Honoring the Season You're In

Last month I introduced the idea that for the service provider, our time is our inventory, and that a change in season can shrink that inventory without warning. It's almost prophetic that I spoke on it last month, because this month, I faced a shift of my own.

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Key Concepts

• The Problem: Higher priorities are requiring more of our time, reducing the amount of time we have to work in our business.

• The Solution: Taking stock of what time we have available, then deciding the priorities and plugging them into our calendar, and deciding what gets temporarily cut for this season.

• The Core Message: Our schedules can change during the busy seasons of life, and they should reflect our priorities.

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Honoring the season

This season for me means kids in sports, one of which is new this year, so there's more running around to get them where they need to go. For a few weeks, I was honestly in denial about it, still holding as many networking coffees as I wanted, still booking client sessions the way I always had.

Seasons come in two forms. There are literal ones: summer with kids home, then fall with a different rhythm. And there are life-stage seasons: one child starting college while two are still in high school, or helping a parent manage a health issue.

Honoring a season means naming your priorities, then putting them first in your calendar. For me, that order is wife, mother, then business. When I feel personal life encroaching on business time, I remind myself why I chose this work in the first place: the flexibility to be there for my kids now, and eventually for my parents and in-laws later. For a lot of solo providers, that flexibility isn't a bonus, it's the whole reason we chose this.

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What I noticed

When I finally looked up from that denial and actually looked at my time, the truth was clear: my inventory had shrunk.

Every day now has a hard stop at 2pm for anything client-facing, and my Friday mornings have become client-facing time instead, a slot that used to be just one accountability call. It's not the schedule I'd choose year-round, but it's the one that fits this season, and it lets me keep my other priorities intact.

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What to do next

If your personal life is encroaching on your business time right now, take out a weekly planner and plot out what a normal week actually looks like for you, not the week you wish you had.

Once it's plotted out, plug in time for the backend work that keeps your business running. This might also be a good time to look at the networking events you're attending and decide if you need to pull back for this season. Not forever, just for now.

One more thing worth knowing: tasks tend to expand to fill whatever time you give them. If you only have thirty minutes, set a goal to get done what you can in that time. That's really what capacity comes down to: how much time you actually have, matched honestly against what you're asking it to produce.

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I help solo service providers align their business and personal finances so their business actually funds the life they want to live. If that's something you could use right now, a strategy session is a good place to start.

Prefer to listen instead?

I actually talked through this one out loud before I ever wrote it down.