‘Free Time’ Will Make You Love Your Job Again
There’s nothing worse than pursuing your passion only to regret it. If you’re in this position — or dread being in it — we think Jenny Blake may have some truly valuable advice for you. Entrepreneurship starts with a motivating vision. Business owners will often pour their whole body and soul into making their vision a reality, leaving no time to take care of themselves or enjoy their lives. Suffice it to say, falling a little too deep into the hustle can eat away at your soul — but “Free Time: Lose the Busywork, Love Your Business,” written by Jenny Blake, is all about reclaiming your love for your work, while creating spare time for yourself. It’s no secret that many business owners struggle to pass on their responsibilities to others, leading to catastrophic workloads. Instead of working within their flow, they battle the friction of everyday busywork that you don’t want to do. As a result, they don’t do your best work when it matters most. But how do entrepreneurs give up busywork while still keeping a business afloat? Jenny Blake’s answer is simple: “Let it be easy; let it be fun.” Blake argues that, actually, your time is worth more than money. When the going gets tough and frustrating and leads to dead ends, she asks herself: “How can we earn twice as much in half the time, with ease and joy, while serving the highest good?” Then, she works through a process called “Align, Design, and Assign,” which helps her align tasks to be well-calibrated to her company’s needs, design them to be easier for her team to process, and assigns the right person for the task(s). Each stage of the “Align, Design, and Assign” process is more profound than you’d expect. In the first part, “Align,” she describes one of her core principles: “Each time you repeat a task, take one step toward automating it.” Rather than rushing through an annoying task, you can make little time investments to ensure that it’s possible to automate in the future. In short, at some point, you may never have to do the task again. In “Design,” she describes how to master the time management of the tasks at hand. She addresses how to establish and measure your “ideal outcomes” and shares some of her most relatable concepts for business owners with burnout, such as her “deep work” windows. Lastly, the final stage named “Assign” tackles one of the biggest challenges for entrepreneurs: passing work on to
others. Nobody wants to be the “chief everything officer,” as Blake puts it. She describes how to build a “delightfully tiny team” and covers many other useful techniques to maximize time efficiency, such as building a task management system. If you’re an overworked small-business owner, ‘Free Time’ is sure to help ease your burdens. Don’t let the world sit on your shoulders — with a little help, you’ll be able to work hard and enjoy much more free time, too. “Whoever can be trusted with very little can also be trusted with much, and whoever is dishonest with very little will also be dishonest with much.” –Luke 16:10
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