The Fallacy of Balancing it All

Jul 22, 2016

Topic:  Photography Business
Time Investment: 5 Minutes
Suggested Product: BizRevamp®

 

Every entrepreneur is familiar with the failure of trying to balance it all.  Inevitably, something falls off the plate.  

But why is this?

Are we trying to manage too much? Are we just not good enough? Sometimes.  But I think it’s because we haven’t adjusted our perspective about time.   In order for something to be good we think there must be a lot of time committed to it.  

In fact, so many people “praise” us when we have so much going on, seem to be busy and “look like” we’re balancing it all.  Wrong. 

In order to feel wanted, we think we must have a lot of inquiries.  Wrong: You only need a few good quality ones to get the ball rolling.

In order to feel like you’re succeeding, we think we must have a lot of social media followers. Wrong: You need high conversion rates out of those followers, not just followers that are hitching a ride on the “like” train.

In order to make strides in business, we think we must spend a lot of time dedicated to tasks. Wrong: You must spend a proportionate amount of time on specific tasks. It’s not all about how much you can get done and how good you can look doing it.  

So what is this big fallacy? This idea that you have to balance it all. Look good doing it. And commit a good amount of time to important areas.  

Wrong. It’s the actual results you’ll get.

You can shorten time frames on certain tasks and responsibilities and STILL get results. One of the biggest things that falls off the plate of entrepreneurs is education.  Continuing education of your business.    We go through our day. Flipping on the computer, grabbing our coffee and trying to get through emails.  Next thing we know it, it’s the afternoon.  Off to client meetings/calls/shoots/whatever.  Then it’s school-pickup time or other life tasks.  That “education spot” on the to-do list keeps getting pushed aside for more immediate things. 

If you’re not putting education on your calendar – you need to get on it now then come back and keep reading. 

If you are putting it on the calendar but it falls off your task list- keep reading.

You don’t have to carve out an hour or two a day to get education to further your business. Listening to an hour long webinar, or 45-minute podcast doesn’t always mean that it’s giving you a better education. In fact, when you’re strapped for time it’ll end up being such a large chunk of time that you quickly dismiss this task as important because an hour or two every day/week/month without an immediate return on time/money.  In fact, unless you are in a slower season and have extra time to burn, you should be avoiding long educational sessions because they will inevitably go beyond your “one-hour-block” in order to be effective.

Consider this, you have to sit down and do the hour of educational listening. Great, but now you have to act on the item.  That could be another 15-20 minutes brainstorming, and potentially another hour or two enacting on that item. Not only does it suck up alot of time (and becomes that precarious task that gets pushed off the desk) but it can also lead to inactivity.  Long educational and brainstorming sessions can lead to an overwhelming feeling.  

Many entrepreneurs get overwhelmed, shut down and don’t act at all. I truly understand this and equate it to when I first began running. (You can insert any type of activity in your life here).  I hate to run. I did then. I still do now.   But I could convince myself to go run for 10 minutes at a time.  But when I was slotting myself for an hour long run as a beginner runner – it was too easy to push it off the calendar and convince myself I didn’t have time.

But by taking 10 minutes at a time, I ended up finding myself saying “Suck it up butter cup. Just ten minutes. Your body will thank you.” And it did.  In fact, that mentality of trying to balance it all was a shift in perspective.  I was able to balance self-health + business + family just by shortening up the time frame.

By shortening this, I was reducing the potential for dismissing the task at hand + became more effective + began to include it on a daily basis.  This ten minutes did end up becoming an hour, then two as I’ve grown in my journey to becoming an Ironman. But even on some days I still tell myself. -“just go to 10 or 20 minutes. That is better than nothing.”  I’m more likely to regret not giving a little bit per day than letting weeks go by before I’ll go out for a few hour run. 

And it is the same for business.  

Don’t let education get shoved off the desk because of no time or overwhelmed.  Take smaller bites. You can do most anything for ten minutes.  Imagine how long you were sitting scrolling through Facebook before you read this.  Probably ten minutes, huh?  You could’ve actively dug into an area of education and worked at moving your business along. 

Commit smaller chunks to education. Plus ACT on these individual chunks.

Yes, I do believe you should keep a list of areas of business you need to work on. Use that as a guide to check off day-by-day or week-by-week when you sit down for your small educational time.  

Whether it’s listening to a shorter and in-depth podcast, or reading a chapter of a book.  Imagine where you’ll be in a year if you do ten to fifteen minutes a day, instead of shoving this education off your desk constantly. For this reason – I created The Real Biz Talk Podcast. It’s 10-15 minute chunks of informational topics such as business, marketing, legal. The goal is that you can fill the time it takes you to get from the house to the studio or client consultation with small education in a ten-minute chunk.  I encourage you to jump over to Apple and subscribe so you get notifications of these podcasts.    

In fact, I feel so strongly about this that I’m rolling out a bunch of episodes soon.  I am so disheartened to see so many of you telling me “I just don’t have time but I want to get better.”

Then let us get you better.    

**Purchase a book and commit to a chapter a day before you even turn on email. 

**Subscribe to my podcast and get automatic notifications

**Create a schedule so that this educational “bite-sized” time doesn’t get pushed off the calendar.

 The year may be half-over but if you committed 10 minutes a day from now until January 1st. That’s roughly (don’t shoot me, I’m a lawyer not a math teacher) 1500 minutes of education.   That’s a quite a bit of education.  

 **If you LISTEN TO THE FREE REAL BIZ TALK PODCAST, that will be approximately 150 episodes

**If you read a portion of a chapter per day, you could potentially complete 20-ish books. Let’s get you going.

Come subscribe. Go find a book.  Move your business forward.

Rachel Brenke

 

P.S. I’m saying-but-not-saying – if we get a good amount of subscribers I have a few fun things in pipeline I can get released!  

 


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