I really WANT to spend the next two weeks on holiday! When you work from home this isn’t always easy. I’ve a mountain of stuff on my to do list, review items, content to write, not to mention keeping a breast of social media. Seriously you can’t have two weeks off!
WRONG!! Thanks to getting my head in the game and being well ruthless I’m shutting up shop Friday 3pm, collecting my children, snuggling up with a Christmas movie and a small tipple. Feet up, slipper socks on ….
Photo Credit | Shutterstock
Want to join me? Here’s my 5 top time management tips to nail this week and earn yourself two weeks off for Christmas!
- Are you really going to do it?? : Now I had a few items (*cough 10 maybe more cough*) that I have been putting onto the next month’s to do list since September! So realistically I’m not actually going to do these am I?! They were mostly blog posts about Summer stuff – some I’d churned out pre-half term as something to do then but others have just stayed on my list so guess what I CROSSED them out! Sometimes days out are just that days out, not BLOG FODDER!! *does a happy dance* A few were toys the girls had been sent but weren’t actually requiring a review (hence why they stayed on the to do list!) so I scheduled a Facebook update and image about them. Another was our appearance on TV back in JULY!! It’s December the summer holidays are over not only is the piece not relevant anymore, I’m pretty sure nobody probably cares now! So instead I created an image to pop on the side bar of Charlie Moo’s Blog.
- Does it need to be done this year?? : If the answer is no pop it over to your January 2016 list. On to mine went some garden review products (clearly nobody in their right mind is gardening in the next two weeks or reading about it!). If however it does need to be done like er … now then do it! Shut down all other distractions (ie. Facebook), give yourself one actual task at a time and by Friday you will have nailed it!
- Organise your email inbox : Spend some time actually going through it! Delete anything you don’t need straight away and remove yourself from unused mailing lists! Print off any event tickets etc, put deadlines in your diary alongside the email address of who needs to be notified these are the things that unnecessarily clog up your inbox, post those eBay sales! Mine dramatically went from 30 – it also means if you do give yourself time each day to check your emails, you can easily organise them rather than having too much to look at.
- Schedule in social media updates : I’ve mostly done Facebook as it feeds in to Twitter, 2 updates per day for 16 days = 32. I went with part blog posts you don’t need new content use what you have (I had a few seasonal posts like one about going ice skating for Charlie Moo’s and another about running a business in the holidays for JD), part updates (Merry Christmas, Happy New Year, it’s also Daddy Moo’s birthday Christmas Eve) and the rest will be aux natural as I’m sure I’ll post pictures of the children doing stuff onto Instagram which I can share on to other platforms. BUT if I don’t have time to be on social media I’m not going to worry as I’ve scheduled.
- Tidy your desk : Clear and file away any paper, empty the bins, remove the stale coffee cups and wipe the surfaces down. That way when you walk passed it (like I do all the time as it’s under the stairs!) you aren’t lured in by the mess and then find yourself there for a few hours! It’s also a great way to end the week – Goodbye office!
So who is with me?? Two weeks off for Christmas not just a luxury for the employed!
Photo Credit | Shutterstock
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I’ve been *hoping* to take 2 weeks off, so I’ve organised my client work to ensure I’m ahead of myself. I’ll probably still update social media but I like your idea of just scheduling a couple of posts a day so you know at least something is going out. And the desk clearing is a great idea, will definitely get on to that!
Merry Christmas!
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Oh, I am most certainly going to be joining you at 3pm on Friday (figuratively speaking)!! I work flat out in the weeks running up to Christmas, 16-18 hour days are the norm, but what I love about this time of year is that when you stop for Christmas people don’t expect you to be about: when you tell the world you’re closed over Christmas they get it, because everyone else is doing the same. Two weeks feels like an age away from your own business, and if ever I take time off at any other time of year it’s always a struggle to keep away from emails etc, and people aren’t necessarily aware that you’re away (no matter how much you tell them). But Christmas is different. At Christmas the world pauses for a few days with you, and that’s a lovely feeling. Roll on Friday, I think we’ve deserved our break and I think our businesses will be all the better for it come January! 😉 x
Love this post. Not sure whether I’ll manage to join you for the whole two weeks but I’ll give it a good try!
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