Have you got the “Chaos” time?

Friday, November 6th, 2009

You know I LOVE this concept.

I heard about it at my last Athena group meeting where our guest speaker brought up the concept of chaos time. When she said it I thought, “What on earth is that?” Actually it’s quite simple and something most of us already do – just not in such an organised way.

Chaos Time is a sacrosanct block of time that you mark out in your diary, say once a week or once a fortnight, so that if anything unexpected happens in your business or your life which disrupts the normal smooth flow (yeah right!), you have the time already set aside to ‘catch up’.

Having had nearly two months off ill recently, and having loads to catch up on, I really need Chaos Time and having implemented a new weekly schedule, every Tuesday afternoon is now my Chaos Time. And it feels really good…

I know that if for any reason a deadline is disrupted, or my car breaks down or my daughter is off school ill or I have to go to the dentists, then I have a whole afternoon, every Tuesday, to catch up. It’s quite reassuring.

It doesn’t mean that I will leave a client’s work until then to finish, but it does mean I can shuffle my to-do list around and say leave my admin until that time. And if nothing happens – if I have no chaos – then I can either take the afternoon off – yey (and go down the pub LOL)! Or I can spend it doing something else that maybe I had been finding hard to fit in…

So if you often find yourself struggling to fit everything in or something always seems to disrupt your week and your work schedule then two tips: establish your own chaos time (and keep it sacrosanct) and don’t book your diary up to the limit – you need to remember that as a small business owner you DO have a life too and that life will sometimes intrude!

Tags: business management, business success, chaos time, organisation, small business, time management
Posted in Business Focus, General, Just Too Busy | 2 Comments »