The Top 5 Ways To Balance Your Commitments

Are you at the point of overwhelm in your business? Do you have so many clients or commitments that you’re not sure how you’re going to meet everyone’s demands? With too many commitments the quality of your work can suffer along with your good reputation and sanity. Does this overwhelm spill over into your personal life? If you work from a home office, others may not respect the fact that you have valid work to do and may put unreasonable demands on your time. Are you saying ‘yes’ to these requests too often?

If you’re at this point of frustration, it’s not too late to restructure a few things to achieve work, life and family balance. After all, as a business owner you have a highly sought after benefit that employees in the corporate world value highly – a flexible schedule. It’s time to get things back into perspective and enjoy this perk.

How? Here are the top 5 ways to balance your commitments:

1. First, start by setting boundaries: Solopreneurs working from home must have clear cut business vs. personal time. Set your business hours and stick with them. Ensure personal time is spent away from work-related activities. Don’t run errands during working hours or answer your business line when you’re about to sit down to dinner.

2. Next, start a waiting list: Too many clients may seem like a good problem to have when in reality it’s better to have fewer clients that get your full attention than more than you can handle. Never promise what you can’t deliver. There will always be an ebb and flow in your business which means that you can offer to put potential clients on a waiting list and contact them when you are available to fully accommodate their needs.

3. Or refer the work to others: Chances are that you have business relationships with others in your industry. Some potential clients may not be the right fit and you can choose to work only with those who are a good fit. Be honest and let the client know that a fellow business owner may be more suitable. Make the introduction.

4. Or build a team by subcontracting and/or outsourcing: Do you have a close knit group of colleagues that share your skill set, work ethics and standards that you would feel comfortable working with? Put together a team that you can subcontract out the overflow work to. And/or outsource to a Virtual Assistant rather than spending your own time on administrative and technical tasks. When you stop trying to do it all yourself, you’ll have the potential to offer more services, increase revenue and grow your business. Not to mention you’re helping others by employing them.

5. And last, but not least, make commitments to yourself equally as often as you do to others: What really matters to you? Make a commitment to yourself today about what you want to achieve. In my yoga classes we have been practicing making our ’sankalpa’ (a Sanskrit word meaning to set an intention using a short phrase or sentence). When you incorporate your intention into your daily routine, in time you can bring about positive change.

As a small business owner you already have many responsibilities. Setting boundaries, getting help and honouring commitments to yourself will satisfy the need for balance and boost your success.

5 Key Focus Areas Of A Successful Home Based Business

A maze puzzle is symbolic to taking our businesses on the path to reaching goals. From start (building), there is no direct route (growing) to finish (your goals) but rather twists and turns and some backtracking along the way. Your schedule is like your plan through that maze. When you take the time to contemplate your route and map it out, you get through your ‘maze’ with less backtracking. It’s easier to stay on course and reach your goals with that plan.

To help you apply this approach you must divide up your time into 5 main areas when organizing your schedule. Here is the list and some of the items that fall under each category:

1. Client Work – or the area in which you perform your revenue generating activities. If yours is not a service business, this area may be Product Sales for example.

2. Business Development - time spent working on your website, preparing marketing materials, proposals, making phone calls, correspondence, attending networking events, planning, meetings, reading/audio/video (resources for business/training), writing (articles, submissions, ezine, blog), social media activity, participating in forums.

3. Home Office – tracking business expenses, filing, invoicing, record keeping, managing emails, scheduling.

4. Personal – build this into your day to remind you to break away from work, to eat lunch or go for a walk with friends.

5. Family – spending time with kids, pets and family activities. This usually comes only at the beginning or end of my work day, but I like to have it showing on my schedule.

How you divide up your time will vary from person to person, but it’s important to assign time to each category throughout the week and work with it until you find a good balance. If you neglect one area the others will suffer. Revenue generating activities have to be consistent obviously, as well as Personal and Family time, but don’t neglect Business Development and Home Office time. You have to incorporate these areas into your week in order to effectively grow your business and prosper.

And if you don’t want to make the time because you dislike these tasks and would rather be doing what you’re good at or taking some more personal and family time, then outsource. Most of the tasks that fall under Business Development and Home Office can be managed by a Virtual Assistant (VA). You don’t have to do it all yourself. Like the saying goes, “Do what you do best, then hire out the rest”.

5 Reasons Why You Should Discover The Wonderful World Of Fiction

Reading is one of my all-time favourite activities and something I have rediscovered recently. I love finding a quiet space and losing myself in a novel. I’ve missed this little escape in my day. Now my girls are big enough to choose their own books from the library, it gives me the chance to browse through the selections and pick some of my own reading material. Not the “How To Grow Your Home Based Business in 5 Easy Steps” manuals, which are all well and good, but that’s still business. I’m referring to the wonderful world of fiction!

As entrepreneurs we need to find more balance. We often spend way more than our fair share of hours in a day thinking and doing business. We must switch gears and stimulate other interests.

Here are 5 reasons why you should make time for the joy of reading:

1. It allows you to single-task. Have you ever read and re-read a paragraph or a page in a book over more than once because your mind is elsewhere? Multi-tasking is not an option when it comes to reading and comprehending what you’ve read. You cannot cook dinner, allow your mind to wander to your to-do list, or have a conversation. You have to bring yourself back to the task at hand.

2. Learn something new – even when reading fiction. All good writers invest time to research their story. They include details, essential facts and statistics that give their stories meaning and create a reality we can recognize and be drawn to. They also use personal observations and quotations giving a story authenticity. You will gain some genuine new information that may indirectly affect your business.

3. Escapism. As entrepreneurs, we spend so much of our day dedicated to work. Reading fiction can be magical. We go places in our minds that we may never experience in reality. Or we may uncover our next travel destination!

4. Practice being present. This is related to single-tasking but takes it a bit further. You need to clear your mind of the 101 other things going thru it in order to be aware of what you’re reading. If you find your mind wandering to something you need to do, bring yourself back to the present and focus on what’s going on right now. Being present takes practice and is an incredibly useful skill in all aspects of work and life and increases your enjoyment of the here and now.

5. It’s a forced break. Because we are drawn away to another time and place, a good story gives our minds a break from what might be going on in our own reality. Time away is a good thing – we usually come back refreshed and often with a new perspective. We may be inspired by new ideas picked up through something we’ve read. Somehow answers seem to ‘find us’ if we’re open to it.

So, my question to you is this? Have you read anything good lately? I hope so and would love to hear about it!