Briar

Welcome back everybody to our podcast. Today we are going to be talking all about balancing our schedules and how to find that ideal mix of where we spend our time every week.

So Lia, why don't you take us away with this one and talk a little bit about what that ideal mix might look like, how we go about finding it, and we will jump off from there.

Lia

Yeah, so I think, you know, when we're talking about balancing the schedule, there's lots of different techniques out there that you've probably heard about, things like time blocking or choosing your top priority for the day.

And I think those are all really, really valuable things to consider when you're looking at how to make your schedule feel a little bit more balanced in your work.

And so certainly not to discount those ideas, and I think they have a lot of value, even in the framework that we're about to talk about, but the Clockwork framework sort of takes us inside the types of tasks that we're doing and finding a better balance of those tasks.

So in every industry, no matter what you do, you're going to be doing four types of tasks. Doing tasks, these are the tasks that really run your business. They're answering the emails, doing your inventory, teaching classes in the case of a dance studio, teaching your dance classes, those types of day-to-day doing tasks.

And there's going to be the Deciding tasks where you spend that time making decisions about things. Do we want a purple t-shirt or a red t-shirt? Do we want to give a discount or not a discount? How am I going to respond to this parent, for example. 

The Delegation tasks, a really true delegation of passing off a task and getting somebody else true trained in how to do that task so that they're doing it correctly and they're not coming back to you needing all the decisions made. So you're truly taking the time to delegate those tasks. 

And then finally the Designing tasks. This is the time you spend in your business designing how you want it to look, how you want it to be. So maybe you're creating new programs for your dance studio or something along those lines. It's really that high level visioning work that you do in your business.

And all four of these areas need to happen in your business. There's a need for all of these to be there. So it's not about one of these things being more important than the other or being of higher value than the other.

But there really is an ideal, the team at Clockwork, found an ideal mix for these four tasks for your company in general.

And that is that 80% of the time in your company should be spent in that doing area. These are the tasks that are keeping your business rolling and moving and open day to day. 

Then just 2% of the time in the deciding area. This is not a super constructive way to spend our time. There's obviously decisions that will need to be made, but we want to try to make the decisions as infrequently as possible so that things are running more smoothly. 

And 10% of your time in the delegation phase and 10% of your time in the designing phase.

Now, this is the ideal mix that the Clockwork team discovered for the company as a whole. This includes everyone working in your business or if you're a solopreneur. It doesn't necessarily mean it's going to be the best mix for you individually as an entrepreneur, a dance studio owner, but as the company as a whole.

So it's really interesting when we work with people through the Clockworking process, we're time tracking and really looking at what everyone in their company is doing so we can see where they land in this mix as a company but also individually and looking at their individual goals right of where they want to be in their company do they want to be in a certain you know out of the company or in that just in that visioning designing role more than we're going to work towards shifting that balance of their schedule. 

But what I love about this model is that regardless of where you want to be in your company you can look at these four areas of work and really see what am I spending most of my time on and is it the most productive use of my time for my business at this stage and with the team that I have. And then you can start shifting that time around a little bit until you find the right balance in the right mix for you and your business.

Briar

I really love all of that because absolutely everything we do will fall into one of those four categories. So if we do enjoy block scheduling like I do it makes it a little bit easier  to sort of lock our time based on how much of our time during the week we want to spend in each of those four categories.

But then also, if we're looking at it by job role, then like you said, we can work on setting some goals to shift the percentages in that.

So for instance, if you are the CEO of your company and right now you're spending 80% of your time doing tasks, but you want to move more into that design phase. And as the CEO, we want to create time and space for you to have that entrepreneurial mindset and come up with new and brilliant plans and ideas and visions for your business, then we can really start editing and changing the things that you are doing in your time tracking to slowly move you more into 80% designing and only 10% doing in them that deciding in the delegating could still stay the same if we wanted it to, right?

So it gives us this framework to use as a guideline to help plus sets and goals and set new directions for the company as a whole, but also each individual.

Lia

Exactly. And it's nice when we're maybe just sitting down on our own looking at our schedule and saying I'm feeling unbalanced, I feel like I don't have time to do all of this work in my business to say, okay, well, where am I spending my time?

And am I hitting all of these areas, right? I think it's really easy for us to get roped into the doing work and then we don't give ourselves enough time to design, right? And then when it comes to thinking, okay, I need to put out a new product or I need to put out something new in my business in order to generate more revenue, let's say, and then you're trying to squeeze it into all the, in between all the doing tasks, so like you said, Briar, think it's great to look at our schedules and when we're trying to find that balance and say  “where can I fit in some design time? Where can I fit in the doing time?” If you have somebody to delegate to you, where can I fit in that delegation time, right?

And use those other principles of block scheduling or time blocking to help implement these four different areas of work into your schedule and finding that balance because your business can't run without all of these. So, on the flip side, sometimes you find entrepreneurs who are living completely in the design world and they're not doing enough of the doing, right? And the doing isn't happening in their business. so that implementation of the design doesn't happen and it doesn't translate for their business.

So we need to make sure all of these areas are hit and using that time blocking is a really great way to think about it. Of let's build in some time blocked design time, turn off your distractions.

You can really focus on that. And then let's build in the doing time, the delegation time, and the deciding time.

Briar

Yeah. And I think, too, having everybody in your company doing that time tracking also really allows us to see, based on their job role, are they doing enough of each of those things, like you mentioned?

And do we have that overall balance? So for instance, a manager in your business might be spending the majority of their time deciding and delegating, and not doing as much, and not designing as much. And that's OK because that is more along the lines of their job role. But like you said, being able to see as a whole.

And we have a tool for this. We have a tool as part of our time tracking that then we can put in everybody's 4D mix. And then it will show us how much percentage we're all doing as a whole. as a whole team and individually in each of these four areas.

So I know sometimes time tracking can get a bad rap, but this is sort of the bigger picture of time tracking and what it allows us to do for the business.

Lia

Exactly. And time tracking is so important because so much of your time goes to places you might not realize it, or you might be spending just time doing things you're not aware of or time things take too much time or take longer than you think they do.

So really analyzing your time in a detailed way and applying these four different types of work to the tasks that you're doing can really give you a great understanding of where your time is going and how you're working your business and can really help you step back and look at that balance and figuring out a schedule and a workload that makes sense for you and make sense for your business in the stage that you're at. 

So this is a great tool to use.

If you want to learn more about it, if you want to access our time tracking tool, please feel free to reach out to us.

You can find us at thebalancedentrepreneur.ca or on Instagram or Facebook.