EPISODE 046 | APPLE PODCASTS | SPOTIFY

A huge welcome! Time is our most valuable resource, yet it often feels like there’s never enough of it. Mastering time management can make the difference between feeling overwhelmed and achieving your business goals efficiently and effectively. And today I'll be sharing a series of practical and helpful techniques that you can implement as soon as this episode is over. And I’ll aim to keep it short, so you can get started straight away.

I was on maternity leave and due to return to my corporate role in a few months, and I wanted to do everything that I could to not have to return to my office role and instead remain at home with our son. But I needed to continue to bring a salary in, so with a variety of different business ideas, I focussed on one and I created a 3-page business plan - just a quick side note, in last week’s episode, number 045, I take you through the exact steps that I used to create this plan, I cover the key components, so you can create your own, it’s a powerful exercise and I do recommend something you take time to do, whether for a new business idea or to refine an existing business. I used this to work out whether my idea was viable, to feel confident about putting my spare energy and very minimal time available into my new business idea, and from there, to be able to resign relatively confidently from my corporate role, before the end of my maternity leave.

Like any new mother, particularly a first time mother and combined with starting a business, those first few months were of course exhausting, but they were also magical. They were filled with new steps, and plenty of inspiring ideas at what was possible. I really do feel that when you have such a major change in your life, it makes it easier to make bigger decisions. And this new stage of mine, with a whole new level of responsibility, really helped me to realise what was most important and in turn to be brave enough to make some big decisions. It was also an intense time to launch a business. If you feel capable, and I know we all have very different experiences and motivations behind our businesses, you can absolutely make it work. It is possible. As a side note, just in case you were wondering, I didn’t have support at that stage from family nearby or childcare. My husband worked full time, but he was very present as soon as he came back from work and over weekends.

It of course wasn’t all easy and glorious, I definitely don’t want to give that impression, but I had a very strong motivation, and I was sensible and careful with my time. Time is so precious and I wanted to be absolutely there for my son, to find time to rest so I wasn’t over doing it and somehow make the very most of the small windows of available time, to focus on the early days of my business.

I was lucky, as our son slept relatively well during his daytime naps and my husband was never home too late from work, so there were clear pockets of time, alongside, as I mentioned, a very deep motivation. I spent the time during the day when our son slept, early evenings and weekends, working on my business. With the small windows of time available, I had to become efficient to get everything I wanted to do, done, and so I focussed on every possible time management method available to me. I truly believe in the saying, if you want something done, ask a busy person.

I learned to prioritise tasks, set realistic goals, and develop a routine that allowed me to stay focused and productive, but also a routine that allowed for flexibility, as this was clearly important as our son had to come first. During those initial months, I was more productive than I had ever been, including all the way through university and my corporate role. I had never previously considered myself as inefficient, but I found a whole new way of working effectively, and it felt really good.

And as another quick side note, as these are questions that often come up … we have three children, and they have always seen me work. One of their equal positive traits is an incredible work ethic and a deep connection with the business I established. They very much understand that it’s possible to make any idea happen with hard work and they have such a positive outlook at what they can achieve themselves.

And please if you have any questions at all around this, I am very much here to listen and help. I fully understand and deeply empathise, and I’m very much here for you. You can always contact me either via Instagram or send me an email to hello@philippacraddock.com … I read all the messages we receive and try to reply to each one. And perhaps I’ll record a podcast on this specific topic, the balance between being a mother and growing a small business. Do please let me know if this might be interesting. I would love to know.

Anyway, I’m slightly digressing, and I want to keep this succinct for you, so let’s get back to the topic. We are exploring a range of time management strategies specifically for creative entrepreneurs, many that helped both my business grow, alongside managing a positive balance.

So, grab a notebook, get comfortable, and let’s get started.

