Lighten Your Load

People have often said to me “I don’t know how you do it!” Friends and family assume that I have too much on my plate and while yes, there are crunch times, that is not my usual mode of operation in daily life. I’d like to share my “secret” with other Studio Owners that may feel the burn of overwhelm and longing for a simpler life can make plans for their own lighter loads of work.

We need to stop trying to be more productive, and instead aim to have less to

do. Create margins for yourself and your business. Take the time to create your own office hours and stick to them. Schedule your day off. Go ahead and schedule time for you to do whatever you want to do, when no one may schedule a meeting, private lesson, vendor visit, anything.

Rather than a daily focus on a MOUNTAIN of things to do - narrow things down to just three things each week. Be very critical of your lists and determine if your workload works for you - is it time to update a process, hire some part time help, ask your spouse for help, or solicit the help of volunteers or staff looking for extra hours. Start your week with a clear focus of what you will accomplish and assign the number of hours, which day you’ll do it and stick to it. End your 35-40 hour work week with reflecting on what you’ve accomplished and anything that didn’t make the cut for this week’s focus but still needs to be done by you.

Perhaps you are trying to do so much of what doesn’t really matter. We business owners have great expectations for ourselves and even greater assumptions about what others expect of us. WE create our own schedules, workload, staffing, processes and yet WE complain about these things regularly. As a business owner there has to be time for the things that you enjoy and the things that recharge you. The myth of hustle culture is over! What seemed like an amazing promise of riches and joy in exchange for working 60 hours weekly and staying attuned to every notification has proven unsustainable, stressful and untrue. Look at programs and services that are not profitable and a drain on resources and cut

them. Maybe it’s the class that irritates you to have to teach, perhaps two classes that really need to be merged into one, it could even be the process that you’ve procrastinated on that would resolve your biggest pain points of staffing shortages or the necessity of you making every decision in your business.

Each time you find yourself saying “I have to. . . “ think about whether or not you actually do. When “I should be. .. “ comes to mind, remember that this is often driven by guilt and upholding what we want people to think about us. Keep a pad on your desk or a note on your phone with a running list of things you’re not going to do anymore, and over the next few months, you’ll see your own transformation, you’ll begin living the more peaceful, and less busy life that you’ve desired.