Balance Your Life
Frankensteining 101
You’ve heard me mention that you can (and should) Frankenstein (alter to your liking) your work-life balance system. You should never sit there and look at my schedule and copycat it for yourself.
That’s not how this works.
Every single successful guru has a completely unique schedule.
There are some guys who sleep 4 hours a night – and work 100% of the time other than that. You have to feel sorry for their wives and kid.
Other gurus make so much more money – but they travel a lot and outsource anything they can, basically just managing their empire – very well.
Some marketers use one PC while others have 3-5 computers on their desk so they can multitask.
Everyone’s different. You can learn from other people’s personal work-life balance tips, but what the goal is – is for you to take that and say, “Hmm – that person can get away with that, so I’m going to do this particular thing THIS way – just because I want to.”
I want you to feel freedom in managing your work and life, not stuck like glue to some stringent schedule somebody else dreamed up. If that’s what you want, why not just go out and get a regular job?
If there’s one thing I’ve learned from spying on marketers who I admire, it’s that they can laugh about their own ridiculous “systems” and the way they go about accomplishing goals.
It’s never a straight line. There are always zig zags, obstacles, and a dash of self-doubt they have to overcome. Have you ever considered that perhaps procrastination can be beneficial? Sounds backwards, doesn’t it? Well, it actually works for some people. So, forget about “BEATING procrastination.” Embrace it!
As marketers have admitted, one thing is clear: we all have such totally different circumstances, talents, and thresholds for tolerating exhaustion that we need to each be kind to ourselves and push ourselves enough so that we feel accomplished, but not to the brink of insanity.
Do You Suffer from a Lack of Support?
Trying to run your own business and balance the rest of your life is hard without help. But it is doable – and there are many other people going it alone, too (sometimes even when they have someone living with them)!
Lack of support doesn’t necessarily mean single. It means alone.
You can be surrounded by people and be left to handle everything on your own – the business, the cleaning, the care-taking of kids, and so on.
So the first thing we have to do is accept that you’re going to be working solo here – and then set boundaries for those who unintentionally (or intentionally) set out to interrupt your time (aka: your success).
We have to stop blaming other people about who isn’t helping. You can’t change other people – you can only change how you handle your life, so in this case, you have a TON to get done in both your business and personal life – and not a lot of time to do it.
We start there.
It’s going to require you to have reasonable expectations. No thinking you’re going to whip up a 60-page report in one day or become Martha Stewart for your home life in just 5 hours.
It’s fine to set high goals, but not to the point that you feel frustrated and like a failure if you can’t reach them.
You really need to sit down and plan it out. Don’t create a goal to produce a new course in 5 days if you expect it to be 60 pages and you can only write 5 pages a day. But some people don’t do the math. Sometimes it’s good to underestimate yourself on paper so that if you get more done, you feel really good about what you did.
I want you to write out some staples about what you have to get done each day. Here is a sample of my Staple Tasks list some days (I change mine up every morning when I write out my to do list for the day):
1. Play or spend time with my kids.
2. Take a long, hot bath.
3. Do the dishes.
4. Do the laundry.
5. Pick up the living room floor.
6. Answer emails.
7. Create a blog post for one of my blogs.
8. Do 5 pages a day for ghostwriting client.
9. Write one section or page of one of my products.
10. Read a page of one of my self-help/leadership books.
11. Visit someone else’s blog, a forum or web 2.0 site to interact.
This is an example of what you might have to get done that day.
And yes, it looks silly to have to write down, “take a long, hot bath,” but it’s something you might enjoy at the END of your day, and if your day is looking harried, then it becomes all too tempting to just take a quick shower instead - and miss out on your pampering baths. So, it has to have a firm spot on the list.
Everything on the list you can get done each day. Now if you have more tasks, you will add those to my To Do list – but these staples have to get done, so you start on those at the very beginning of my day – as soon as you flip on the coffee pot.
Don’t worry about who else in the family is going to do what. Only worry about you and your tasks. If you have kids who have chores, then you might jot a note down to yourself to remind the kids to do their chores.
If you know for a fact that you can’t get it all done and you’re feeling especially unnerved by that, then you have options. You can have a talk with your partner to divvy up the household tasks.
