One of my hobbies is trying to get as much as humanly possible out of my day. To be honest, this is probably one of the worst hobbies I have because it stresses me out so much when I think I am not achieving enough, but by streamlining my process and a few handy strategies I have picked up along the way I have developed ways to maximise the time.

I work from home, just like so many lady bosses out there. There are so many fabulously mundane things that need our attention at home – like the laundry, cleaning the house, cooking meals. And there’s also some fabulously enticing things to distract us too, like lying in bed until noon watching the latest episode of Pretty Little Liars. The real challenge is to use the time you have productively and maximise that time to achieve business success. Woah, I know, tall order, right

Well today I’ll share a little sneak peek into my daily routine before sharing my top strategies, my biggest challenges and finally my secret weapon!

MY DAILY SCHEDULE

Full disclosure: this is a super flexible routine. I have deliberately designed my life to withstand any additional things that pop up, including health issues and family commitments. This has been a calculated and purpose-driven decision that has helped to reduce my stress levels and has really increased productivity!

7.00 AM – WAKE UP SLEEPY HEAD

Rise and shine! Generally the first thought that goes through my head is “I will rise, but I refuse to shine…” in my best inner grouchy voice. This doesn’t last long, after I splash water on my face I feel much better and get on with it. Get dressed, breakfast and drop Gavin at the train station before heading to my desk.

8.15 AM – EMAIL CHECK-IN

My very first task when I sit down at my desk is to check my emails. I do this before I write my to-do list, because often there are action items in there that need to be included in my plan. I always reply to current clients first, they are 100% my priority. Then I check emails from potential clients, replying to their enquiries and addressing concerns, before checking other email that might be promotions, questions or proposals.

I like to leave my email open throughout the day rather than just checking it this once. I often refer back to details in emails from clients and I like to know when new emails come in through the day. Sometimes I am working on a client project and they email with a change or question, I like to open these emails straight away.

8.45 AM – TO DO LIST

I like to take a quick 10-15 minutes to review my to-do list and set my top 3 goals for the day. This helps me to stay focused on what I am doing and doesn’t allow time for deviation when the procrastination bug starts to bite.

9.00 AM – SOCIAL MEDIA CHECK-IN

I like to spend a bit of time checking in with my social media. I use this time to schedule posts, share content written by other business, branding and design experts, interacting with my followers and meeting new people in FB groups. It’s important to me to stay connected with the people around me, and staying active on social media makes it so much easier for me to serve people! I am able to see questions they have, things they are struggling with and trends that are prominent in my field. I also find it super convenient to use scheduling tools. I currently use Buffer for Pinterest, Facebook and Twitter and Onlypult for Instagram.

10.00 AM – CLIENT AND PROJECT WORK

Once I am happy that I am up-to-date with the inter web world, I will start working on client projects or if I don’t have a current client, I will work on my own projects.

For each new client I will set out clear timelines that guide me completing their work before I even start. This is so I know what I need to do each day and also so that the client will know when feedback and input will be required and it allows them time to schedule this in too.

12.30 PM – BREAK, LUNCH + EXERCISE

If I could work right through lunch, I would. To be honest, that is exactly what I used to do, every single day. It was really bad for my health, for my focus and it also made me super grumpy. So no I try to take some time out for a little break and I head to the gym or head out for a walk. Sometimes even just switching off and reading a book for a little while helps!

1.30 PM – BLOG POSTS OR BUSINESS PROJECTS

I mentioned that I will use the time that I am waiting on feedback from clients to write blog posts or work on other projects. Well this time slot after lunch is designated for just that, so I can either trade this time with the period before lunch or I can do extra blog writing and project development. I love this time of the day because I can work on developing my ideas and research new possibilities. It’s a bit of an indulgence!

3.30 PM – PHD WORK

Something that people might not know about me is that I am currently writing a PhD at the University of Sydney, Australia on the ways in which identity is performed online through branding, looking specifically at people just like you and me – ladypreneurs! So I set aside a few hours every afternoon to work on this. Sometimes, the poor PhD is put on the back burner if I get too carried away with working on blog posts or other projects, but I try to get two or three sessions in a week.

