“Help! I’m wearing too many hats”

When you’re running a small business or freelancing, sometimes it’s easy to get overwhelmed.  When it’s just you doing everything you have to be: 

• CEO
• social media person
• writer
• designer
• bookkeeper
• tech support
• admin  
• social secretary and more!

Task juggling is to be expected when you’re first starting out but you have to be aware that not all of your tasks are equally important. Marketing outweighs bookkeeping, for example, because without marketing, there won’t be cash to manage. 

Consider how much time you’re spending on each area. If you spend all day tweaking the design of your website but put off sending an email to your list, what have you gained? You might have a prettier website, but you lost an opportunity to drive traffic to your offer or service.

In an ideal world, you’d put on your CEO hat and delegate the rest, but we don’t always have that option. 

We have to work smarter, and be aware of how we’re spending our time. 

Prioritise Your Daily Tasks

We all have different skills when it comes to the tasks we want and need to do. You might love designing but hate bookkeeping, while someone else enjoys numbers and doesn’t like dealing with design. One thing is certain: 

money-making tasks should be at the very top of your to-do list. 

These could be product creation, email marketing, client outreach, webinar development, or something else. Work out the best money-making tasks in your business and be sure to prioritise them every single day. 

Know the Difference Between Important and Urgent

In his classic book, The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, Stephen Covey recommends prioritising tasks based on a time-management grid. Every task is assigned to a quarter of the grid, based on whether it is urgent, important, both, or neither. 

When you know where a task goes on the grid, you’ll know instantly what you should be working on. For example, marketing is important but not urgent. A ringing phone is urgent, but not important. The sales page for your new program, which is launching tomorrow, is both urgent AND important. 

Before you prioritise your daily to-do list, think about where each of your tasks falls in the quadrant, and schedule them accordingly. 

Will you always be working on the best task for right now? Probably not. But by making a conscious effort to organise and prioritise your days:

You’ll find it’s a lot less stressful and overwhelming to manage your small business. 

Do you need help with a time audit or creating order in your life, work or business? Get in touch for a free call to find out how I can help you. I have many more time saving tools to share with you.