Time Tracking for Spiritual Entrepreneurs
The Struggle (Resistance to Structure) is REAL!
If you have HUGE resistance to Time Management and Structure dear holistic business owner, you’re not alone. This is something I’ve had to work on alot myself and it comes up time and time again with my clients.
It’s quite stereotypical.. creative, spiritual types are known to be quite airy and spacey- the exact opposite to structure, routine and rigidity. So I want to name the elephant in the room before I share my tip with you in case you zone out and think this structure “thing” is not for you.
Perhaps you’ve grown up feeling unskilled at time-management and perhaps you worry that the rigidity will stop you from being able to flow with your intuition and creativity. I hear you. And yet you’re here reading this article. So I hazzard a guess to think that perhaps you feel there’s some aspect of time-management that you need or want in your life.
A Gentle Way to Get Started with Time-Management
The first step to changing any habit/ tendency or long-rooted behaviour is AWARENESS. Becoming aware of your pattern, noticing the impact of the behaviour and filling in the gaps in your awareness- the gap between what you think you do and the evidence of what you actually do.
A gentle easy way to get started with becoming aware of how you spend time so as to inform how you would like to spend time, is to start time-tracking. Time-tracking can also be known as time-logging and it is as unglamourous as it sounds. You could do it in a notebook, in an excel sheet or what I find easiest is in Google Calendar.
Steps to Time Tracking using Google Calendar
- Download the app “BlipBlip” and set a chime to ring at the top of each hour.
- Each hour, write into Google Calendar what you were doing for the past hour.
- You might like to colour code your activities e.g.
- Yellow= TIME IN my business
- Orange= Time ON my business.
- Pink= TIME OFF my business. Leisure, things that fill your cup.
- Grey= Life (cooking, cleaning)
- At the end of each week, look at your calendar and reflect on how you’ve spent your time.
Reflection at the End of Each Week
The purpose of Time Tracking is start you noticing how you’re spending your time so it’s really important to reflect at the end of each week and look at the hard facts. Am I working too much? Am I not working enough? Am I doing enough things to fill my cup and charge me up? Am I spending all my time learning or doing admin? Am I spending enough time on marketing, visibility and relationship building? Reflect. Take the learning and make some adjustments for the week ahead. On we go, step-by-step, habits don’t improve overnight, we just keep chipping away.
I hope this has been helpful to you as a first step in improving your relationship with time-management and time in general!
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By Ciara Bruton, Holistic Business Coach.
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