5.30 PM – FINISH UP + TIE UP LOOSE ENDS

I spend half hour or so just finishing up for the day, one last quick check on social media and emailing out updates to clients. Gav generally arrives home at about 6-6.30pm so I will stop work then.

After work we do try to get out and socialise or have some fun. Mondays we have dinner with my family and Tuesdays we do ballroom dancing lessons, then dinner with Gavs family. Wednesdays Gav plays ice hockey, Thursday we have a little business check-in meeting and Friday night we either relax or spend it with friends and family.

I use my evenings to relax, spend time with my family and Gav and my favourite part of the night is watching an episode of whatever we are watching while I knit or sew my latest crafting project. I really need this time to unwind in the nighttime and crafting while watching a story unfold is a great way for me to relax and ensures a good sleep.

10.00 PM – HEAD TO BED FOR ZZZS

I love crawling into bed after a bad of work. It’s so rewarding to know that I did a good job, got a whole heap of things done and made a difference. On weekends, Gav bans our mobile phones from the room so we can sleep tech free. It’s something I resisted to start with, because, you know, that hunk of plastic and metal is an extension of my arm, but really it does make a difference to have a break every now and then!

MY TOP STRATEGIES

I have a few tried and test daily strategies that have helped me to maximise my productivity.

• Firstly, I identified what I have to do every day. Take a minute to ask yourself what tasks do you need to do on a daily basis? Can you create a routine block in your day that will allow you to do these things quickly in an orderly fashion.
• I always factor in breaks and mental health check-ins. Being flexible and open to taking some time off is really important. Owning your own business is draining so sometimes I just need to accept a bit of downtime and take some time off, even if it’s just a few hours in the afternoon spent with tech off, wandering around the shops. Take note of when you are feeling tired, emotional or when you just can’t focus and take some time to yourself to re-boot!
• I also find batching similar tasks together really helps with my focus. This could be something like batch writing blog posts for the week or batch editing Instagram images. Grouping these tasks will save you time and will increase your consistency.

MY BIGGEST CHALLENGE

One of my biggest challenges of working from home is staying focused on the task at hand. It is so easy to stop working at start ‘tidying up’ – believe me I know how tempting it is to procrasticlean, I used to be terrible for this. Having a strict schedule that has been carefully thought-out and planned is a great way to combat this challenge. If you have set business tasks that need to be completed in a certain time frame, you are less likely to be distracted by the other things in your environment that need your attention.

MY SECRET WEAPON

Recently I was having troubles narrowing my focus and this was having a huge impact on my ability to complete tasks. I was feeling really scattered and I would jump from idea to idea, project to project. It was getting exhausting and I was achieving very little. Luckily, I have a boyfriend who also has a business mind, so it was easy for him to identify the big problem with my business that I couldn’t exactly see, but could definitely feel: I wasn’t accountable to anyone. When you are a solopreneur and you work from home, who are you accountable to? Is it your clients? Well, yes, but only for the scope of their project. You don’t have a boss to answer to – that’s one of the attractive qualities of working for yourself. There are no big stakeholders. You may consider your blog readers or the people you engage with on social media as stakeholders, but as long as you are delivering content, their interest in your business operations are limited.

I felt alone and not in a “oh-poor-me” way – in more of a “way too much freedom” kind of way. I needed to be answerable to someone and to a bigger set of goals and so the Weekly Brand IT Girl Business Accountability Check-In Meeting was born. In this meeting Gav and I talk through my general business situation, we look at social media stats and consider the strategies that are leading to growth or we come up with new strategies to try. We talk about marketing and advertising, customer enquires and current projects and look at my business expenses. We take minutes of the meeting, including action items (or ‘jobs’) for me to complete in a given time frame – sometimes it is by the next meeting and sometimes it has a due date several weeks down the track. We check in on last week’s action items and we make note of if they were completed and what the next step is – this often becomes a new action item for me to complete in the upcoming week. The last thing we do is talk about HNIs. Hectic New Ideas. This is when we talk about new ideas for products, services and projects Brand IT Girl could look at undertaking in the future. If the HNI receives a positive reaction it becomes an action item.

This process has helped me so very much to stay focused on my goals, with a task-based orientation through the week. I can see a list of action items infront of me and when I need to do them. This makes it much easier to push distractions aside when there are tasks that require attention. Being accountable to someone else for my business is a huge driver for getting these tasks done.

