Crafting a Schedule For Your Business

One of the many benefits of having your own business is the freedom to set your hours. This can also feel daunting. When do you work? When do you take time off? When starting out, it’s too easy to slip into the over-working that’s so prevalent in the dominant culture.

But not here, not in a holistic-based business. Here’s a formula for scheduling your business so your work style supports your lifestyle.

Step 1: Choose what you want to celebrate and how you’ll celebrate.

Another way to say this is to begin with the end in mind. What are you going for? What’s a measurable outcome you’d like to experience? This can be a specific metric in your business or a feeling or experience.

Decide what you want and then decide how you want to celebrate having this. A quiet evening at home with loved ones and a special dinner. A weekend away. A special purchase – whatever will feel like a delicious prize that’s worth going for.

Let’s say you want to craft an entry-level offer for new clients to get great results and get to know you better. This offer will help them start to solve the problem you are an expert at solving. You’ll be ready to celebrate when all the purchase buttons are in place and you’ve got your first sale – woot!

Step 2: Schedule in rest.

Get out your calendar and block out unstructured free time. Several hours a day and several days a week. You need two to three full days off each week for you to be who you are, tap into creativity and stay energized towards this chosen outcome you’ll be celebrating. It’s during this “off-task” time that your mind will come up with novel solutions and creative insights in addition to processing and filing all the “on-task” work that’s come before. It’s just as important as more formal work periods. Enjoy your hobbies, nap, read a novel, hike in nature, gaze out the window – only things you love to do during this time. No chores or “to dos” that you don’t absolutely love to do.

Though there are a lot of pieces to crafting a mini-course, it will flow more smoothly when you’re feeling fresh each time you work on it.

Step 3: Block chunks of time for uninterrupted focused work.

The celebration has been decided and you’ve got plenty of free time on your calendar, now – and only now – we can get to work.

Schedule "buffer" time for the administrative aspects of your business – answering emails, tracking metrics, setting up the tech for a workshop, etc. Don't let these tasks encroach on this deeper creative work. It’s during this time you can also set up the project you’ll work on for focus time so when that time starts, you’re ready to dive in.

Experiment with the timeframe that works best for you. It may be 25-minute bursts where you take a stretch break for five minutes between each session. Or, you may do better with a 90-minute session of deep focus. This may be hard at first but when you do it consistently, you’ll be delighted with how much you get done and how good the work is.

Let’s stick with the mini-course example. Open up the document where you’re writing the content. Jot down a starter sentence or a few ideas. Then, close all other browsers and apps on your computer. Have your essential oil diffuser filled and your favorite playlist cued up. Mine is Jazz In The Background. This all happens during buffer time.

When it's time for focused work, you can sit down to an already open project that’s inviting you to dive in with the environmental cues to support you.

Then when you’re done, you’re done. You can walk away from your project and enjoy your free time because you’re measuring the time you put in not the quantity of work you completed. In this way you’ll get it done, it will be full of your genius and you won’t feel fried from working on it too hard.

These scheduling steps are in the order of importance. Of course, it takes focused effort to create or achieve something meaningful. But it can’t be ALL focused effort. That’s a lie. It’s a cultural myth and we don’t play that game.

This is one example of how to work in a way that’s soothing for your nervous system. It’s what we’re doing right now in The Collective. We started a “surge” on the new moon of Gemini leading up to the summer solstice which is the peak of solar energy and a time of celebration. We started by picking what we want to celebrate and how we’ll celebrate, then scheduled in free time and only then, scheduled in “the work.” It’s been exciting to see all the inspired action our group is taking with this framework of support.

If you’d like this kind of support in your micro business, we’d love to welcome you into The Collective. This is our inaugural year so you can join at a special introductory price through June 22.

Want to talk this through to find out more and see if it’s a good fit for you? Schedule a time with me here.

Or, is that tingle in your tummy telling you YES and you’re ready to dive in? Enroll in The Collective HERE.