6 Ways to Find Time to Work on Your Vision Venture
Time and money are two of the things that prevent us from reaching our goals and living our dreams. We want to help you reach your business goals that will hopefully help with money, but what about time?
Time may be the reason you want to start your vision venture. You may want to spend more time with your kids, have more time to pursue what you love, or make more time for yourself. We know time is a strong driving force in your journey. But starting your own business probably won’t give you extra time, especially if you already have another full-time job. In fact, you may be wondering how you will even find one extra hour, let alone the extra commitment it takes to devote to your dream.
We are right there with you. We both have full-time faculty positions that don’t leave us much free time throughout the year. So how have we created time to work on TwoPhds? Here are a few of our tips!
1. Wake up early or stay up late.
This may be the first blog post to tell you that you don’t have to get up early for work, unless that works for you. Corey gets up at 5:00 am so she can start working by 5:30 am. She generally gets two hours of uninterrupted work before everyone else wakes up. Corey is 110% a morning person (and goes to bed before 9:30 pm), so her best work is done first thing in the morning. No matter what else happens that day or that week, in two hours a day, or 10 hours a week, Corey spends quality time working on TwoPhds.
Barbie, on the other hand, works better at night. And it works for her! Although she teaches at 8:00 a.m., she often has her best ideas after everyone else goes to bed, and she has uninterrupted time to focus (but the sleep thing for her can be tricky!).
The beauty of this is that it doesn’t matter if you’re a morning person or a night owl. You have to determine when you do your best work and do it then. Your two hours of uninterrupted time will probably be as productive as spending 5-6 hours in the office with all its distractions. Find what works for you!
2. Let someone else do those time-consuming chores.
We loathe going to the grocery store for a lot of reasons: it takes forever, we buy more than we need, and then we still have to go home and unload it all. About a year ago, we started using grocery pickup from every place it was available. Now instead of spending an hour in the store, it takes less than five minutes to get our groceries. This service can save an hour or two each week.
Need even more time? What other chores can you outsource? Maybe you could hire a house cleaner once or twice a month that will give you some valuable time back. Look around and see what someone else can do for you, so you can make more time to pursue your passion.
3. Take a working lunch break.
Back when we had lunch breaks (now, we are typically teaching over the lunch hour), that time was either spent running errands or zoning out. Looking back on those moments, we now see so much that could have been accomplished!
If you do have a lunch break, use that time to either take care of the ‘have-tos’ so you can create more free time, or just skip the ‘have-tos’ and focus on your vision venture! That’s another hour each day of high-quality work time. Get even more out of that hour by packing a lunch so that you just lose a few minutes getting it ready to eat.
4. Stop the social media time suck.
When we would “relax” during movie time or just hang out, we spent it multi-tasking for hours on Facebook, Instagram, and Pinterest. Instead, start keeping track of how much time you are spending on these social platforms daily, and then make an effort to cutback each week. It also helps knowing what you need to accomplish (like writing a blog post on Saturday and Sunday) so that you feel you really earned the downtime.
Did you know you can see how much time you’ve spent scrolling Instagram? So you only use social media when you’re waiting in line or killing time, right? We hate to break it to you, but you’re probably spending way more time scrolling and trolling than you realize. While we may try keep it to a minimum on week days, we noticed that the weekends were rather unproductive.
To see just how much time you spend on each app, Open the “Settings” app in iOS, then choose “Battery.” Make sure you click the clock on the right hand corner.
Yikes, almost 10 hours on Facebook in the past week.
5. Take time each week to plan.
After picking up groceries on Sunday, try spending an hour chopping and prepping ingredients for the week. If you’re like us, there’s not much time to spend cooking once we’re home after a long day (and there are more rewarding ways to spend that time). It is also helpful to prep lunches for the entire week, which saves time and money at work.
Take your planning a step further and discover what else can you knock out on the weekends to make your week days easier. Set aside time to go through your planner or lay out your clothes for the week.
6. Know your limits
While squeezing every extra minute out of your day sounds good in theory, don’t forget about the impact it can have on you. Working a full-time job or raising a family (or both!) can take its toll. Adding in the extra hours it takes to work on your small business can cause serious burnout.
Don’t forget to use some of your ‘extra’ time for yourself. Usually we take one day on the weekend to rest and recharge. Is there something you love to do? Spend at least 30 minutes taking a walk or run, reading before bedtime, or enjoying coffee by yourself in the morning. Take that time for YOU!
The journey to build your own vision venture is exciting, but exhausting. Or maybe working 50+ hours a week for someone else has completely drained you, and that’s why you’re on this journey. Burnout is real, and it is something we will be talking more about in the next few weeks. While we haven’t figured it all out yet either, we look forward to having you join us on this journey!