Who to ask? You can recruit your husband/wife/boyfriend/girlfriend to be your business meeting partner or you can ask a business minded relative or friend for weekly or fortnightly meet-ups. You may even find an online business friend in a similar field (Note: I don’t recommend a friend in the same industry as you, this can cause tension when talking about new ideas!) that you can partner with for these check-in meetings. Try Skype for these meetings and remember to share the minutes sheets with each other via email afterwards so your partner can keep track of your goals too!

To make it easier for you to start these business check-in meetings, I have created a downloadable eBook just for you! Enter your email below to unlock this eBook right now!

If you suddenly find yourself with nothing to do (firstly, lucky you, I crave a bit of “I have nothing to do” time), there are plenty of useful things that you can do for your own personal development and to help your business and/or blog to grow and thrive.

1. SCHEDULE YOUR MONTH

If you are anything like me, being organised is a priority. So why not grab your planner, a cup of tea and sit somewhere nice and schedule your month. You can plan your appointments, when you will be going to the gym (because health is important!), when you will spend time with friends and family and you can even use this time to schedule your blog posts and social media posts. Remember to schedule a little “me” time. Taking some time out to schedule your week as a whole is a great way to ensure you are living a balanced life.

2. TAKE A COURSE AND HONE YOUR SKILLS

Downtime is the perfect time to take a course, practice what you know or hone your skills or learn something completely new and be inspired by the possibilities it opens up for you. I recommend Skillshare for short courses on a huge range of topics. The classes are taught by industry professionals that have real life experience in the field. Some of my favourite courses include: Pattern Design by Elizabeth Olwen, Icon Design by Adam Whitecroft, and anything by Katie Rodgers, but particularly her Fashion Illustration course.

3. BATCH EDIT YOUR INSTAGRAM PHOTOS

Another great way to use your downtime is to batch edit images for your Instagram. Doing this as a batch processed task is great because you can make sure you are being consistent with your images and the overall theme of your Instagram account, and it saves time in the long run too! Not sure how to edit your images? Use this infographic guide full of Instagram stats to help you decide.

4. RE-EVALUATE YOUR GOALS

Taking time out to really look at your goals and evaluate how you’re doing is a really useful thing to do with your downtime. Identify what you have been doing successful and what you have been less successful at achieving. You may even find that some of your goals are no longer as important to you or perhaps your circumstances have shifted and new goals have popped up that really need your attention. Once you have identified what you want to achieve, set actionable steps to meet each of your goals. This could mean conducting research, planning out work schedules and aligning your day-to-day activities with your goals in the form of strategies to help you achieve!

5. UPDATE YOUR WEBSITE

When you have nothing to do, there is absolutely always something to do on your website. Consider updating your About Page or your blog Sidebar and really use these under-utilised spaces to engage your readers. Double check your bio and contact details and check that all you social media links are still relevant and taking your readers to the right places. Consider also updating your photography and design elements on your website. Or perhaps you could go all out and give your website a complete makeover with a new pre-made theme!

6. WRITE TO PAST CLIENTS AND TOUCH BASE

A fantastic thing to do with your spare time is to write to your past clients and touch base. If you find that your spare time falls before Christmas, New Year or any other major holiday/celebration, consider writing your past clients greetings cards. Otherwise, send through an email and ask how everything is going. Make sure you check their social media and website first to see if anything major has been happening in their business and if so, this gives you a great chance to offer congratulations, words of support and assistance if necessary.

I am all about making life easier! While I believe that your mindset and the way you use your time is key to living a productive, efficient life, I do also think that some online tools can really help to make life easier too!

These are my top 4 online tools that I use to streamline my business operations.

EVERNOTE

Evernote is perhaps the best thing that ever happened to me and it will be the best thing to ever happen to you too!! I use the basic plan which is free and it works a dream. I use Evernote to record to-do-lists, notes, blog post drafts, ideas, business plans, canned emails, research and more. The best thing about it, is that you can access Evernote on all your devices, making it super easy to keep track of everything! You can sort your notes into notebooks and notebook stacks which allow you to keep everything neat and tidy!

