I wonder if any of you feel like me and have too much to do and too many things that need to have been done last week!  My business growth is following my business plan, which is good, however the plan also included hiring a good part time assistant. Like many successful entrepreneurs, the need is there ahead of the money.

There is a dollar cost associated with success that I didn’t factor in.  I am earning more money but I am also spending more. Similar to a lot of small solo-business owners, I am contracting out more jobs, however I am still doing the lions share of the work myself.

So what do you do when you know it is not possible to get everything done? How do you prioritize?  Here are five tips to help you feel more in control and peaceful. Organization has never been my strong area so if I can do this anyone can!

1. Do a mind-mapping and begin Monday morning  by writing down every single thing you can think of that needs to be done. Jot down next to it-why it’s important.

2. Notice what category each thing is in. Here are the categories I use:
• Finances
• Marketing
• Planning
• Customer service
• Operation

I have my office cubbies organized into these five categories so it helps me to stay with this system.

3. I use Stephen Coveys time management chart.  I draw it large on my whiteboard and then write in each of my items in the square they belong.  This short exercise helps me to decide how important the job is. Some things are urgent and important and other things are important but not urgent, like planning and goal setting.

Some people never get to this because the seemingly urgent things always eat up the time. For me it is the opposite. I love doing planning so I will end up doing it first and forget to pay a bill on time!  The non-urgent and not important category can eat up huge amounts of time and energy. Social media can fall here unless you are very specific about a marketing task. Getting on Twitter everyday for 15 minutes might be important but getting sidetracked on Facebook could be a waste of time.

4. Once you have this chart up on your board, fill in empty squares with your items and then notice the items that are in the same category from number two above.  I do the stuff in square number one first and then square number two.

5. Customer service always takes precedent! In a two-hour gap between two client appointments today I was working on a Power Point presentation. The phone rang and it was one of my clients who needed help.  I put her first because without my customers I have no business!

Now you might be thinking that doing these five things is a time consuming task in itself but it actually only takes about 10 minutes. You can also add new items as they come up during the week.  The fun part is wiping each item off the board as you complete it. This is the magic of using a whiteboard.

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