Structured Mondays
This is a very important strategy for protecting your time. I chose Mondays; you could choose any day of the week. This is the day that I do not expect to work in the studio.
On Mondays, I do these tasks:
- bookkeeping (we have several LLCs that require bookkeeping or bill paying from different accounts)
- bill paying- both personal and work
- email followups (bank, accountants, lawyers, whatever is pending from last week)
- bank account reviews (checking for any issues)
- sales tax, quarterly tax prep, yearly tax prep as appropriate
- inventory – monthly
I used to just pay bills as they came in. This seemed like a non-issue, because nearly everything was online and it only took a minute. But, that minute actually represented a distraction and a break in the flow.
Now, I have a drawer and a folder. Any bills that show up digitally get dumped into a shared folder called “1 Bills to Pay”. My husband and I both add to the folder. Any physical bills go into drawer and get handled on Mondays. By simply saying “I pay bills on Mondays” I batched the process and removed a level of stress and annoyance from my day.
Then, if by 3pm or 5pm I have time for a few hours in the studio, I’m thrilled!
