🔎 Operations

Your guide to taking the “stress” out of time management

Your time is valuable.

Wasting time is like throwing money directly into the trash. As marketers working on multiple projects, it is in your best interest to utilize your time wisely to get the most out of your week.

This will allow you to balance multiple projects without getting stressed out and overwhelmed.

Here’s our guide to managing your time:

1. Assess your personal time. Think of your projects this way: How much time do you have in a given week, and how many projects can you realistically take on every day?

Planning your time accordingly will help you stay sane, while reviewing your project lists once a week can help you nail down the details before diving in.

2. Eat the frog. Not all tasks are created equal. Prioritizing tasks that are urgent and/or bring in the most ROI will allow you to move forward in a productive manner.Check out the 4 quadrants of the time management chart. This will help you assess which tasks are most important and which tasks will be a waste of your time.
3. Determine dependencies. Once you have all the project activities listed, think through each one carefully to identify which tasks rely on others to be completed. If you’re building a house, for example, you can’t put the roof on until the frame is completed.

To learn more about managing dependencies check out this useful resource here.

4. Track your activity. Do you really know how much time you spend on tasks? Most of us end up underestimating the time each task takes. This can cause you to undercharge clients for work…an opportunity wasted.

You can use software like Clockify to track your time easily.

But time tracking is only part of the process. Setting limitations on your time will stop you from getting carried away on a task. Sometimes it’s important to stop certain tasks after a while so you manage your priorities effectively.

5. Delegate and outsource. If you’re getting to the stage where you have a surplus of projects, it might be time to ask for help.

Let’s say you have several email marketing clients. You could reduce your workload by outsourcing the graphic design or copywriting tasks to a freelancer. This means you don’t have to drop clients.

You can find plenty of digital marketing specialists of all spheres right here in the Furlough community!

6. Review your process. Take note of how each decision you make affects your time management and productivity in your work.Have weekly check-ins with yourself and your team to assess what is working and what needs improvement. As long as you take steps to improve your, process you will come to a working solution over time.

We don’t want to call it a global takeover, but…

It is pretty darn close.

A quick glance in the Furlough #general channel will tell you one thing: we are growing…rapidly.

Last week the community welcomed a slew of new names (some with pretty insane marketing skills) from all over the globe, including:

• Switzerland.
• Toronto.
• England.
• Nepal.
• India.
• Nicaragua.

If there is anything we love here at Furlough, it’s diversity.

Stranger danger: If you’re new and haven’t had a chance to tell us about yourself, don’t lurk in the shadows. Drop a message in the #introduce-yourself channel and let us know which country you’re repping.

And trust us, with all the talent we have here, not connecting would be like winning the lottery only to hide the ticket under your pillow and never redeem it…crazy!

🤳 Round-Up

BRAINTEASER:A man pushes his car to a hotel and tells the owner he’s bankrupt. Why?See the answer here.

• TWITTER:  Now you can get paid for your rants. Twitter is introducing Super Follows, its monthly subscription model for content creators.
• WHATSAPP:  Learn how to get your audience shooting messages to your business with this guide on setting up Whatsapp Ads.
• REDDIT: Need a quick way to increase your click-through rate on this platform? Their newest rollout may just be the answer you were looking for.
• SAAS: Breaking ground in this industry just became a little bit easier thanks to this thread.

 

We will see you next week with more marketing news from your favorite global community.