This is a tangent to my post on balancing self-care with service to others. But it focuses on the service to others part. Within that, you also have 2 pieces to balance: taking care of your business and taking care of your clients or customers.
When I work on time management with my clients, at some point in the process, I’ll have them create a broad brushstrokes template calendar of what they would want a month to look like. In the course of this activity, it’s easy for them to put the primary attention on scheduling time blocks to get things done for their clients. And a smaller amount of time is allotted for the tasks to take care of their own business.
In the course of an actual day or week or month, it’s not unusual for new needs from a client to take precedence over plans to work on business development or manage important administrative aspects of your business. As time goes on, the feeling of overwhelm and being behind for their respective businesses increases. (And yes, this happens to me as well!)
It is certainly important to take care of your clients at a high level. Your clients are the life blood of your business. But without a healthy circulatory system, there’s nothing for that blood to run through.
Try this… Think of your own business as another client. If it helps, think of your business as a client with an urgent project. How would that change how you schedule? How you move things around on your calendar to accommodate new needs? Can you allow your business to take priority when it needs to?
The moment you realize that taking care of your business (and yourself) is equally as important as taking care of your clients, it will change how you schedule your time. It will bring things more into balance.