UNDERSTANDING TIME MANAGEMENT

Let’s first understand exactly what I mean by time management; it’s the process of organising and planning how to divide your time between specific activities. For small business owners, specifically creative entrepreneurs, effective time management is so important as it genuinely allows you to work smarter, not harder, I know that sounds cliche, but it is very much true, and helps to enable all the juggling that comes with a creative business.

A decent focus on healthy time management ensures you get so much more done in far less time, even when time is seriously tight and pressures are high. It’s about making the most of your limited resources to achieve your business goals and maintain a healthy work-life balance.

Within a creative business, you will most likely find yourself juggling multiple roles, from marketing to customer service to either creating or overseeing your offerings or working on design plans and proposals. This unique mix can make it really difficult to focus on what truly matters, the key aspects that will help you to increase your income and grow your business effectively, to ensure it is aligned with your goals and plans.

Effective time management will help you to prioritise tasks based on importance and urgency. Set and achieve clear goals. Increase productivity and efficiency. Reduce stress and prevent burnout. And it will help you to create an important balanced approach to work and personal life, plus the time you would most love to be able to focus on the creative aspect of your business. I feel so often this is the aspect that often gets left to the end of the day, when we are most tired. Wouldn’t it be wonderful, if we could have our weeks planned in a way where the creative element becomes a core part of your day, where you can immerse yourself fully and enable our strongest skills to be centre stage, rather than some more of the tedious business elements, which are necessary, but often not quite as enjoyable.

You’ll also find yourself exposed to frequent distractions, whether it’s phone calls, messages or emails from customers and clients, or suppliers, to unexpected visitors whether you are at home or in an office, or if you are in a retail space, the ongoing flow of traffic into your store or studio, and plenty of other distractions, including social media and ongoing notifications. And of course if you are at home, it’s all too easy to become distracted by household chores that need to be done.

And being a big hearted creative, we are so incredibly prone to taking on too many projects or saying yes to every opportunity, and this can quickly spread you too thin and prevent you from giving your best effort to any single task.

I am sure so much of what I’m saying you can relate to. And you can see that without a clear plan or routine, it’s so easy to drift from task to task without making significant progress on your goals. I know all of us have been there.

Poor time management can have serious consequences, both for your business and your personal well-being, including missed deadlines, reduced quality of work, lost opportunities, it absolutely increases stress, it can of course lead to health issues and creates a deeply unhealthy work-life balance, where you have less time for family, friends, and self-care, which of course has a big knock on affect your overall quality of life.

It’s so important that we deeply understand these challenges and the impact of poor time management, so we can start to see the importance of implementing effective strategies and practical techniques to help you prioritise tasks, set goals, maintain a balanced approach to your work and life, and effectively manage your time better. And I promise you, it is absolutely possible to achieve.

PRACTICAL TOOLS & TECHNIQUES

This is a really big topic, and it’s one I share in detail within our online programmes. Over the last couple of weeks I have spoken directly to many of our most recent students, and fascinatingly, everyone I have spoken to has said that that their biggest takeaway and transformation has been around their planning, scheduling and effective time management, and just this one focus, has completely transformed their businesses and as a direct result, their personal lives. We don’t have enough time today to go through every key element, but please know that it is entirely possible to fully transform how you manage your days and even if you feel insanely overwhelmed, you can absolutely turn this around and feel calm, organised and gently very positive.

But I do want to make sure you leave with some really helpful starting points from this episode, alongside simply knowing you are not alone and that there are many practical strategies; so let’s start by looking at a straightforward method to help you prioritise tasks, based on their importance and urgency.

You might have heard of the Eisenhower Matrix. It’s a neat and simple method that helps you to divide tasks into four categories. To start with, it’s a good idea to really focus on the four steps. Once you repeat them several times, you will find that they begin to become quite natural, so you won’t need to place quite so much focus as you begin to understand how to implement them. Which is exactly what we are aiming for. It will take some practice and you have to be intentional about it, but if you put in the effort and time, it can have a big impact on your levels of efficiency, and in fact, it will become an intuitive part of your planning.

categorise each task using the Eisenhower Matrix

There are four categories in total. For each task, determine if it’s urgent, important, both, or neither. Use the following criteria from this method to help you.

