“I’m So Busy; I Don’t Have Time to Plan.”

In a recent meeting with a client, she lamented being so busy with paid client work; she didn’t have time to plan and strategize for future business growth. Her revenue is growing, but she hasn’t yet achieved her financial goals. She feels if she doesn’t take time to plan out her business, her business will start to run her. Does this sound familiar? Where does all that time go in a day? 

Many business owners are drawn to entrepreneurship because it gives them control over how they structure their days. My client prioritizes the early morning hours for working out, solitude and coffee. She takes a break mid-day to take a walk with her husband and grab lunch. Who wouldn’t want to do that? Amazing, right?!

My client indicated she needs time to plan and create new products and services while still meeting the needs of her current customer base. She questioned why she didn’t have enough time to get it all done. Was she wasting time on social media? Shopping online? Texting friends and family?

During our coaching session, we agreed there was a straightforward way to figure this out. She would track her time. For three days, she would use a simple paper and pencil tracking system to write down each task and how long it took. At our next meeting, when I asked what she’d learned, she said, “I’m a busy girl!”. And she knew she’d been more productive because she was tracking everything. Even so, she hoped she’d find out where she was wasting time and then use that found time to plan instead. That’s not what happened. She didn’t see the pockets of time she expected and needed to focus on her business. She also learned that some client work took longer than it should, given the client’s fee. We discussed that some companies plan to terminate 25% of their clients each year because they’re no longer profitable. 

This time-tracking exercise did not require any fancy software or app, which can sometimes be a deterrent if you have to figure out how they work. In just three days, my client gathered some valuable information:

• She is quite busy
• She’s not earning the revenue she should for some of the work she is doing
• She’s more productive when she tracks time (and may keep that as an ongoing tool), 
• If she doesn’t do something differently, she’s not going to run her business the way she wants to. 

So now what? I asked her: 

• When do you do your best work?
• When are you least productive? 

She shared that she’s most productive when she first gets to her desk in the morning and least productive on Friday afternoons. Initially, she was hoping to block off the entire day on Fridays for planning and strategy work. With her current client load, that’s not realistic, so instead, she’ll carve out an hour first thing in the morning for these growth activities. The rest of the day will be devoted to client work. That’s five solid hours she wasn’t designating before.

Are you struggling to find time for the things that matter to you in your business or job? Try this easy time-tracking exercise first to see where you’re spending your time. A few simple tools and a little bit of effort can reveal a lot and allow you to be more intentional in your planning efforts.