The other day I was reading an article written by a man. He isn't married and has no children. He mentioned in his article that he was very stressed just from working and doing things for his friends. He felt he had no time for himself. No time to unwind and have fun. I thought to myself, "This guy needs to really figure out what he is spending his time on".
I have a husband to make happy, a house to clean, 3 children to nurture and teach, 2 cars to clean and maintain, a business to grow and that is just to name a few. I'm sure many of you mothers can relate. There are many times when I feel very pressed for time. I asked myself, "How can this man who only has a business and a couple of friends be so stressed and feel he has no time for himself?"
The answer is that we can all get carried away with the little and mundane tasks that get us through our day and forget to look at the big picture, no matter who we are or where we are in life.
So how do we fix this problem?
I recently made a list of all the tasks I do throughout the day. I made a new list for each day for about a week. I estimated how long I thought I was spending on each task. At the end of the week, I took a look at my lists and realized I was wasting quite a bit of time. Can you believe I spent a total of 15 hours checking and responding to emails during that week? That was just email!! Now I know I don't get that many emails. I tend to get sidetracked when I'm reading my email. That is my problem.
What are your time-wasters?
I dare you to create similar lists for yourself for a week and see where you stand. Are there things you can spend less time on? I bet there are some things that can even be eliminated? How important is each task? Which ones are really contributing to your family or your business? Really look at those tasks, does your family or customers/clients really care if you tackle that task, or is it something that could wait for another day?
Scheduling time for ME.
If you want to have time for yourself, you really need to schedule it in. We schedule our work hours, we schedule in time for cooking dinner and spending time with the kids. We even schedule play dates for our children. Why don't we schedule play dates for ourselves? These dates could be just browsing in a mall. They could be taking a bath or reading a book. Whatever it is that you need to help you unwind and feel alive, is what you need to schedule in to your daily calendar. You should be taking at least 15-60 minutes per day for yourself.
You need to schedule these dates in for yourself. You will rarely have a spare hour just pop up where you can decide to take off and do something for you unless you schedule it in.
There are two sides to marketing: the everyday marketing and the larger, overall goal marketing. The daily marketing will involve more immediate concerns for your business along with other things required to keep your business going. Consider Visit this site for more information on , sending out marketing material, and perhaps even coming up with someshort term marketing campaigns.
The longer term marketing and your overall marketing goals will deal with where you want your business to end up in a certain amount of years. This is what you're going towards, and deals with more than just keeping your business going. This deals with figuring out how to expand into different markets or figuring out different ways to keep your business growing.
The problem is that the everyday marketing has a way of blocking out all else. You just have so much on your hands as it is you don't have time to sit back and consider all of those other marketing plans. They aren't needed at this very moment, and so you can avoid thinking about them.
If you do this enough than you might find your everyday tasks not helping your business do any better. If you find yourself competing against a more organized company that has a much more thorough marketing plan you might very well have business start to slip through your fingers. An organized marketing push is always going to do more than ones meant only for the moment.
The best way to avoid this happening to you is to begin each year with an overall goal. Everything you do should be focused around this goal from your major marketing pushes involving postcards or posters to your everyday forms of marketing like Visit this site for more information on , and letterheads.
This way you'll be able to more easily tie all of those everyday activities together, which helps to stay focused without having to devote a lot of time each day to considering your overall marketing. Just doing your everyday marketing will be going towards your overall goal because you already set things up.
Each year you can then reevaluate your marketing and make any changes that are needed to keep yourself on track and be sure you're working towards a set goal.
I would suggest that when deciding on your marketing goals for the year that you make sure to set a goal that is within reason. If you keep giving yourself goals you know you can't reach, you might not really give it your all, because you know you'll never really be able to achieve it. At the same time be sure your goal isn't so easy to gain you once again lose any real motivation or drive.
Your goal needs to be tough but possible, and increase your drive to get your marketing out there and improve your business.
Both Kimberly Reddington & Kate Manheaven are contributors for EditorialToday. The above articles have been edited for relevancy and timeliness. All write-ups, reviews, tips and guides published by EditorialToday.com and its partners or affiliates are for informational purposes only. They should not be used for any legal or any other type of advice. We do not endorse any author, contributor, writer or article posted by our team.
Kimberly Reddington has sinced written about articles on various topics from Energy Healing, Computers and The Internet and SEO Search Engine Optimization. Kimberly Reddington, founder of CereusWomen.com, teaches moms how to turn their skills and talents into a successful home-based service business and to find a balance between work and life. Discover Kim's popular special report by visiting. Kimberly Reddington's top article generates over 49500 views. to your Favourites.