In traditional employment, if you don't immediately have something you have to do, you still have to sit / stand / walk / talk as though you did. You can't just......leave. You can't take a nap, go home and bake cookies, or take yourself out to a movie. You can if you're self-employed.
What freedom!
Except....
Except you're the boss. Which means you're the one that has to ensure that phones get answered, email gets answered, business cards get ordered, bookkeeping gets entered, linens gets laundered, supplies get bought, trade pubs get read. That last sentence was chock-full of the passive voice ("gets answered / ordered / entered", etc.). The beauty of the passive voice is that is avoids saying who is going to do all these things.
You are.
So you've got conflicting realities: the reality that when you have no clients booked you're free to do whatever you want and the reality that because you're self-employed there's always something more that needs to get done. How do you structure a day? All free time or all work time? What are your working hours? When does your day end? When does your day start?
Some of you will remember that I started this blog when, thanks to my husband's job, I lived in Australia for a year (2010-2011). I wasn't practicing massage, I was working on my writing. Talk about a day with NO inherent structure to it!
I created a chart for each week. Each day had 3 categories: morning, afternoon, evening. At the beginning of the week, I wrote down what I wanted to do / accomplish / work on in each segment of the day. I went a step further (because, yes, I am that kind of nerd) and color coded the boxes / tasks. Purple for "work" and blue for "personal". That allowed me to see at a glance whether my week was overloaded one way or the other. Here's an example of what it would look like now.
I can look at this chart and realize Tuesday and Wednesday are very long days. But I also notice that I have a chance in the middle of Tuesday to watch the America's Cup races in the afternoon. I also notice that I plan to get a swim in on Wednesday afternoon while I'm at the gym. So maybe those days are just fine the way they are.
This is one way to bring structure to an un-structured work life. Any other way that works for you is good. You run your own business. Do what makes sense for you (including take a nap in the middle of the day if you want to!).
So I am not the only calendar nerd out there.... :) I have many colors....I like how you have your client time blocked out. New therapists just want to leave their day open and let people land where they want... hmm doesn't work for me. Next thing you know you have said yes to too many people and whatever happen to lunch much less your break... So I teach them to block out their vitals ( food sleep rest) and put client hours around that with a 15 min break in between each session. I made my holes and found people to fill them. they like having the same appointment time every two weeks, I know when I am working and when I am not.
ReplyDelete