Don’t make it your responsibility to oversee the chore list. That takes time away from your productivity. If things aren’t getting done, have a once a week talk to go over any problem areas, but leave it alone during work hours.
You also need to set boundaries for people who believe that “work at home” means “sit at home doing nothing.” You might have already had your fair share of those gems.
You may not need to go to the extreme of kicking them out of your life. You might have friends who drop by without calling. REALLY annoying. Would they have dropped by your office as frequently, interrupting your meetings? No.
One woman ended her friendship with a marketer because the marketer wouldn’t watch her kid during the day. “Well, you’re HOME,” she said. Yes, lady – she’s home WORKING, not making herself available to be your babysitter!
Good riddance.
People will call. They’ll drop by. They’ll ask for “favors” because you’re “home.” You have to start learning how to get out of all of that. For starters, don’t answer the phone if you have an interrupter who is insensitive about your work time. If you need to, text them and say, “Can’t chat now – working – will call later.”
Don’t open the door if they pop in. Boundaries, people!
Don’t worry about hurting other people’s feelings. This is your life and your career we’re talking about.
Have a go-to excuse that you use with everyone who tries barging in on your time.
Like … the WEBINAR.
People who are not fellow marketers look very intimidated by this word. They ask if you can run an errand and you say, “Oh I can’t – I’m co-hosting a webinar!” and they look confused, and back away slowly. It sounds technical.
If they DO ask, then you just say, “It’s for another marketer – she needed a co-host and we teach her group various marketing lessons through an online live event.” They don’t need the details.
Yes, it’s a lie. If you feel guilty lying then just tell the truth. To me, this is a little white lie. I’m working. That’s all they need to know. But that’s not good enough for some people, so instead of saying, “I have to whip up a blog post,” which they’ll assume you can do later, I just make it a scheduled live event.
If they don’t give me an exact time, then I say, “I have several webinars coming up – when is it?” When they say 5 PM Tuesday, darn! I have a webinar at 5 PM Tuesday. J Look out for #1, people!
Crafting Your To-Do List
Now that we have the support system in place (or not in many cases), you have to learn how to literally create your to do list. This is where some of you are salivating, thinking you’re going to get some genius literal secret map – not happening.
I’m going to share my to do list creation tips with you, and then you take it from there.
Your day should ideally consist of half-life, half work, right? Oh, and a lot of sleep for good measure – because without good sleep, the rest of your entire day is toast.
You won’t function well and because you’re dragging professionally, it’s going to eat into your personal time.
So before you do anything, figure out if you have sleep issues (we all do sometimes), and find a way to get the maximum amount of sleep you need (that might mean 5-7 hours or 9-10 hours a night).
You can use any tools you want to create your to do list. Some people like a spiral. In fact, you might like a clean NEW spiral. For some reason, once they start getting ratty and worn down where there are about 7 sheets of paper left, you might feel like you need a fresh one – and at $0.99, it works for a marketer on a budget.
Perfect timing – I just got an email from Nicole Dean where she posted her Expert Briefs blog of the day. Todays was about how the experts manage their calendar.
In the post, Nicole remarks about how surprised she is that so many of these six figure marketers use pen and paper. She’s talking about calendars, not to do lists, but I love how she said, “One last thing. My “to do” list is not electronic. I keep that separate on paper. So, I am old fashioned in that way.”
I think many of us like the pen and paper route.
Open your to do spiral (or Excel spreadsheet or whatever you’re using) and divide it into two columns. You can use one column if you want, but you might like having two.
On the left side of the page, it should say “Work” and on the right side, “Home.” Now home might mean everything not work – from errands to kid stuff to cooking and cleaning.
You can go down the left side of the page first and write, in priority listing, what has to get done that day. Then move on to things you hope can get done that day. But don’t just write, “5 pages of ghostwriting for Joe.”
Instead, write it like this:
· Joe – page 1
· Joe – page 2
· Joe – page 3
· Joe – page 4
· Joe – page 5
· Blog post on Covert Messenger Pro Review
· Set up PLR discount
· Email list with review and discount
Going back to mindset – which do you think would make you feel better if you only got 4 out of Joe’s 5 pages done for the day? Would you feel better being able to cross off 4 items? Or having to leave all of it uncrossed because you lacked finishing up the last page?
