've learned so far is about scheduling. I find that working in chunks of time is better for me, and am working on a schedule that groups similar tasks into chunks of time one day a week, instead of an hour each day. I'll share once I work it out. :) Good luck!
ReplyDeleteLove this post! iCal and google reminders save my life! I sometimes get the same sweet but naive "you're so lucky" sentence. And while i do consider myself very lucky that i get to work from home with my husband (we do screen printing), it is still extremely hard work. when you work for yourself, there is no punching out at 5pm. the manual work is only half of it. and sometimes its hard to balance the personal time with business time.
ReplyDeleteThis month's schedule is going to be an interesting one. The rest of April and May will be the first months we take a break from screen printing and focus on photography full time. Looking forward to the hard work! Cupcakes and coffee will be a big help :)
Agree 100% @anni
@Kyla Oh I'm happy you can see it. I didn't change it (because I missed your original point, haha) it's a bit small but I like the look and it's a dark gray. If it's showing up different on your screen let me know. :)
ReplyDelete@Andrea Yes please share when you're finished!!!!
@Kristina How exciting! I just got to learn how to screen print last year (they let me do 1 print) and I was fascinated by the process.
Hi Becka! I really love this article, and shared it on my blog today...
ReplyDeletehttp://www.lesleymyrick.com/2011/04/love-list-april-21-2011.html
Consider me a new follower!
Much love,
Lesley xo
Love how everything is colored coded by activity - great idea :) (and hello - it's my first time visiting your blog)
ReplyDeleteScheduling has been very difficult for me as well. I find myself getting distracted lately. I need to set a schedule and stick to it!
ReplyDeleteI was reading about the Pomodoro Technique which seems likes a pretty cool system. I also started using http://teuxdeux.com/ which is a great list maker, but not so great for scheduling blocks of time.
Scheduling has been very difficult for me as well. I find myself getting distracted lately. I need to set a schedule and stick to it!
ReplyDeleteI was reading about the Pomodoro Technique which seems likes a pretty cool system. I also started using http://teuxdeux.com/ which is a great list maker, but not so great for scheduling blocks of time.
You are amazing! I just want to sit and soak in your business wisdom all day long... Then again, that would definitely not be sticking to my schedule:)
ReplyDeletethis is a beautiful post...thanks for sharing your wisdom.
ReplyDeletei do the email thing too...it's rough. i want to check it every 5 minutes to make sure i don't fall behind, but a lot of times, that's what makes me fall behind instead. nuts.
I love this schedule and that you've made time for yoga and have email off! by a certain time. I might try one of these for myself as i need to properly schedule blogging time. Thanks for sharing :)
ReplyDeleteWhat program/cal do you use? It's really nice visually. My goal is to transition out of a dayjob by January 2012 so thanks for this vision of what it might look like to schedule as a business owner!
ReplyDelete@Hilary I used Numbers to make the calendar which is really just a spreadsheet. Then I screenshotted it and cut it out in Photoshop to make it a jpeg. I usually use iCal for my normal calendar but I just needed this as a reference. Numbers lets you change the colors of the cells so you can color code chunks of time. I've been doing my schedules like this since college. ;)
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