4 Schedule Management Hacks to Help Do More with Less Stress

If you’ve been following along for a while, you’ve seen a slight evolution in my business including a recent total revamp in my services and how I structure my client work. Well, I am excited to say that the client work side of my business is going amazing and I am busy with work I love. In fact, I’m probably the busiest I’ve ever been in my business’ history (with actual work, not ‘busy work to distract myself from what I don’t want to do’). My boyfriend and I joke that this is the most he’s seen me work since we’ve been dating, and to be honest, that’s totally true.

Luckily I love the work I am doing, I’m obsessed with my client’s and their businesses, and I’m pumped every day to sit down and create. But, regardless of all that enthusiasm, it’s still a heavy schedule to maintain with lots of moving parts (and due dates) to manage.

Here are four tricks I’ve been using to help manage my schedule that might help you with your own.

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WRITE WEEKLY TASKS/OBJECTIVES

I love a cute stylish notebook as much as the next office-supply junkie, but lately I’ve been really into the old school Steno Books. Like the kind your grandparents probably used to have lying around. I like them for the double columns because I can set weekly tasks for clients on one side and weekly tasks for myself/my business on the other.

At the start of each week, on Monday, I go through all my client’s Asana and/or Trello boards as well as Slack groups and write down everything that is necessity that week. Even if it’s a tiny project that I could do in 15 minutes right then and there, I still write it down. I separate it per client and just fill up the left side of my Steno.

On the right side I write my tasks for the week, which stay pretty much the same: answer emails, write/schedule a blog post and a newsletter, update my SmarterQueue and Tailwind with the latest blog, and any meetings I might have.

I like to see the big picture and know if it’s a week of a lot of smaller tasks (like last week) or a week of a few big tasks (like this week). It helps me to mentally prepare, roughly envision when would be good days to go to the gym versus a run, what day I can try to schedule a sister-date, etc.

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SET A SCHEDULE EACH DAY

I don’t designate (fully) what items go on which day until the morning of. Sometimes I get a little mercurial and have a day where my mood is shot and I feel unmotivated. Sometimes I work for 12 hours straight and forget to take a sip of water. Though the goal is to obviously find a happy medium in there, I don’t like to contain my days beforehand.

So each day when I sit down to get started I view the list and pull 2-3 things from it that I feel inspired to work on that day. I’ve noticed I am surprisingly upbeat and ready to work Mondays (I think because I’ve been not working during the weekends as much) and I usually can knock out a big chunk of the to do list in one day – a lot of the tasks for my own business and a handful of smaller, quick tasks for clients.

I designate which ones are the tasks I’ll focus on, but I keep the weekly task list visible so that I can work ahead and do more if I feel so inclined. Sometimes during a mid-day lull I’ll cross off easier tasks that require less brainpower and I definitely make a point to cross through them on the list and give myself the visible ‘pat on the back’ that I’ve accomplished things.

"I love the act of physically crossing items off my to do list - it feels so complete!" [tweet that!]

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TURN OFF NOTIFICATIONS

When I am working through the to do list, something that has been hard for me to totally accept doing (though I know it’s important) is to turn off notifications. Most of my clients and I communicate via Slack, so I get those notifications all the time. Plus I can just be a chatty Cathy and message people silly things or random questions. I also have a newly invigorated excitement for Facebook lately, so I keep finding myself on there in the middle of the day.

I realized I needed to turn off notifications to avoid all these distractions in my life. So I did. I muted notifications from Slack and my phone and everywhere else. I realized that no one would explode if I don’t answer his or her email immediately. And you know what? It’s worked!

Now I still check my email throughout the day, I’m not quite at the level of ‘once in the morning and once at night’ or anything (though, #goals). But I have stopped looking every five seconds and I have definitely stopped scrolling through Facebook with reckless abandon reading random click bait articles that show me the ten signs I’m a Pisces (besides the fact that I was born on March 1st) or whatever.

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TAKE STRETCH BREAKS

All the other tricks are so work work work oriented, which is fine, but I do want to point out that I take breaks. A lot. I get up, I walk outside (the weather has been gorgeous lately in Charleston), I do some quick yoga flows, I walk down the street and grab a coffee… I definitely take breaks.

And I think you should too.

I’ll be straight up with you – I know what it is like to burn out in your business and I want to avoid ever feeling like that again. It sucked. I am doing everything in my power to avoid feeling like that, and taking a break is definitely part of it.

I am not the greatest at following this mentality, but I am trying – and you are never to busy for self care! So if you are the type of person who won’t stop for anything – write it in your schedule at the beginning of the day to stop, drink some water, walk around, etc. It’s just as important as writing your newsletter, or whatever else you have on your to do list.

"Stopping and taking breaks needs to be an important part of your daily to do list." [tweet that!]

And that’s it! That’s what I’ve been doing each week and each day to power through and support multiple clients with their businesses as well as maintain my own. What are some tricks you use in your business to manage your schedule (and stress)? Let me know in the comments below!

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SmarterQueue: The New Tool That Is Saving Me Hours On Social Media

SmarterQueue is a social media scheduling tool that works fantastically well for people like me - busy creative entpreneurs. I’ve gone back and forth between different social media scheduling programs for a while. I kept finding issues with one or another that would frustrate me and make me want to jump ship. Either it was too expensive, or it didn’t have recycling posts, or I thought the interface was annoying to use. I actually stopped using any program for a while because I just couldn’t figure out what I wanted to stick with.

