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168 Hours – Are you making the most of them?

Leave a Comment / Culture, Entrepreneur, Fun Stuff, Must Read Blogs, Uncategorized / By Cindy Donaldson / July 12, 2018 / breaks, Chart, day, Facebook, hours, jenn donovan, less is more, priority list, red barn consulting, time management, to-do list, todo list, track, Tracking, weeks

We all have the same number of hours in a week, so how is it that some people manage to be so productive, like Gary V, while others can barely manage to check a few items off the to do list. Are we so obsessed with trying to save time and complaining that there is never enough time, that we aren’t focusing on how we are spending our time? Think about that for a second. When you are doing something you don’t like, let’s say running on a treadmill or preparing a report for work that you know no one even reads, how fast does time go by? It crawls. 5 minutes feels like 5 hours. BUT when you are doing something you love, accomplishing things that mean something to you, 5 hours starts to feel like 5 minutes! So, if you like hiking, why are you on the treadmill day after day. If you don’t like your job and its requirements, why are you spending 40 hours a week being miserable?

Laura Vanderkam, who studies Time Management, thinks that time isn’t the issue. \”We don\’t build the lives we want by saving time,\” Vanderkam said in her TedWomen talk in 2016. \”We build the lives we want, and then time saves itself.\”

Some of the most famous business people today never complain that there aren’t enough hours in a day or week, and they probably accomplish more in a week than most of use accomplish in a month. So, what’s their secret? Is it simply because they love what they do, or do they have some magical ninja fairies in their pockets helping them get shit done? Here are a few strategies Vanderkam uses to manage her own time.

Track your time

I once had a boss who had my entire department track our time for over a month. This required filling out a spreadsheet with what we did every minute of every day. How many orders I processed, and how much time I thought those took, phone calls, responding to emails, etc., etc. It got to the point where I was adding in funny stuff to see if he noticed. He didn’t. HOWEVER, you should track your time for one week. It doesn’t have to track every minute but write down things in 30 min. increments. It might feel tedious to start and one more thing you have to do, but you might be surprised at what you discover and where you are actually spending your time. You might find that you spend several hours a week reading articles on Facebook or LinkedIn, yet you’ve been complaining that you haven’t had any time to read some new books.

Take breaks

Your brain cannot function for hours on end on the same task without taking a break. A break some rejuvenate and refresh you. You might find that you THINK you are taking breaks, but scrolling through social media, personal emails, or texting are NOT breaks for your brain – or your body. These breaks aren’t really breaks at all. Doing all those things are fine, and you should plan those in to your day, but you also need to get up, move around, and reboot your brain. Step away from the electronics!

Less is more

When it comes to making a to do list, less is more. Having a short, manageable list is MUCH easier to navigate than pages and pages that cover your whole list of monthly items. A long list = failure. You want to feel accomplished at the end of the day and check off several if not all the items on the list will keep you motivated. This list should be for both work and home – they are equally important.

Your time is your own. How you choose to spend it is up to you. Your boss, spouse, or even kids don’t make that choice for you – you do. You can’t make more time. You can’t put it in an account for a rainy day. Those 24 hours a day, 168 hours a week will get spent regardless. Make every minute count and be on your terms.

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Become a Social Media Master in 20 Minutes a Day

Are you a social media master? Do you spend hours creating a powerful intro, put together the perfect plan, and then post at exactly the right time? Have you conquered Facebook, brought Twitter to your heel, and gotten LinkedIn under control?

At RBC, we live, breathe, and eat social media (yes, our meals are mostly differing shades of blue logos…) And we know that one thing business owners don’t have much (read “any”) of, is spare time. So, here’s a super simple guide on mastering your social media marketing in less time than it takes to cook a delicious Facebook soufflé.

Plan your social media ahead of time. At the start of the month, you’re going to plan what you’re going to promote on social media. Look, we know it’s more fun to wing it, but trust us on this. Look through all of the content you have — Blog posts, articles, videos, image galleries — All those things you’ve put time, effort and a little love into creating. Decide on the marketing themes for each part of the month, and the main points you want to get across.

Put together a social media calendar. Once you know what you’re going to promote, you need to work out the when and how. That means you need a social media calendar. On each day plan out:

What you want to promote.
How you’re going to promote it.
The channel(s) you want to use.

The trick is to strike a balance between posting enough to build momentum, and not posting so much you’re over saturating. The best way to do this is to post your own stuff and also share other useful articles, links, and content from others. That could be through retweeting, sharing, repinning, etc.

Write your social media posts.This one is key — Write your social media posts ahead of time. You can be much more consistent, use similar language, and get into the right mindset to get all the important information across. Remember to slightly repurpose your posts for the social media network you’re using. Your LinkedIn posts are probably going to be a bit more formal than your Facebook ones. Twitter means you’ll need to limit yourself to 140 characters.

Automate your social media posts. You don’t want to sit at the computer waiting for a specific time to post your content. Use an automation suite like Buffer or Hootsuite to automate your social media for you. Now, you shouldn’t completely rely on automation, so switch it up with some personally curated and posted updates as well. Engage people in conversation, and help others feel involved. Make sure you respond to @mentions properly.

Track your social media results. You’ll want to know where you’re getting the most visibility and traction. This means looking at when visitors are coming to your website and responding to your social media marketing. Use Google Analytics and similar tools to see what’s working for your audience, and tweak your marketing approach.

Get a social media expert to help you out. This probably doesn’t come as a surprise, but here at RBC, we’re experts at this stuff. If you don’t have the time, let us do the hard work for you. We’ll audit all your content, put together the perfect social media calendar, promote the heck out of your products and services, and get lots of lovely visitors over to your website.