TODOIST

If to-do Lists are your thing, then Todoist is a great resource for streamlining your business. You can create to-do lists for different projects and set due dates. It makes it easy to see what you have to do today or in the next seven days and you can even use a Lab in gmail to save tasks that pop up in your email inbox. There is a great mobile app, making this a tool that you can take with you!

STREAK

If you are using Gmail (and I am sure there are equivalents for other email services) you should be using Streak. Streak is a customer relationship management system and can be used to turn your inbox into project management system too! You can access Streak by going into your Gmail Settings > Labs > Enable Streak and this allows you to track conversations by categorising them in boxes.

These boxes can then be placed into Pipelines which are like the stages of a project. An example of a Pipeline could be ‘Custom Jobs’ and within this would be several stages of the custom job process: ‘lead’, ‘contacted’, ‘pitched’, ‘negotiating’, ‘won – in progress’, and ‘closed’. It helps you to see what stage a certain project is and what needs to be done.

The free plan is sufficient for small business and allow you to track up to 200 emails a month!

BUFFER

I spoke recently about the benefits of scheduling your social media. Well, the tool that I use to do this is Buffer. I have opted for the paid plan and it costs me around $104USD a year on the Awesome Plan. I use this great tool to schedule posts for my Facebook Page, Facebook Group, Twitter and Pinterest.

The best features of buffer include:

1. You can put 100 posts in your queue per month and use the schedule option to set times for Buffer to post from your queue.
2. You can schedule specific times for your posts to make sure they are going live when you need them to.
3. Access to analytics make it easy to see how your social media posts are performing.
4. Buffer shortens URLs so you are not taking up characters and you don’t need to use a third party service to shorten the addresses!
5. You can also upload your own images for each of the social media platforms.

Do you use online tools to streamline your business? Which ones do you love?

Social media is such a powerful resources! So how do you ensure that you are using it properly?

One of the best things I have done for my business is committing to social media scheduling. Let me give you five reasons why you and your business should be scheduling your social media.

1. CONSISTENCY

Scheduling your social media posts helps you to ensure a high level of consistency with the content you are posting. There is nothing better than well planned consistent content on Social Media and planning ahead of time with scheduling tools will help you to communicate a clear and concise message, and ultimately you will notice increased engagement when your readers know what to expect from you!

2. FREES UP TIME

Social media scheduling frees up time and means that you will encounter less distractions throughout the day. If you are anything like me, you go onto Facebook or Twitter to post some content and suddenly 30 minutes have passed and you haven’t even started writing your content – browsing takes up a lot of time! Scheduling social media gives you back that time throughout the day and you will be less likely to fall into the procrastination trap!

Here’s what I do to streamline my process and save time when writing blog posts:

• I write a draft of my blog post in Evernote. I can do this on the go, so it makes it really easy to collect my thoughts when I am out and about, at cafes or on the train.
• I transfer the blog post to my WordPress and add the formatting and featured images.
• I schedule the post to go live early in the morning.
• Using Buffer (I used to use Hootsuit so that works too!) to schedule posts for Facebook, Twitter and Google +. These posts are generally scheduled to go live just before the peak hour work commute for my Australian readers and then again early the following morning for my international readers.
• Using Latergram I schedule Instagram posts and when the predetermined time arrives, Latergram notifies me on mobile to post the content.

It’s super easy and saves a heap of time on a daily basis that I could be doing other things!

3. TARGET YOUR AUDIENCE

Scheduling your social media allows you to post your content when you may not necessarily be awake or near your devices. This means that you can still post your content when it is most convenient for your audience without it being a huge hassle for you!

Check out this great infographic by Elle & Co that outlines the best times to post on Social Media

4. INTENTIONALITY

As I have started to grow my Brand IT Girl social media channels I have realised that the more strategic and intentional I am, the quicker and more engaged my audience grows. I carefully choose the content I share on social media, and while sometimes I wish I could just post a funny photo or a cute snap of my dog, I refrain from posting these things on Brand IT Girl branded reader touch-points. I keep my personal Facebook for those sorts of shots and the rest of my channels are intentionally and very clearly definable as Brand IT Girl.

5. INTEGRATION

Scheduling also allows you to integration and coordinate your content across your communication channels. This means that I will tailor my messages to suit the readers that engagement with me on each of my chosen touch-points making sure I don’t repeat myself or bore my audience. I keep certain channels for certain things: