We Have All The Time In The World
I had an epiphany last night. A bell ringing, hallelujah moment about how my brain uses its space and time management. It was a good one so bear with me, even if you may think this blog is taking a strange road to get to the point. It will be worth it…
I was in the shower.
As I said, bear with me. As with most working adults with multiple responsibilities, I have to fit 218 things into each 24 hour period. Having a shower is a moment to myself, which is, more often than not, used to contemplate the other 217 things I have to think about. The work tasks that need done before the end of the day, the emails to be sent, the packed lunches that need to be prepared, the sports kit that may or may not need washed before the morning. You know, The Usual before the day can end. In order to best manage my time, I use a stopwatch on the quickfire “me” things so duly relying on the phone, the 10 minute timer was set and into the shower I go.
The time passes in a flash and glimpsing my phone lying on the basin at one point, I realised that I had one minute left. 60 seconds of hot water joy was literally swirling the plughole. My ever-helpful brain immediately leapt to a panicked countdown in my head of time running out, of wasted opportunities to use the very expensive deep conditioner that is always shelved, of whether or not I had time to dry my hair etc. Despite the handy phone stopwatch doing the job for me, my brain was very sadly taking over and squandering those quiet moments with a very dubious (and frankly speeded up) version of the Final Countdown.
Eureka!
This is where the epiphany hit.
Disenage brain, Brain. Stop panicking me. Stop wasting those moments with thoughts of what comes next, what I could be doing and how I should’ve done it better (in this case, “showering”). I made a conscious and really quite tricky pivot and I willed myself to stop thinking about it. Every time my brain yelled “thirty seconds to go”, I stubbornly made it leave the room and I thought about how it was nice to be standing in hot water and that I’ve always liked the smell of that Lush shower gel. I actually had to make myself chill out and enjoy and for 34 seconds it worked. It felt good. The timer went off, I joined my life again but I felt for one moment that I had control over the worst task master in the business, my own brain
This may be a small example of adjusting my attitude to my daily washing regime, but small changes can bring big results and I realised it can be applied to my business in as much as it can be applied to shower gel.
Time Management + Focus = #SchedulingGoals
It’s time to stop thinking about what would be better, what awaits, what comes next. Not solely in a sense of productivity but of appreciation. If you only have ten minutes, make those ten minutes count. If you only have a small budget, make THAT work and stop thinking about what you would do if you had more. If you can only multi-task one social media platform in a busy day, then make that one work work work for you. Invest your time, your money or your attention properly and get the most out of what you’re doing.
It’s too easy to let your own awareness of all the external forces at play creep in, but if you allow it to affect your investment in what you’re doing then you are wasting your opportunities. An hour well spent creating a content schedule, for example, is better than four hours debating back and fore with yourself about preferred methods of using Instagram Stories.
The Shower Epiphany, as it shall now be known, is just one example of making the most out of the small things, but if you do that, then the bigger budget management, the bigger marketing projects, the bigger, more scary, options have a much better chance of succeeding. Focus is one of the most important skills to develop when you have a small business – I’ll keep working on mine and in the meantime, maybe Compass can help you find yours.