You want to feel driven and successful – it breeds more of the same. Just as beating yourself up does. Enjoy seeing 4 items marked off and knowing you only have that last page to finish.
Sometimes you can look at it and see the visual portion – see it as, “Well I already got those 4 items done, 1 more won’t kill me,” so you put your nose back to the grindstone and finish it up.
On the right side of the page, write the home or life tasks that you want or need to get done. It might look like this today:
· Dishes
· P/U living room (P/U stands for pick up)
· Vacuum
· Cook dinner – grilled cheese and fries
· Laundry
· Bath
Today there are no errands, but some days it might put “post office” or “store” on there. Once you have my list made up, simply go from one side to the other, literally balancing out your day.
As you finish a task up, cross it off.
On your list, have all things you know you will finish today in full. There is no overflow. Otherwise, you would prioritize and work your way from the top down.
List any outsourcing tasks on there because otherwise you might forget – and it is a task that consumes a bit of time.
On the right side, all you might get done is laundry. But in between these pages, you’ll get more done as the day wears on.
By the time your day is done today, you’ll be feeling pretty good. Your living room will be all clean, dishes and laundry will be finished, and you’ll have dinner for your kids! And you might even have snuck in a bit of relaxation, too. Not to mention all of the work tasks.
Pretty productive!
And that doesn’t include the socialization and emails you might do. You may or may not write that on your list. Some people actually consider social networking part of their “break time.” Work time is all the content creation, research, etc.
Going out on web 2.0 sites is like an office worker who stands up to stretch and walks around chatting with others.
There’s another way that you can write out your to do lists, because sometimes there’s a big task that needs to be broken down. If you want the whole kitchen clean, for example, you have a main category and sub-tasks, like this:
Kitchen
Dishes
Counters
Sweep
Mop
Clean out fridge
Empty trash
Bathroom
Mirror
Counter
Toilet
Floor
Tub
Trash
So, when you have an entire room to do like this, you will break it down JUST like we did “Joe’s ghostwriting pages” in individual tasks. It feels GOOD to have gotten the dishes, counters, sweeping and mopping done and cross all of those off.
The fridge? It can go on tomorrow’s list if you haven’t completed it yet.
This is also a great system for just keeping track of what you need to get done. Of course, every day you’ll have to add dishes back in, but not sweeping and mopping. You can substitute the fridge for that the next day.
On your to do list, chances are you’ll put the daily things that have to get done in life – the dishes, for example. But what about those bigger projects like deep cleaning or scanning or organizing a big box of photos?
You want to remember that old saying, “How do you eat an elephant? One bite at a time.”
Tackling big projects like this just requires you to break it down into small steps and put it on your “Home” side of your to do list.
Someone actually submitted “box of photos” as an example of what they can’t seem to get done. You may have one of those boxes yourself – and it’s been giving you the stink eye for a couple of years now.
So, you figure now is a good time to tackle it. What you can do is put on your home list one day: buy photo boxes. And for that day, that’s all you do in regards to that project – buy one for each child in the family or however you want to organize them (by year, event, etc.).
Another day you put “Sort handful of pictures.”
Done – one day you literally grab a handful, and on your break, sort it into boxes for however you are organizing them in groups.
Once those are sorted, break the task into “scan” tasks like this: “Scan five pics of each kid and upload to Shutterfly.”
Done.
Eventually, the whole box gets sorted through. Is it all done in a day – or even one week? No. Takes a little time for big projects like this. But you’ll love seeing progress made on big projects because eventually, it will be done.
So let’s talk about deep cleaning. Take dusting for example. You would break dusting up like you did your kitchen list previously, only this time you would have it look like this:
Dust House
Dust ceiling fan blades in den
Dust ceiling fan blades in master bedroom
Dust blinds in living room…and so on
Every time you took a break, you would get up and eat a bite of that elephant. Make a list of what kind of deep cleaning you want to do in each room of the house. Then add it into your to do list – a little each day.
