Where does all the time go?
Hello hello,
Do you think about how your time gets sucked up?
A friend of mine once said: "if I knew what I could do with time and money after having kids BEFORE I had them, I'd have got way more done."
That's the funny thing about time. It doesn't give a crap about how you think it works - it does it's own bending and stretching thing as it damn well pleases.
I've been thinking about this recently because every year I think I'll enter a particular novel competition. Every year the deadline looms and my novel sits in a state that I cannot submit. And every single year I watch the deadline fly by and think "that's okay, I'll use the next 12 months to be ready for next year."
Except I don't. And I repeat the cycle.
Sure, I spend hours of my day waiting for children. To put on their shoes. To get out of the car. To brush their teeth. It's tedious and if I don't stand over them while they don't do these things, we'll be even later than we already are.
But children are not my reason for never finishing my novel. I am.
It's taken me a long time to realise that I simply don't prioritise this thing that I want to do. And until I do, nothing will change.
It's the same with content. This is the reason why you do a nice content plan in January and by February it's sat unused. It's okay - it's normal. You just need to do something different and make it a habit.
My lovely friend Jane de Vos recommended Click Up app to me. It's been life-changing. Now I don't need to try to shoehorn things into my week because Click Up organises it for me.
And alongside this, I've created a new content planning system (for me, mind. It looks VERY different for my clients). It's insanely simple. Look 👀
Each post-it note colour is a different content bucket. Mix them up and come up with something witty and interesting to say on each thing. Of course, with a strategy behind it but it is working a treat. And when I need to add more on there, I add a task in Click Up to tell me to do it. Ta-Da!
So in this week's podcast, I give two exercises (maths - okay it is maths) to work out how much time you should be spending on content and where you should focus your efforts.
The worksheet is here and the episode is here.
Oh and thank you to everyone who sent in newsletter suggestions. I'm now doing some research into newsletter content with them. I've already got a hypothesis (get me with the science words) and am working on data gathering. If you have any more recommendations of newsletters you have to open - do send them over.
See you next Thursday!
Fiona