Can you feel it?
Vacation time is over, kids are in school, and the summertime distractions are gone.
Now, it feels like your brain has a massive jolt of caffeine, you’re finally feeling focused on SEO content again, and you want to do ALL THE THINGS.
Yup, I call that BTSE (Back to School Energy.)
Over the years, I’ve learned how to harness BTSE, use it to plan my end-of-year goals, and brainstorm ways to boost my income.
Here are three things I’m doing to harness that energy right now — and you can do them too!
I’m slicing some social media tasks.
I’ve talked before about how we get in content creation ruts, doing things because we “have to” — not because it works. This quarter, I’ll focus more on live, on-camera events (they work and drive income!) and focus less on posting some social content (sigh…Facebook.)
This one is difficult because (1) it’s hard to kill my babies, and (2) I’m a process-driven person, so shaking things up always feels weird. At the same time, laser-focusing on what works (rather than giving in to my weird process needs) gives me more free time, helping me see better returns.
(Side note: In this post, I discussed evaluating your current content strategy and slicing what doesn’t spark profits. It’s amazing how much content we create that does….nothing…for us.)
While I’m shaking up my social media, I also plan to…
Evaluate my other processes and streamline them.
My process ruts mean I’ll do the same, time-inefficient thing simply because it’s what I’ve always done. For instance, my new newsletter format was taking more than 45 minutes of formatting time every Monday, which would have turned into a normal part of my week. Fortunately, my BTSE helped me find a solution rather than settling for the time suck.
Next up is seeing if I can streamline my email welcome series and develop a new promotional and posting calendar, breaking everything down step-by-step. Yup, I’ve got a lot on my plate. I bet you do, too. Switching up processes allows me to spend more time on the things that matter. Especially since now…
I’m focusing on 3-4 hours of creative time a day. Period.
I hit the wall hard this summer with post-pandemic burnout (like many people), and I realized my work habits weren’t overly healthy. Add in a bad medical test result (the retest was fine, but the 2.5-month wait was hell) and fur baby stress — and my brain completely tapped out. I was doomscrolling multiple times a day and calling it a “mental time out” because I “wasn’t working.” Yeah, that was not productive.
So far (and this has only been a 3-week journey,) I’ve kept to Oliver Burkeman’s suggestion of 3-4 focused hours a day. (Have you read this post? It’s life-changing!) Enjoying actual rest — where I take a walk or read a book — has made an amazing difference in my focus, energy levels, and error rates. Plus, I’ve finally gotten clarity on how to handle business stuff that felt overwhelming. And it turns out I don’t miss doomscrolling at all.
So, take the time to harness the BTSE for yourself and see what happens. Just a little process tweak — or slicing an unnecessary task — can free up time to do so much more.
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