Short of saving up to hire some cleaning services, this is just how it has to be done by entrepreneurs who lack some work-life balance. You’ll feel much better getting some things done each day than getting nothing done and feeling like crap about it.
You can do the same for your big Internet Marketing tasks on the “Work” side of your to do list. Let’s take the task of creating a blog post as our example. For someone who blogs frequently, you may not need to break it up.
For others who struggle to get it done, it might need to be done in steps like this:
Create a Blog Post
Choose blog post topic (use competitor spying, forums, keyword tools to get ideas)
Outline 5 main points for post
Write introduction
Write 1st main point
Write 2nd main point
Write 3rd main point
Write 4th main point
Write last main point
Write the conclusion
Gather curated information – quotes, backup sources, pics, video, etc. and insert into blog
Preview blog post for errors
Schedule or post it live
Tweet, G+ and FB blog URL
Share blog URL with email subscribers
Let’s go over a few other work-related examples so that you know how to manage both personal and life to do list creation.
Working on a Ghostwriting Project
Conduct research to create outline for the product
Write the introduction
Chapter 1 – page 1
Chapter 1 – page 2
Chapter 1 – page 3
Chapter 1 – page 4
Chapter 1 – page 5 (and so on through the end of the book)
Proofread draft copy
Send to client
Send final invoice
Creating a Tangible Affiliate Product Review
Pick a product to review (based on bestseller lists, keyword volume, trends)
Jot down main talking points (what consumers care about in this product, like parents care about safety with toys for toddlers or cooks care about whether or not a mixer can handle pizza dough)
Look up manufacturer specs on the product
Write introduction
Write about safety (or list each main talking point in a separate bite-sized chunk)
Mention any cons about the product and have rebuttal to them
Compare the product to 1-2 others in general
So let’s do a sample scenario for someone who isn’t me. Let’s call her Jenny.
Jenny is a work at home Mom of a toddler named Trevor. She is ghostwriting to pay the bills and feels like she can’t ever get to her own projects because they don’t generate fast enough money like ghostwriting does.
She wants to work from home to be a good Mom and have more time with her child, but she feels like she’s not doing a good job caring for her house or family because she’s always ghostwriting.
Jenny can benefit from learning how to balance her work and life together. First, she needs to slowly raise rates on her ghostwriting – even $1 per page at a time – so that she can free up some of her 24 hours.
She needs to get herself and her child on a good sleep schedule so that she feels rested each day and the little one isn’t cranky. Let’s say Jenny wake up at 7 AM every day and goes to bed at 10 PM.
Right now, she has 3 work clients for ghostwriting. She also wants to create her own Kindle book about gardening, a passion of hers. She started a blog on gardening some time back, but it has sat neglected for months.
As soon as Jenny gets up, she should craft her to do list for the day. Hopefully, she will have given herself a cushion of time to get the projects delivered to the customers. If new customers come to her, she puts them on her schedule for a later date – once she knows she’ll have these current projects off her plate.
Let’s look at a sample of how her to do list might look:
Work Home
John – page 1 Get Trevor dressed
John – page 2 Give Trevor breakfast
Rob – page 1 Clean the kitchen
Rob – page 2 Paint with Trevor
Seth – page 1 Do a load of laundry
Kindle Book – page 1 P/U living room
Research & outline garden blog post Plant garden with Trevor
Take pics of garden for blog post Give Trevor a bath
Write blog post and publish Start dinner
This is a small sampling of what Jenny could have on her to do list. The key is that she chose a niche she’s passionate about in real life. She can combine time with her family with work, using the topic of gardening to bond with her son and profit in a niche she enjoys.
The schedule has her writing 6 pages a day – including one for her own Kindle book. On days she has less ghostwriting, she will fill in those spots with her own Kindle creation.
No matter how many clients she has, she will always be one of them who gets a spot every single day. Now it might take her 25 days to create a short eBook for Kindle, but it’s 25 days, not never.
At the same time, she’s met her ghostwriting obligations, she’s blogging and building traffic there, and her time with her son is sample. Her house is even tidy. If she wanted to add some “deep cleaning” tasks on there, she could. Or she could add some continuing education to her Work side.
Now what you need to do is take the example and swap out Jenny’s tasks with your own. You might be working as a graphics designer who is an affiliate marketer for Amazon products, and wants to create your own info product for ClickBank.
