How much time can you realistically dedicate to your business?

This is the number one thing I did to reduce my overwhelm…

Welcome to Finding Simple & Calm, a place where I share my journey to living a slower life when everything about my life says otherwise. I write about the realities of simple living, motherhood, and being neurodivergent. I’m also passionate about creative small businesses, and I love writing about and teaching methods on how to reduce the overwhelm, spend less time doing the tedious business-y stuff, and more time being creative. I hope you can join me?

Short:

Get realistic about how much time you can actually dedicate to your business.

Can you only work between school hours? Or maybe you have to work certain days because you have another job or commitment? Perhaps you can only work certain weeks, or months because you have other responsibilities you need to take care of.

Sit down with a blank piece of paper, open a calendar in front of you, and write down how many weeks, days or hours you have to FULLY dedicate to your business.

Long:

I used to be terrible for thinking I had more time than I actually do.

After my third baby was born in 2023, I returned to work 40 hours per week. Ok, that’s normal I hear you say. Yes, that’s a normal amount of hours to work a week, BUT, I only had 5 hours of childcare per week 🙃.

The maths didn’t add up, and there’s no wonder I quickly became burnt out and overwhelmed.

Now, I have enough childcare for my working hours and I cannot tell you how brilliant it is to not have mum guilt while I’m working.

This is the number one thing I did to reduce my overwhelm…

I got realistic about how much work I could actually do.

Let me show you how…

Firstly, I worked out how many childcare hours I had.

My older two children were at school for 6 hours Monday to Friday, and baby was at the childminder Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday - 09:30-14:30.

So, realistically I had 5 hours x 3 days to work completely on my own.

I decided to have Monday’s and Friday’s off work to spend with baby and catch up with housework.

So, I had 3 working days per week, but not really 5 hours each day. Let me explain why…

It takes about 15 minutes to drive from the childminders house to home. So that’s 30 minutes per day that I was losing instantly.

Then, I had to factor in my lunch break. I gave myself 30 minutes to feed myself, the dogs and let them out. So now I’m down to 4 hours per day.

4 hours per day x 3 days = 12 hours per week.

12 hours per week is obviously significantly less than the 40 I was previously working, however, I was/ am MUCH happier (even though I’m earning less money) because I’m not overwhelmed.

And that is key!

My work won’t always be like this. Baby will eventually go to school and I’ll have longer to work on my business. But right now, this works for me.

Apply this to your business:

You’ve got to work out what works for you, right now, and be realistic. You can always review it when/ if things change for you.

Think about any commitments you have such as children or other caring responsibilities. Think about any days or times you are unavailable.

Consider your boundaries here too. Are there days or times that you don’t want to work? Perhaps you’d like to have a day or two off per week? Maybe you’d like to only work mornings. Set the boundary now with yourself.

A boundary that I have is that I don’t work on weekends. That is my family time, and I need that time to fill up my cup.

What if your days are always different?

I’d look at the entire month in one go if you can. I do this because I like to see/ factor in any school holidays or training days.

I split my month into weeks and, although my working hours are the same each week, you could put your working hours in each day.

I’d love to know if the hours that you’re working right now are realistic for you. Let me know in the comments.

If you found this helpful, please consider restacking this post to help other creative business owners find me.

Thanks so much!

Speak soon,

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