1. Urgent and Important: Deadlines approaching, critical client meetings, resolving crises, or tasks that directly impact your business operations.

2. Important but Not Urgent: Long-term planning, personal development, building relationships, and activities that contribute to your overall goals.

3. Urgent but Not Important: Interruptions, most emails and phone calls, minor issues, or activities that do not contribute significantly to your long-term objectives.

4. Not Urgent and Not Important: Time-wasting activities, excessive social media use, or tasks that can be postponed indefinitely.

create a visual matrix:

Draw a four-quadrant chart (see example image above) or use an app that provides the Eisenhower Matrix; there are several you can find online. Simply search Eisenhower Matrix.

If you are doing this by hand or on your computer, label the quadrants as Urgent & Important, Important but Not Urgent, Urgent but Not Important, and Not Urgent & Not Important.

And then place each task into the appropriate quadrant. And don’t be tempted to place everything into the first quadrant. I know, you might feel like everything should go here, but that’s a sure sign that you are feeling overwhelmed, and let’s give ourselves some compassion here. Carve out some quiet time to focus on this properly and give yourself the time needed. You might feel that you don’t have time to do this, but I promise you, and please trust me on this. If you take some time to really plan carefully, in a quiet and calm way, where you can focus, you will save yourself so much time.

start to prioritise your tasks:

Start with tasks in the Urgent and Important quadrant. These are your top priorities. And make sure they really are the priorities that align with steps that will move your business forward, the ones that are non negotiable. As a side note, you might realise that there are tasks that you have to place into this category, projects perhaps that you have already committed to, but you know they are something that you shouldn’t have said yes to. Simply acknowledge this, don’t feel overly negative, just use it as a very helpful learning exercise, to help you decide the right projects for you to focus on in the future. It is so important that we become very good at knowing when to say an absolute yes and to dive in feet first, and to know when to say no, either because it is an unnecessary distraction, or because it’s simply not aligned with where we would most like to take our business.

Next, schedule time for Important but Not Urgent tasks to ensure they get done without becoming urgent.

Then, delegate tasks in the Urgent but Not Important quadrant whenever possible.

And finally, look to see if you have any tasks that you can either minimise in some way or eliminate entirely, by pacing these into the Not Urgent and Not Important quadrant, to free up your time, to focus on the more important and urgent tasks.

In addition to this method, it’s essential that you set clear goals and deadlines. Rather than going into detail on exactly how you can achieve your goals, if you haven’t listened to it already, there is a whole episode dedicated to this, it’s episode 042: "The Significance of Clear Business Goals" and you’ll learn detailed insights on SMART goals, plus four additional steps to genuinely help you understand the deeper purpose behind your goals, how you can break them down into manageable steps, maintain consistency and the importance of setting realistic deadlines.

PRACTICAL TOOLS & TECHNIQUES

Once you have worked through categorising your tasks, next you might find digital tools help you stay organised and focused. There are a number of productivity tools you can use, the key is simply to do a small amount of research, select one that you feel may be the most intuitive and start to use it. There will never be a perfect system, and the worst thing you can do is to continually switch between different platforms, so choose one and stick to it.

Trello is a pretty versatile project management tool that uses boards, lists, and cards to help you organise tasks and projects visually. You can create different boards for various projects or areas of your business, and use lists to represent different stages of a project. Cards within lists can be tasks or ideas, and you can add due dates, checklists, attachments, and comments to each card.

Asana is another powerful project management tool and if you have a team it is particularly helpful as it is designed to help teams track their work and achieve their goals. It allows you to create projects and tasks, set priorities and deadlines, and assign tasks to team members. It also offers a timeline feature to help you plan and visualise your project schedule.

