Why the heck am I feeling so overwhelmed?
I looked at my calendar for the week.
Yup. My weekdays were jam packed with client meetings, office administration duties, phone calls and court hearings. My early mornings and weekends were slated for workouts, personal errands, dinner with the family… You know, life!
Rationally I knew that we all have 168 hours in a week so why was it that some people I know seem to get so much stuff done—really impactful stuff too—and I often feel like I’m spinning my wheels not moving forward as fast as I would like?
There was so much that I wanted to do for my clients. So much value that I wanted add for them.
There was just not enough time or resources for me to do so.
I realized that I needed to make some tough decisions with my business.
In order to keep up and continue providing the same level of personal and timely service that my clients were used to, I either needed to add more staff and resources to my business (which brings its own set of headaches) or I need to trim certain practice areas away.
After much thoughtful consideration, I decided to trim away two main areas of my law practice to make space for growing the true love of my business—the reason I started My Pink Lawyer® in the first place—Estate & Legacy Planning for families.
The decision was tough and not everyone is going to be happy with it.
I realize, though, that life is a series of, oftentimes, tough choices. And as I shared in a recent post about gracefully saying no, saying yes to some opportunities by definition means saying no to other opportunities.
And although it’s tough, sometimes you have to prune away existing areas of your life or your business in order to create space for the other areas of your life or business to flourish.
Business coach Michael Hyatt describes it as creating “margin” in your life. And unfortunately, margin does not randomly happen. You must proactively create it, and sometimes even fight for it, daily.
I understand you might not own your own business and the example I shared with you today is about how I am attempting to create more margin in my law practice to allow for future growth.
However, business owner or not, you probably are a wee bit overscheduled in your own life right now. Here are 5 quick tips to create more margin in your own life:
- Leave plenty of buffer between activities. For example, have you allotted for travel time or some decompression time between activities?
- Wake up earlier. There’s no easier way to add more buffer to your day than to wake up an hour earlier.
- Stop overbooking yourself. We have a tendency to overestimate what we can accomplish in a day.
- Batch your recurring errands together. Pay bills, do laundry, and grocery shop just once a week and decide in advance when you will do these errands.
- Learn to say no. You already have enough on your plate, remember?
Deciding to create margin in your life takes a second of your time. But actually creating it is a constant work in progress.
Now go forth with your pruning shears, my friend, and create some margin in your own life.
Kristen “Making Space For Future Growth” Marks
P.S. Just as margin in your life doesn’t just magically appear, nor does your confidence in making great planning decisions to simplify life for your family magically appear. That confidence comes from knowledge and putting tangible blueprints in place to make the transition of your assets and affairs easier for your family. Schedule your Estate & Legacy Planning consultation here to get your family’s legacy “blueprint” started right now.