Break those elephants into bite-sized pieces.
And maybe you’re not a parent at all, but your home tasks would include yard work or exercise or renovating your home! It will all fit – just break it down into little baby steps.
In Between Your To-Do List
Now here’s really where the magic happens. We just mentioned how some consider socialization their break time. I want to explain break times to you because they’re what help you eat away at those larger tasks in the previous section.
You have your MAIN to do list with tasks on it.
As you’re completing those tasks, you take little unplanned breaks all throughout the day. They include:
· Getting up to get a drink of water (or a Coke)
· Going to the restroom
· Chatting on the phone with a friend
· Standing up to stretch because you’ve been sitting too long
Do this stuff all day – but make it productive. Don’t just stand up and slowly shuffle into the kitchen to pour yourself a glass of ice water.
When you stand up, glance around the room. Your task might be to pick up the living room. So, you might see on the floor:
· Your son’s sneakers
· Some Halloween décor you took down but haven’t put back in the attic yet
· Your daughter’s library books
· A hanger
· A pillow from the couch
· A game controller
· Someone’s sweatpants
As you get up to get that glass of water (or stand up or talk on the phone), walk around doing a few of those little items right away. As soon as you stand up, grab the books and put them in her room. Grab the sweat pants and hanger and toss them into the laundry area.
Get your water, sit back down and work some more. During another break, grab something else – the pillow, the game controller – get a snack, sit down and work.
If you want a longer break, you might do one of my entire “Home” tasks, like clean the entire living room or kitchen at once. But this honestly might wear you down – tire you out more. So, some people rarely do it this way.
You might like doing a little bit here, a little bit there in EVERYTHING.
A half a page of ghostwriting, with a break to pick up a few things, back to the page – finish it up and cross it off and break again – finish picking up the items off the floor – cross the task off your list that says “P/U living room.”
Doing your schedule this way allows you to get a lot done – in both your home and work life. You FEEL good. You feel like you’re productive. You’re happy.
Are all of your breaks work breaks? Nope. But even then, you can multi task.
If you have Netflix on your smartphone, you can go out in the laundry room to fold towels, for example. Pull up NetFlix and turn on your favorite TV series or movie and watch a bit while you fold towels. Just one scene at a time. You might love how NetFlix picks you up right where you left off. You’ll feel entertained all day.
Or you bring the towels into the living room and turn on TV to watch something You can record on Tivo and play it back - get entertainment and relaxation while working. A little bit. Not a ton. Enough to sustain you.
Sometimes you want or need more relaxation. So, on your break you do nothing but sit and veg out and relax – no multi-tasking. You have to listen to your body and your mental state – what do you need in that moment?
During those low moments in life when you’re going through a crisis like a divorce or major health crisis? When you feel like crying? Use a break to cry for a few minutes. Then dry your eyes, blow your nose and get back to work.
I think you’ll find that as you chip away at your tasks, you’ll be able to feel less panicked or defeatist about what you get done each day and those times when you DO need more of a break, you can take them without guilt – because you know that during other times, you’re working at full throttle – giving both your business and your personal life everything you have to give.
Dealing with Distractions
Distractions are different for everyone. Some people are capable of working with the TV on, the kids playing video games loudly, people talking – you name it. Maybe you’re the type who needs peace and quiet.
I suggest you get some sort of white noise going. You need to train yourself to work amid house sounds – the kinds I just listed above. Maybe that includes a dog barking.
There’s even a white noise online free site you can use called Coffitivity. Turn it up or down. Maybe train yourself to work with it louder and louder over time. That way your family making noise won’t be a bother to you.
And not every day will be identical to you. Some days, it’s all you can do to muster up some focus, so if you need to shut off the TV because the Real Housewives of Beverly Hills drama is just too tempting and you keep wanting to glance over at it, turn it off.
I mean, sometimes we have to have some discipline, right? Tivo is great because you can watch it whenever. And you know that during one of your breaks, you can watch a “scene” and see what all the fuss was about.
Some people consider their partner or spouse a distraction. This sometimes has a lot to do with the fact that the other person doesn’t understand that you’re working. I mean, they hear you say it, but they don’t “get” that it means they shouldn’t interrupt you.
