So, if you’ve been following the blog, you know I worked ahead for most of December, so I could spend time with my family. Now I’m coming back into work, and this is the first blog written in the new year. Happy 2019 everyone!
One of the things about coming back to work is finding the routine again. It can be difficult to reinstitute the discipline that keeps on track after so many spontaneous family activities. On top of that, New Year’s happened.
Over the course of November and December, many business owners focus on their planning. While this may set up a business up to succeed, it’s also easy to over commit. With so many hours in the day, it’s hard to know how much will happen.
When looking at the plan I made for myself in December, I realize I was ambitious in scheduling out the hours of my day. In effect, I backed myself into a time crunch. I found I didn’t like it, so the second week of January is all about figuring out what I can do when regularly and what needed to move to a floating schedule.
I made the decision that I was going to continue batch writing and uploading blog posts. Then instituted some more automation tools to free up time. I also decided that money making activities got priority during the week. Somethings I chose to remove altogether, and others ended up pushed back to later in the year.
All of that allowed me to find a better workflow for my first week. That’s what must happen as a small business owner, items need tweaking when you hit a wall. Not recognizing that necessity leads to early burnout. Avoiding burnout should always figure into the cost-benefit analysis.
Setting up automation and pushing some items further back in the year has made coming back to work a little easier for me. I am still tweaking my schedule, from adding a little more exercise to adjusting my money goals for each week. Combining all those things, I’m glad to be back into my normal routine and working in Silver Magpie Writing.