Going from employee to self-employed means you are now in charge of what you do, when you do it. Whilst this can be liberating, it can also be intimidating, and lead you towards working 14+ hours a day because there will always be something that needs done.

On the one hand you need to be doing enough to be earning enough to pay the bills, keep your clients happy, and generally make sure your business is ticking over.

On the other hand, you're still going to need time off. Not just holidays, but at evenings and weekends where it's good to switch off from all thoughts of work. If you neglect to do this, it can put a strain on relationships at home, as well as lead to higher levels of stress and potential burnout.

You also need to make sure that you're getting the most out of the hours when you are working. This doesn't necessarily mean being as busy as possible, but planning tasks so that you're getting the best results from the work you put in.

On this episode we're introduced to a new guest, business coach Laura Lucas. She's joined by our regular contributors, AdWords specialist Andy Brown, photographer Julie Christie, and recruitment consultant Patricia McGuire.

Recommended Reading

There's a couple of very good books on focus and general productivity that are well worth a read. The first is The One Thing by Gary W. Keller and Jay Papasan. This book drums a new way of looking at tasks into you, and encourages you to ditch multitasking, unnecessary work, and to take things one step at a time.

The second one is The 4-Hour Work Week by Tim Ferriss. Don't be fooled by the title, you probably won't end up working only 4 hours a week, but this book is an incredible manifesto against procrastination, doing pointless and unnecessary work, living in your email inbox, and generally doing too much on your own.

Transcript

I think because I enjoy my work so much as well, it's hard not to just work when you have spare time. I have to say, I'm not really there with that yet.

I’m Colin Gray, and this is UK Business Startup. Where we’re about the get productive. If you’ve been following along, there’s a chance you’ve made the leap by now. Are you already working for yourself? Or your own company of course. If you are, I want to ask you this: how many times have you been asked about whether you work in nothing but your pants? It always seems to me that 99% of the working world think that the main advantage of self-employment is not having to wear clothes.

And of course that is part of it to be fair. But the other part, the more serious one, is suddenly being in control of your own working life. Now you can choose what you do, and when you do it. It’s freedom, at last! Or is it?

The problem is, businesses tend to be more than a job. They’re 3 jobs, 5 jobs, even 10 all rolled into one. Especially in the early days, you’re doing everything. Suddenly freedom looks like 14 hour days, 7 days a week. Because there’s always something to do.That’s why, this week, we’re talking about your working life. That means schedule, priortities, productivity and making sure you have a real life alongside it all. Let’s look at the small view first – one day. When no one’s telling you what to do, how the heck do you make the most of it?

Laura Lucas: I was quite used to that from sort of my corporate job I suppose. I was always a team leader and had to plan the direction of the department. Not just plan my own days, but plan the days of my teams and things like that as well, so, it wasn't something that was completely new to me.

That is Laura Lucas, a new guest on UK Business Startup. She’s a business coach at Inspirential and works on her own. This is how she starts to plan her day.

Laura Lucas: I know that I want to help as many business owners and leaders as I can. That means I need to find those business owners and show them what I can do to help them, and get them on on-board with me. That's then broken down into a number of different activities, so putting up information online that's going to attract those sorts of people, going out and meeting people proactively through networking. Then getting them into meetings and showing them my expertise and making sales ultimately. I've got to make sure I'm doing those sorts of activities every, single day. That helps knowing what the overall goal is.

So, this is it – our days aren’t really our days. They’re just one small part of the wider goal.

Patricia McGuire: I think you have to be quite strict with yourself that you set aside some time just for you, and not only time just for you, but time to think, because it's very easy to get bogged down in your day-to-day business. A business needs you to stop and think about what's coming next, and the mistakes that you've made and how you can rectify them.

Don’t worry, we’ll get back to the real detail on how to plan your working day, but this comes first. The only way you’re going to have an effective day – and to grow your business – is by having each day move you just a little bit forward towards your main goal. Patricia McGuire said it well there – it’s really easy to get bogged down, to end up doing busy-work that doesn’t push you forward. It sounds ridiculous when your income depends on avoiding that, but it happens to us all.

Laura Lucas: I started to fall into that trap probably early last summer. I had a period when I was really, really busy. Then I have two times in the month when I do my accounts, because I don't have masses of transactions in my business. I just sit down for half-an-hour, twice a month and do that. I sat down and realized that I hadn't brought in any new business for three weeks, even though I had been really busy. That gave me a real wake-up call. It was quite lucky that I did that. You can be a busy fool can't you?

Laura has a good method there. She’s got a system in place, every fortnight, where she checks her progress. Her aim is clients – she wants to help as many people as she can, and earn an income from that of course. So, she sits down – fortnightly accounts – what’s my goal? New clients? Have I brought any in? No! Well, damn… Let’s see – what can I do to change that?

Once you’ve got your overall goals, how do we start to break it down so it leads us to effective days?

Laura Lucas: I'll make a sort of three month plan really. For making detailed plans, I find three months is about the right timescale for me, and I'll know what I want to achieve in that three months, and break it down into step-by-step tasks. Then each week, I try and batch task and stick to the same sort of activities.

Julie Christie: I would say, have a schedule for every day or for every week. Plan your week ahead and schedule in all your tasks, and give them priorities. What's the most important? What's the least important? Put them in that order. Schedule them into your diary.

That was Julie Christie from Tea Break Tog joining the show, and giving a good example of where the long term planning leads us. Once you have your 3 month plan, you break than down into monthly goals, and then weekly goals. Once you have that level of detail, you’re ready to really schedule in the work.

Laura Lucas: Mostly on a Monday, I'm in the office doing things like, writing blog posts, writing social media posts, writing new material for clients and things. Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Thursdays, are a mixture of seeing clients and meeting new, prospective clients and things. On Friday, I generally only work the morning on a Friday, and that's more for projects, and really thinking about moving the business forward. I stick to that as much as I can, it doesn't have to be perfect, but each week with my three month plan, I sit down on a Thursday afternoon and plan what my next week's going to look like. All the activities that are coming up, I actually put them into slots in my calendar.

I do the same – monthly goals, to weekly goals, to small tasks. Those are then scheduled into the calendar on Monday morning. You’re probably thinking it sounds a bit of a pain to stick to that – a bit onerous – but it’s exactly the opposite actually.

Laura Lucas: When I'm sitting at my desk, I never have to think about, “Oh what should I do next?” I know what I have what I have to next because when you have that uncertainty, that's when procrastination can creep in. But if you know exactly what you're going to do, you can just get your head down and do it.

It’s ironic, because one of the big attractions of going self-employed is the chance to be your own boss. But, the thing is, that freedom comes with a big price, and procrastination is a big one. This type of scheduling is kind of like creating a little boss in a spreadsheet – someone who’s telling you what to do every minute of the day. And with that discipline comes a whole new type of freedom. The freedom that comes with knowing that you’re not missing things, you’re not wasting your time. You’re moving forward, just a little bit, every single day.

So, what if you want to start off a little easier. You’re not ready to go full-schedule. What’s the alternative?

Andy Brown: It's always a tough one isn't it, the p