About that time I started hearing whispers of SmarterQueue and I’ll be honest the first time I logged in my initial thoughts were, “uh uh. I am not learning another one of these things just to be disappointed.”

But then one Monday morning I sat there and did it, I set up the whole schedule and everything and then I just let it run its course for the free trial period. I didn’t even think about it (or my Twitter or Facebook accounts at all).

Well, spoiler alert, the trial period won me over. It made me see the light. I’m a convert.

Here’s why you need SmarterQueue in your arsenal (trust me on this one).

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CREATE A SCHEDULE + CATEGORIES

Something that I love about SmarterQueue is that it’s very much a ‘set and forget’ approach (quite possibly my favorite approach to anything). The initial set up involves creating a schedule for posts based on categories. My categories include “my own blog posts”, “self-promotion”, “other articles”, “inspiration”, “questions”, and “tips”. How the scheduler works is that you designate that at whatever time and day you want it will send one of the categories to post.

Then you take time to a fit content into those categories (which I’ll touch on next). But that’s it – SmarterQueue filters what content appears at what time based on your schedule and your categories. The schedule stays consistent but the content varies depending on what you put in and the best part is it recycles (but more on that later).

The set up honestly took me about an hour the first time. Which might seem long, until you realize you NEVER HAVE TO DO IT AGAIN. Like it’s just done. Forever. What used to take hours each week is just done. Plus, I truly had no idea what I was doing on initial set up (I'm one of those 'read directions after I'm frustrated' kind of gals), BUT had I read a post like this one I would’ve been able to do initial set up in even less time (so keep reading!).

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ADDING NEW POSTS

Adding new posts into each category is simple. They have a drop down to ‘add content’ and you can either write a new one (which I did for the tips and the questions and the inspiration categories) or pull from a RSS Feed (which I did for my own posts and other blogger’s articles).

They also have the option to repost your best content (and it’ll pull from way before you started using SmarterQueue) and the coolest one – “find content” where you can literally type in someone’s username, name, etc. and find their content and related content.

It’s so easy to support other people this way and you don’t have to worry about scrolling through Twitter to find a good tweet to repost, you can search for influencers or peers you trust and repost them directly in SmarterQueue.

Oh, you already have Twitter lists created for that? Cool. Just search the name of your Twitter list and pull that up directly in SmarterQueue to pull from. It’s amazing. I wasn’t lying.

The best part of all of this is that it seamlessly shortens links for you and pulls relevant photos, so your Facebook posts always look formatted correctly and your Twitter posts always have graphics attached (which convert better).

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RECYCLE POSTS (FOR HOWEVER LONG)

In the area where you are ‘writing’ a post, you’ll notice near the bottom the question “would you like this post to expire?” which really should say “do you want to make your life easier?”

Because guess what!? You can just recycle posts that you know will always be relevant (like questions that might provoke interest in your services or your own content). So I usually leave the option for posts to re-queue if I know they’ll be relevant forever in my Twitter feed (plus SmarterQueue won’t let the same post show up to close together, so no worries about back to back posting of the same exact content).

There’s also the option to have the post expire after a set number of posts (so maybe you only want to share someone else’s same content like 4-5 times, and then delete it from the schedule) OR the option to stop posting it after a certain date (which would be useful for a launch or promotion that ends).

That’s part of the ‘set and forget’ concept that I love so much. I started with probably 20 posts of other people’s content that I will always want to share and know will be relevant and useful, so I left them to never expire. Then I’ll occasionally go in and add a new post (if I’m excited about someone’s post, or featured in their post especially) randomly, to make sure it stays fresh and relevant. That process takes me about 2 minutes when I randomly think to do it (probably once a week).

"Want to 'set and forget' your #socialmedia? This is how!" [tweet that!]

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ANALYTICS

I’ll be honest, I’m not great at tracking numbers in my business (which I know is just terrible of me), but if you are an analytics person SmarterQueue delivers weekly updates straight to your inbox and also has a robust analytics section in your account.

In the analytics you can study which type (category) of post is performing best, which is getting the most likes or clicks or other engagement, what time is performing best, etc.

I won’t pretend to be an expert at analytics, to me engagement and interaction with people has always held precedence over straight numbers – but it is nice to get a weekly report showing numbers increasing, clicks increasing, and followers increasing – especially when I’m honestly not doing that much (if anything) to make it happen!

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NOT BREAKING THE BANK (+ AFFILIATE PROGRAM)

Here’s the best thing I’ve found – SmarterQueue is super affordable and also has a customizable package option, so depending on if you need 4 accounts linked or 40 accounts linked, you can make the package fit your needs (and not overpay for services you don’t need).

I also admire any company with an affiliate program. Regardless, if I like something enough I am going to share it with you. But, it’s nice to be rewarded for wanting to shout from the rooftops about a new program or software that is benefiting you and your business. Plus, I like when affiliate programs offer more of an incentive – SmarterQueue gives you a free 30 day trial (versus 14 day trial) when you click through my (or someone else’s) affiliate link (which are all through this article, just a heads-up)!

Ready to learn more about SmarterQueue? I’m doing a Facebook live this afternoon at 2pm EST. I’d love for you to hop into our group and hang out, plus see #BTS of my SmarterQueue account and ask any questions about set up, using, etc.!

Every link to SmarterQueue in this post is totally an affiliate link, but I promise you this: I'm legit obsessed. Hop onto my FB live, I'll show you how #obsessed I am!

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