I woke up at 6 and started working. I have a system, you see. I have so called “slot times” in my calendar for my clients. During those slot times, I fully focus on one client at a time and my work for them. I like this system better than the one I had before, where I did a little every day for each and one of my clients. This way I ‘m more productive, efficient, and - to be honest - better marketer.
I divided my day into three 2-hour sessions for three of my clients. By the time clock struck 11, I was done with two of them (an hour break for breakfast at 8). I quickly loaded my board on top of my car to hit the water for an hour of surf, and to run some errands after.
I had a meeting at 2 p.m. I needed to get back to. At 2:03 p.m. I slid in to the digital room, still armed with my rash guard and zinc-covered face. Haha! It sure was a conversation starter. And the meeting went great, despite zink in face and no lunch.
After the meeting, I made myself some pasta sallad with tuna. (Bought a kilo of fresh tuna from a local fisherman I passed on my morning run on Monday. Looks like I’ll be having tuna for lunch and dinner for the rest of the week, and with pleasure! Gosh, do I love fish..!)
After my somewhat late lunch, I took a shower and sat down for my last work session. But I didn’t make it far until my friend Daniel popped by. And those of you who know me, know how much I love hanging with my friends, so I closed down work and chilled with Daniel at my place, listening to Latin-American music and repeatedly asking him to translate the lyrics as my Google Home played through song after song. As the sunset was getting closer, we decided to go down and watch it from the beach.
As the fiery head star disappeared behind its oceanic scene and the unicorn sky slowly got darker, we went back home and resumed our business. As I am sitting in my couch on my little roof top, fingers lingering around and playing with Daniel’s curls, trying to make out complete sentences from the songs, the sky opened up and the rain started pouring. The sound of the tropical downfall is magnificent and deafening, drowning all other sounds around you. Sometimes it’s even hard to hear the other person if you’re in a conversation. Yet, it’s a constant, quite peaceful, noise. As Daniel dozed off, I went back to work, and after to read my book. As the clock struck midnight, my eye lids got heavy and I decided to wrap the day up. Before I go to bed, I always look at what lies ahead of me the next day in my meticulously planned calendar.
I put some high intentions for this week. A little too high, I realized, as I was crossing off my to-do:s. I looked at my calendar and starting rearranging all the tasks I didn’t manage to fit in on Monday and Tuesday: yoga, running, client and business stuff, and divided them among the remaining days of the week. I’m a time optimist, you see. It was one of my biggest weaknesses I identified many years ago, but only five years ago took action to actually do something about it, and turn it into a strength.
Around 5 years ago, I sat down and decided to do something about it. I came up with 3 potential actions to become more efficient and better manage my time. The three actions I took where:
Set all my clocks to 10 min later than it actually was. This, I realized, always made me on time to meetings.
I turn off all notifications, including messages, phone calls and emails - and if I don’t have work on my phone to do (which I do a lot, as a social media manager), I put on flight mode. This decreases distraction, which also helps with my concentration issues.
I started adding “didn’t-think-about-that” time to my scheduled tasks. For example: Unexpected traffic jams or slow internet. An hour of work for a client can sometimes (un)expectedly turn into 1,5 hours. Because as it shows, there are two more characteristics I have which doesn’t feed my time optimism in a positive way: 1) I hate leaving unfinished tasks, and 2) I’m a perfectionist.
Am I perfect now? Not even close. But, I’m better. I can say have made huge progress. Am making - every day.
And then there is a third aspect you have to consider after you wake up: the present. Some days I wake up and feel like I need a break, and so I take it. Or something else unexpected happens which prevents me from working. But I have become more acceptable to not reach 100% of my intentions of each week. I’ve learned to be proud over myself for reaching as much as 50% of them. Because when you start your own business, the success lies in doing. Not planning, thinking, dreaming or doing a lot. But doing something.
And with this, I wish you all a good night, or day - depending on where in the world you are right now. Tomorrow is another day to try doing our best. Isn’t that awesome. To be so fortunate to have endless of days ahead of you to do magic. Makes me realise how lucky I am to have my health and freedom to build my own dream life - one day at a time. I'm not taking that for granted..
Love,
Gaby