One of the things that I had to get used to when I started working for myself was being in control of my own time. Many of us get excited about starting our own business until we come to the realization that we are in control of our own time.
No one is telling us what to do and when to do it.
When I was a store manager, I had a district manager that held me accountable. I had to make sure that all assignments and projects were completed in a timely fashion and make that deadline.
I had to make sure that I got to work on time and take a lunch break every day. There was a system in place and everything was carefully thought out to avoid any confusion. However, when I started working for myself, it was an entirely different ball game and before I knew it, nothing was getting done!
I would stay up late and wake up at 10am, then just lie in bed for another hour mindlessly scrolling through Instagram just because I could. Noon comes around and then I would make myself some lunch. Scroll through Netflix and catch up on an episode of ‘Nailed It’, and then get started on things I needed to do for my business around 2pm. This is a sure-fire way to fail as a business owner.
I needed to get back into the habit of disciplining myself as if I was still in a corporate environment.
There was no one there to hold me accountable for my actions if I wanted to succeed as an entrepreneur. What you do with your time is directly related to how successful you will be as a small business owner, and I needed to make that message sink in and FAST!
Spending hours at a time scrolling through social media or watching movies on Netflix is not a good use of anyone’s time.
As I am writing this right now, I got distracted with plucking some eyebrows that were out of place because I have a mirror that sits on my desk that I use for quick touchups before zoom calls. The bad thing is that I could easily spend half an hour doing this.
It’s so easy to get distracted by unimportant tasks or things that make our minds wonder. Removing distractions surely helps you to be more effective with your time when it comes to your business. This is something that I pay attention to daily.
Learning to discipline yourself may not happen overnight, but what is important is that we’re taking small steps to remove these distractions, and small steps overtime leads to better time management and big wins!
