Guest Blog Post: Amber Gray, Founder and CEO, Trusty Oak

As busy, successful entrepreneurs, it’s not difficult to find ourselves swimming in emails, bouncing from meeting to meeting, skipping lunch, and even at times missing out on life’s most precious moments. We give a lot of our time, energy, thoughts, and care to nurture our business and it’s not uncommon for business owners to get off balance when it comes to taking care of our own health and well-being.

I can personally attest to this being an ongoing challenge I face as a leader. In the past, I felt like grinding away was just a necessary sacrifice in order to reach my goals. But I’ve learned some new skills that have changed my mindset and helped me to keep a much better handle on how I spend my time and how I avoid the spiraling path to burnout.

In May 2021, I made one of the best decisions of my career and hired a business coach to help me grow my business and to personally invest in myself to grow as a leader. We worked together to develop a plan that included priorities broken down into quarterly goals. During the first two quarters, I was quite zealous! After all, it was exciting to have a coach and to gain new clarity around what it would take for me to scale my almost six-year-old company into a multimillion-dollar company over the next few years.

Real talk here: by the second quarter, I was working harder than ever and longer days than ever before. I had stopped working out consistently. I would usually have a cup of coffee to start my day, work non-stop until around 2 pm before eating at my desk, and many evenings would end with me taking my laptop to the couch to continue working. On the days I wasn’t working late, I would place a DoorDash order and crack open a beer or pour a glass of wine to help me wind down for the night. And then I’d start it all over again the next day and rarely felt “on my game.”

And eventually, I found myself feeling very much on the edge of burnout or a breakdown – something had to give. So of course, I talked to my coach to figure out how I needed to adjust my priorities and take care of myself while also achieving my big goals. With some help, I was able to create a few top-level habits that resulted in a waterfall of improved lifestyle habits that have made me healthier, happier, and more successful.

1. I set a weekly appointment with myself to plan my week and time-block my calendar.

On Saturday or Sunday mornings, I spend 30-60 minutes reviewing the week ahead and adding some color to my calendar. I add events on my calendar for literally everything I need to do that week and I color code this so I can see at a glance if I’m spending my time in an intentional way.

When someone sees my Google calendar, they usually react with “Whoa!” and may add a comment about it being a little crazy, but the truth is, having my day planned to a T reduces my decision fatigue and helps me get more done each day.

Take the time to plan your week so your week doesn’t have a chance to take you for a ride.

2. Delegate repeatable administrative tasks.

One of the most common phrases I hear from entrepreneurs when talking about delegation is the age-old myth that “it’s faster if I do it myself.” The issue here is this ignores the fact that as a CEO and business owner, your time is the most valuable resource in your company and you must protect it at all costs. Even if it’s faster if you do it yourself, it doesn’t mean that you should be doing it. And this particularly applies to tasks that are repeated in your day, week, or month.

Take note of administrative tasks you find yourself doing regularly. Maybe it’s logging into Quickbooks to send invoices, responding to emails with referrals or requests for coffee meetings, or it’s adding contacts to your CRM or database. Determine if there is some form of automation you can implement for any of these tasks and for those that you can’t automate, delegate!

Administrative tasks rob you of valuable time, even if they only take you a couple of minutes at a time. Not only do these minutes add up to hours over the course of a week but our brains waste a lot of additional time when we are switching tasks constantly. 

Limit yourself to at least one hour per day of admin and work on whittling that down to less by delegating something new each week.

3. Say “no” more often.

This one sounds the simplest and the most difficult all at once but it’s my belief that we must – and I stress must – stop saying yes so much! If you are busier than you want to be, that is always still something fully in your control to scale back. Yes, there are consequences to our actions either way. However, when we ask ourselves a few thoughtful questions, we can usually see clearly that some of what we are agreeing to do does not even give us the real results we want.

Ask yourself this series of questions and then practice saying no more often.

Is my feeling of overwhelm temporary or is this a trend? 

If it’s a trend, the only way out is to change what you are doing and how you are spending your time. Don’t drag your feet on making changes to processes that are simply not serving you any longer. If it is truly temporary and you need to address what you are feeling, evaluate your schedule and identify the tasks you can drop altogether or delegate (even if it means carving out another hour to show someone how to do it.)

Does this task or meeting align with my top 3-5 priorities this quarter? 

If not, postpone or drop that task or meeting. Identify the outcomes you want for your life and your business and focus on what it will take to accomplish them. Write down what will happen if you do those things, and write down what will happen if you don’t do them. Having those reminders handy when you are planning your week or evaluating your commitments can make the decision a lot easier.

What current commitments have I made that happen weekly or monthly? 

Repeating meetings can often be a stealthy thief you have just gotten used to accepting. In the past, I have joined groups that met weekly or monthly. I volunteered to sit on a board. I set up a monthly lunch meeting with a friend in the industry. I had a weekly Zoom with someone I could use as a sounding board and we generally just enjoy learning from each other. 

These were all good things and positive interactions but with that many repeating meetings, my calendar started out colorful before I even had a chance to plan how I wanted to spend my time! 

I canceled these repeat meetings and reduced the frequency of some, while others I had to completely opt-out of for now.

Here’s a bonus tip: Limit yourself to only 1-2 networking interactions per week.

I was networking a lot, especially when I first started my business, and those weekly meetings led to requests for one-to-one coffee meetings from two to three people each week. I said yes to most of them and then wondered where my week had gone!

Now, I still make networking an important part of my business development strategy, but I keep a check on how much I am meeting with people just for networking purposes. If I already have a networking event on my calendar for the week, I give myself permission to add a second one only if I feel it’s in line with my big-picture plan for the quarter. Otherwise, I provide dates further out on the calendar and keep my schedule open for what really matters for my business this week.

Saying no even one extra time each week and limiting certain types of meetings will bring you some immediate relief!

Here’s the summary:

• Take an hour over the weekend to plan your week and add every. single. thing. to your calendar.
• Evaluate your administrative tasks each week and look for something new to delegate to a team member or virtual assistant.
• Start saying no more often and limit your commitments to get laser-focused on tasks that contribute to just 3-5 key priorities each quarter.
  

If you commit to developing these three habits, you’ll find your productivity – and your sanity – soaring.