Are you have trouble finding time to interact and engage with your audience?
If you have a growing business, it might seem overwhelming. There’s writing to do, emails to answer, products to create, speeches to write and more. So how do you make time for a task that you know is important, yet your days are already so full?
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What can you stop doing?
In every one of our lives there are certain things that we do out of habit, not because they are serving us well. I’m sure you could come up with a small list of activities that steal precious amounts of time. You could be spending that same time doing activities that actually grow your business instead.
These might include:
Answering email multiple times a day
Answering personal phone calls during your best hours of the day
Logging in to Facebook or some other social site
Juggling multiple tabs on your computer at once
These activities are a distraction.
They don’t help you move forward. In fact, they take over your schedule and make you feel like you’re not getting anything done, when in reality you’ve been busy all day long.
Instead of trying to stop cold turkey, you might try giving yourself certain permissions. For example, I can only log in to Facebook if I have done 2 audience engaging activities first. If I have not taken the time to engage with my audience and reach out to them, I cannot access my personal Facebook page to “see what’s going on”.
Then once you give yourself permission to log in, set a time limit for how long you can spend there. Then it’s back to work
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Set a daily reminder to engage with your audience.
Just like meetings and events get put on the calendar, daily activities need to be set up as well.
Set a time on your daily calendar, and set up a reminder to alert you. Google calendar has a feature that will pop-up on your computer or mobile phone screen. Or you can have it send you a quick email reminder. No matter what tool you use, the key is to have daily reminders to take even a few minutes to engage.
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Commit to a time to turn off and end engagement.
Being an engaged and personal author or small business owner does not mean your audience can have 100% anytime access to you. You must maintain healthy boundaries. This builds a relationship of respect for one another’s personal time and personal needs.
Taking care of yourself and being emotionally and physically available to those you love and care for at home, while also taking good care of yourself is going to require that you honor a certain time of day when you say- that.is.enough.
Knowing that you have this commitment in place will spur you on to be more focused through out the day when engaging and interacting.
The less you honor your commitment to end engagement each day, the less you will feel productive. No matter how much time you spend working. You have to make a commitment.
The more you honor this, the more you will feel in control and like you’re running a successful and thriving business.
Takeaway:
- Make a list of the things you need to stop doing. Jot down subtle time wasters or unproductive things you do out of habit.
-Set up reminders to keep you focused and on task throughout the day.
-Commit to a time to turn off the business and enjoy other parts of your life!
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