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You didn't become a solopreneur to build a business that runs your life. You did it so your business could serve it.
The Aspiring Solopreneur is the twice-weekly podcast at the heart of the Life-First Movement. It's for solopreneurs who believe the business should be designed around life, not the other way around.
Hosts Joe Rando and Carly Ries, co-authors of Solopreneur Business for Dummies, sit down each week with solopreneurs who are building Life-First Businesses and experts who are helping others do the same.
Every episode explores what it really takes to design, run, and evolve a one-person business with your life at the center.
Basically, what we're trying to say is:
Life First. Then Business.
Are you running your business by the clock or by your brain? Most solopreneurs carry their corporate habits straight into self employment, cramming their calendar full and calling it productivity. But what if your schedule is actually working against you? In this episode, Joy and I make the case for ditching the time block everything approach and building your workday around your natural energy instead. I share a simple three step framework you can start using today, Joe drops a Calendly trick you probably didn't know about, and together we challenge you to spend one week tracking something most solopreneurs completely ignore.
Carly Ries:You're listening to The Aspiring Solopreneur, the podcast for those in pursuit of a life first business. I'm Carly Ries, and my cohost Joe Rando and I spend every episode with solopreneurs who are proving there's a better way to run a one person business and experts who are helping make it happen. We like to say life first, then business, so let's get right to it. Okay. So, Joe, the past two episodes, you've kinda introduced the topic of the life first business.
Carly Ries:And as a part of that, we talked about the ownership trap, which you've kinda defined as like the phenomenon where solopreneurs unknowingly build businesses that dominate their time and energy, and then they become slaves to their business, kinda like a traditional job. And we say that a lot of that is the lack of design, and they build a business around their skills. I started thinking about it in the context of scheduling and time. Because so many solopreneurs bring their habits from corporate into their solopreneur business even if they don't intend to. you'll have people who adopt somebody else's productivity framework without questioning it because that's what they did in their career, their whole life before going solo.
Carly Ries:They're used to time blocking, morning routines, the Pomodoro Technique, I've talked about that.
Joe Rando:All good stuff. All good
Carly Ries:All good stuff. But they're all organized around the clock and not around you. I feel like that's a trap in itself. You're optimizing a schedule instead of really optimizing your output. And the calendar kinda becomes your boss, which is the opposite of why you left your job.
Joe Rando:Yeah. I think using a calendar as a to do list is a bad idea. I've talked about that before. I think I first heard that from David Allen who did Getting Things Done. There are a lot of reasons for that, and I won't go into all of them.
Joe Rando:But, I think what you're getting at here is the fact that, just using your calendar to say, oh, this time here I can do this thing that needs to get done, is something that we probably if we step back and thought about it, say, it's probably not a perfect strategy. But, we don't step back and think about it. We just go, okay. Yeah. I got an opening at 3PM. I can do that. Yeah. It's open.
Carly Ries:Yeah. Exactly. And I would argue that now that you have your own business, instead of planning around a calendar, plan around the times of day where your energy is highest, and then revolve your work and your meetings and everything around that. And I know it's not groundbreaking. Everybody knows when their energy is highest.
Carly Ries:Right? But they just aren't revolving their businesses around it intentionally. They treat their energy patterns kind of as trivia. Like, oh, I'm a morning person. I'm a night owl.
Carly Ries:I get up at 05:30 naturally. And they use it as that, as opposed to treating it, I would say like operational data. Do feel like that's fair to say?
Joe Rando:Well, I absolutely do, and I think, again, going back to David Allen, it's something he talks about extensively. In fact, in his system, for a given task, you indicate exactly what kind of energy level is required. Do I need, high energy real focus, or is this kind of a menial thing that I can do in my sleep? You know, that's the kind of stuff I like to do at 3PM. Although, if it's really boring, I'll actually fall asleep because I just am not an afternoon person.
Joe Rando:I'm great in the mornings and in the early afternoon. But later afternoon, I don't come back to life till around 5PM. It's just a low. And I know it. I try really hard now to avoid important stuff at those times. Can't always do it, but I try really hard.
Carly Ries:Yeah. So I talked to you about this yesterday, where I think in our soundbite episodes, we should start pushing them into like actionable things people can start doing. Because we have our interview episodes, they're longer, but I'm like, what kind of advice can we give people today that they can start implementing today? So I'm throwing this advice out there blindly because I haven't told you about this yet.
Carly Ries:But I did come up with some ideas I have to start building your business around your most energetic times instead of your time, to help a person get closer to a life first business. I put together three quick steps just to kinda get people headed in the right direction. So again, I know you've never heard these steps, so feel free to throw a curveball
Joe Rando:Alright. I will.
Carly Ries:That sounds ridiculous. you're the peanut gallery. You're the one that brings me back down to reality. So identify your high energy windows. And again, I know people know when their high energy windows are.
Carly Ries:But this is like a practical, for real, identify this. I would recommend tracking your energy for one full week. I know people are like, I don't like doing food diaries, and I don't like doing this. Just one week. And track your energy and not your schedule.
Carly Ries:And then rate yourself if you're feeling sharp, steady, or dragging. Joe, you know the three to five window. That's your time. But are there other times of the day that you may not be noticing that you're dragging? And then don't judge it or try to fix it, just observe and write it down.
Carly Ries:So you're trying to find patterns. And in my opinion, or at least for me, because I actually did this a few weeks ago, I had like two or three peak windows per day. And honestly, they were a little shorter. Then I thought, but man, was I productive during those two or three peak windows. Like, could crank it out so fast.
Carly Ries:And then just be honest with yourself during this step one of identifying your high energy windows. And don't try to change who you are, but just observe. Are you good with that first step?