Todoist is a simple yet effective task management app that helps you keep track of your to-do lists. You can create tasks, set due dates, and organise them into different projects. It also offers labels and filters to help you prioritise and find tasks quickly.

I start by listing all the tasks that I need to complete and prioritise them based on importance and urgency, exactly as the Eisenhower Method helps you to do. Next, I allocate specific time blocks for different tasks, ensuring that I have dedicated time for high-priority projects. I always set realistic goals, I have got better at predicting how much I can accomplish in a day and over longer periods of time. Overloading my schedule is an absolute no-no. It is counterproductive and is the quickest way to make you feel demotivated. And I review frequently. I make sure I’m on track and if I’m not, I amend my schedule, knowing I’ll catch up. Remaining flexible helps me to feel calm and there are always ways to catch up, whether a less important task can be simplified, or there might be times where I just have to prioritise work over something else, and although we are always aiming for a healthy balance, there are of course times when you need to compromise, and next time I’ll know that type of project will take a little longer, so I learn from that and allow that next time I am scheduling a similar task.

This continuous level of flexibility and improvement process can help you become significantly more efficient and effective over time. I’ve found that by integrating these practical tools and techniques into my daily and weekly routines, it has had a dramatic impact on my time management skills, it has increased my productivity, and maintained a healthy work-life balance. And I really do think it started when I was most stretched with available time, having those limited windows of time forced me to be as efficient and productive as possible.

CREATING A PERSONALISED TIME MANAGEMENT PLAN

As mentioned before, frequently review and adjust your plan. At the end of each week, review what you’ve accomplished and adjust your plans for the following week. Don’t be afraid to reschedule or reprioritise tasks based on new developments or as your priorities shift.

It’s so important that you stay flexible and that you fully understand and embrace that your time management plan is a living document. It should evolve as you are working through your projects and tasks, and based on personal circumstances. I’m sure like for many people, the last few weeks for example have been tough on many levels, and my schedule has had to adapt to allow for this. I’m still exactly where I had hoped to be, but it has only happened through repeated movement and flexibility. It’s so important to fully embrace flexibility, so you can comfortably adapt and make changes as you need to, to stay productive and in a good place mentally, so you feel balanced.

Also make sure that you self assess how well your time management methods and strategies are working. Take time to think about what’s working well and where you’re encountering any issues or challenges. Think if there are certain times of day when you're more productive? For example, I’m definitely more productive in the mornings, so I schedule my focussed work, the work that I need to deeply concentrate on, first thing in the day. And also take note if you find there are recurring tasks that take longer than expected. Keep a note of this and then plan your schedules for next time. When this happens and of course it will happen, never berate yourself. You simply didn’t know, you were optimistic with your time, but you now know and you’ll schedule to allow for the extra time needed next time. This continuous self-assessment is really important; it'll help you identify areas for improvement and refine your approach.

As we come to the end of this episode, I hope you have been able to absorb plenty of takeaways.

If you don’t have a robust time management strategy already in place, please do take the steps I’ve outlined to start implementing one. I promise you it’ll have a huge impact on your efficiency and productivity, both in work and for your life as a whole. I am not someone who loves rigidity and structure, I love spur of the moment and last minute plans. I am definitely not someone with a diary that is filled up months in advance, I’m a pretty last minute person, however, when it comes to work, I live by my schedules and the techniques I’ve outlined in this episode.

Take these small steps and incorporate the techniques that you feel most aligned with, into your daily routine and you’ll see the positive impact they can have on your productivity, and overall well-being.

And please let me know how you get on, what works for you, if you have had any a-ha moments, or if you have any questions. You can send me a DM on Instagram. I read and try to reply to each one.

Thank you so much for being with me. I really do hope you found this episode helpful and inspiring. Remember, effective time management is absolutely a process, it takes time to figure out what works best for you. Keep refining your approach and stay committed to making the most of your valuable time.

With huge love,
Philippa x