You might have even thought about showing up to their office 5 times in a day to pop in and ask them things like, “What do we have to eat?” or “Do you know where the remote is?” LOL!
I can just see the faces when you show up to their office to do these things. But if you don’t want to go to those lengths, then you might need to find a different method.
Personally, I would suggest you go to the person and spend a few minutes of quality time. Then get up and say, “Okay I’m going to finish an important project that needs my full focus, so do you need anything before I get started?”
Then if they interrupt, I would train them to wait by saying, “Sorry I’m in mid-project – it’s going to have to wait until I’m done.” Make them wait. They will learn to figure out what they need before you get started, when you so kindly offer to be available to them.
Will they get flustered at first that you’re not at their beck and call?
It’s possible. But if you want to change things, you need to stand firm and work out a plan with them. Emphasize how you need to not be interrupted every 5 minutes for tasks they can do on their own, like look in the fridge or search for the remote.
What about your kids? They need you. They won’t understand. Parents might just want to be there for them - don’t ever shut your kids out. Ever. You might work in the living room, where your child’s gaming systems are and their toys are.
So your daughter might tell you about a rubber band bracelet she’s making. She gets frustrated and feels like quitting, so one 2-minute pep talk later, you’re back to writing and she’s back to playing.
You won’t get these precious years back, so if your child wants to spend some time with you, put the keyboard down and give them some attention for a short while.
You won’t regret choosing your kids over work. Money-wise, schedule-wise - you would have liked to have it finished your work earlier. But nothing – and I mean nothing – comes before the needs of your kids to spend time with you.
In the early stages – as you’re building your online business, there’s a cost for your success. You might have to work more – harder – than you ever have before.
But just keep in mind what we talked about earlier – what’s driving you to create this? You don’t want to sacrifice that very thing (like time with your kids) for the months or years it takes you to reach a certain level of success.
How to Run Your Business When You’re Sick
Being sick is horrid. It can sabotage both your work and your life because when you’re sick with more than a little cold, you don’t feel like working. And if we’re being honest, your work would probably suck anyway.
So the best thing you can do when you get hit with a really bad sickness like the flu is to do minimal work (answer customer service emails, for example), and turn off the computer and let your body have those 2-3 days it needs to get better so that you can function.
I hope you know the difference between feeling a little ick and truly being sick like where you feel like a truck just ran over you. Because just as most office workers have to get their rear into their cubicle with the sniffles, you should be working on your business, too.
When you do get really hit hard, even if you have a project due to a client, just be honest with them. Tell them you’re extremely sick and don’t want to work like that because the deliverables wouldn’t be up to par.
You probably won’t have anyone complain. They much prefer that to you not answering emails or lying about it.
After 2-3 days, when you feel human and functional (not 100%), you get back to work and finish what you had on your plate.
You might not be the only sick person in this equation, either. When your kids are sick, you have to take care of them. Take breaks to make chicken noodle soup, check on them, and comfort them. And understand that you might need more breaks than usual.
Sometimes that means putting the keyboard down and holding a sick child. You cherish those moments and do it. Never put work first.
Look at some of your really busy friends in the world. They’re maxed out every which way you turn. Their own activities, their kids’ activities – they never rest or slow down.
Their kids are often bratty and wild. Don’t you feel like the lack of down time – the lack of cuddle moments and just “availability by mom or dad” has just gotten out of control?
So when their kids are sick and everything slows down, their kids want them to hold them constantly. If you’re available, your kids won’t act so desperate to cling to you all of the time.
As an entrepreneur, don’t become unavailable. Not to your kids or to yourself. One of the reasons why you chose this career was probably so you didn’t have to choose between work and life – you wanted both, so give yourself time to enjoy and nurture both.
I want you to learn how to enjoy your career, and that means you have to stop being a perfectionist. Allow yourself flexibility in both your personal life and your work routine.
Whether you want to be the “egg timer” strict schedule marketer with rigid time chunks who uses lots of online organization tools - or you find that you enjoy the laid back, pen and paper, pick and choose what you do marketer – it’s right if it feels right to you.