Joe Rando:I am. I just would like to clarify that it's important, I think, to do this over multiple days because sometimes certain tasks energize you more than others. And that pattern, if you just try to do it one day, might be misleading based on the fact you were doing something really interesting at some time of day versus less so. So it would be good to have a little more data than just a short window.
Carly Ries:Say a week. Like, at least a week.
Joe Rando:Yeah.
Carly Ries:I mean, I don't know if I told you this. I went to the Avalanche Wild Hockey playoff game on Sunday night, and it was insane. And we got home around midnight. I don't stay up past 08:30. So this is like crazy, but it was a big thing for my husband.
Carly Ries:And the day after, nothing. I didn't have energy at for any time of day. So that's another reason why don't you shouldn't just do a one off day. Because you're depending on your sleep habits, whatever, dog wakes you up, like you need a good sample size. And maybe that's not even a week. Maybe that's two weeks.
Carly Ries:But you need to start noticing these patterns, I guess is what I'd say. Okay. So you have the patterns. And then let's go with David Allen and match your high energy windows to the high value work.
Carly Ries:So first you need to define what that high value work actually means in your business. That's like the techs that directly generate revenue, build relationships, move the strategy forward. This isn't emails. This isn't checking a to do list. This is actual brain intensive work that your business would need to survive.
Carly Ries:And most people spend their peak energy on things like email, and Joe's favorite thing, Slack,
Joe Rando:My favorite.
Carly Ries:Admin work. It's your favorite, or lack thereof. Because that's what's sitting in front of them and you feel like you're being productive but you're not. That's just the busy work. So then once you know where your high value work is, then you can fill in the gaps with the low energy time after you've allocated where you're doing your high value work based off your high energy levels.
Carly Ries:But if you're a morning person, and you immediately start firing from the get go, don't look at your email. Start thinking of your strategy for the next three months. If you are gonna do email, start reaching out to people to set up a cup of coffee, or a meeting, or something. But do something that's actually productive. And again, at this point, you should know how long your peak windows are.
Carly Ries:So if it's two hours, protect those two hours like they're a meeting with your biggest client and just go to town for those two hours. And then if you're gonna head a slump, maybe that's when you go work out to get out of the slump. But just map the high energy windows with your high value work.
Joe Rando:Yeah. I totally agree with that, especially not checking the email because it automatically leads you down some rabbit hole. Right? You're gonna see some email where it needs a response, then you're gonna respond and then the next thing, your window's gone. I disagree with the idea of doing email, reaching out via email to create relationships, because I don't think that's a high, I think it's a high value thing, but I don't think it requires that high energy.
Joe Rando:If you have a certain way that you phrase things when you do these reach outs, it can almost, and don't do this, but it can almost be copy and paste, right? And you would edit it. But I mean, that can really be lower. It's high value work that can be done at a lower energy time. Does that make sense?
Carly Ries:Yeah, absolutely. Now that's why I'm kinda glad I blindsided you, because I didn't want you to agree with me on everything. But that makes total sense, and I agree with that, I see where you're coming from. And then the final step is to actually and this is the part that most solopreneurs miss is they think about it like, oh, yeah, those are my optimal times to work. I'm gonna map it.
Carly Ries:But then they don't actually do it. So then you need to structure your operations around these natural rhythms. If you have recurring meetings, calls with clients, check ins with contractors you're working with, fit those outside of your peak windows. Those are not high energy tasks, even though they're meanings. And then at the same time, batch similar low energy tasks together so they don't bleed into your high value into your high value time. then here comes the scary part. The people think they're gonna get fired for or whatever. You have to tell your clients and the contractors that you work with when you're available and when you're not. And this is a boundary. It's not an inconvenience.
Carly Ries:So you need to build your daily template, and then default to it, and that way you won't have to reassign every morning what's important to you that day. Everything will just kind of fall into these high energy categories. And obviously, some days will be different. You'll get curveballs, but you'll have a baseline and the structure to start working closer to a life first business.
Joe Rando:Can I throw a little tactic into that? with tools like Calendly, you can create certain meeting types and set the times of day that actually it's allowed to book you for. So you could have one for high energy meetings and one for maybe lower energy meetings and have the time blocking be different for those. And, if it's something you know you wanna have your brain ready, you send the high energy meeting one.
Joe Rando:It doesn't have to say that. It's just a meeting with Joe or meeting with Carly. And then the other one would be, if it's just something stupid that you need to deal with, and you don't really wanna waste your good time on, send the other one, and they'll see a whole different time of day or times of day that they can can book you. it's just a good way to kind of enforce that, in advance.
Carly Ries:I love that. I actually didn't even know that. So that's super helpful. But Joe, that's basically it. I guess the challenge I would have for our listeners right now is start that week of auditing.
Carly Ries:Start that week of observing, and see where you can be restructuring your business to really start putting those life first steps in motion. And that's all I got for this episode.
Joe Rando:I'll start mine next week
Carly Ries:Perfect.
Joe Rando:It is late in the week now.
Carly Ries:So very good. Touche. Well, listeners, thank you so much for tuning in. As always, leave that five star review. It helps us spread nuggets of information like this to other solopreneurs looking to create a life first business.
Carly Ries:Share this episode with another solopreneur you know, and subscribe to the show on your favorite podcast platform, including YouTube. And we'll see you next time on The Aspiring Solopreneur. You may be going solo in business, but that doesn't mean you're alone. In fact, millions of people are in your shoes, running a one person business and figuring it out as they go. So why not connect with them and learn from each other's successes and failures?
Carly Ries:At LifeStarr, we're creating a one person business community where you can go to meet and get advice from other solopreneurs. Be sure to join in on the conversations at community.lifestarr.com