3 ways to simplify to your business today
My theme for this year is trusting in simplicity. It’s a theme that infiltrates so many aspects of my life, as well as my business.
Simplicity doesn’t come naturally to me! I overthink and overdo. But it’s something I’ve been cultivating for a while now. Three very practical ways that I support myself in bringing more simplicity to my working life are as follows:
1, Weekly planning: I’ve been doing his for nearly a year now in various forms and now feel like I’ve found me sweet spot. Every Sunday or Monday I sit down for 15 - 30 mins and review the week ahead. I take out my To-Do list and figure out whether I actually have the time and space in my calendar to get the things done. If I don’t, I postpone it or let it go. For me, this really frees up a lot of the nagging to be on top of things that I otherwise feel.
2, Chunking out my calendar: Not the most endearing way to describe this! But it basically involves scheduling in all of the things I’ve decided I’m going to do. Crucially I also schedule around chunks of time that are already blocked out in my calendar. This might be regular client calls or other meetings, or it might be individual time with each of my kids, or a weekly yoga sesh. I would highly recommend this step! It’s a really good eye opener as to how little ‘free’ time there actually is and for me, really helped recalibrate my expectation on what I could achieve.
3, Review and revise: If you are an employee as well as an entrepreneur then I suspect you will be familiar with GANNT charts, setting priorities, checking in on KPI’s, or something similar. All intended to keep your project on track. I’ve found that often when people have experience with these in their employee life, it puts them off using them in entrepreneur life! However, the principle is still really important. I’ve tried a tested lots of different ways to help measure my ‘progress’. I don’t think it matters how you do it, but I think it’s really important to find some way of continually checking in on the goal to see if what you are choosing to do on a week to week basis is actually in support of what you want to achieve.
I appreciate that these are small steps, but I’ve found that making small changes and then sticking to them is what really helps in the long term. The bonus of them being small is that they are things you can get started on right away!
I’d love to know how you get on and what you think. Let me know in the comments below.