Note: This transcript was auto generated then some poor soul sat and listened to it, and followed through correcting any mistakes they spotted. Please however expect human error and shout if you spot an issue. Email: lee [fancy curly symbol] trailblazer.fm.
Verbatim text
Lee Matthew Jackson
Welcome to the WP Innovator Podcast, the podcast for web designers and design agencies exploring the world of WordPress and online business. And now your host, Lee Jackson.
Lee Matthew Jackson
Hi and welcome to episode 38 of the WP Innovator Podcast, and today it is you and me yet again. So I’ve been tackling a few subjects that have been coming in through conversations that I’ve been having over Skype or in some of the mastermind groups, but also through the WP Innovator Podcast group. That’s on leejacksondev.com/group, if you didn’t know, which redirects you there. And good old April, she posted a few really encouraging remarks, but also she’s asked the following question, and I thought, great, it’s about time I do a podcast on this, and it’s called Time Management. So welcome, episode 38 on time management.
Lee Matthew Jackson
Let’s read what April said. Lee, I’m curious, how do you manage your time as a business owner? How do you keep up with everything? And that’s managing people, projects, doing your podcast, social media, refining processes, etc. So there it is, that’s a big loaded question, and I can’t promise to answer all of that really, really well, but I’m going to spend the next few minutes just talking through what we do as agency, but also what I do as a business owner and an entrepreneur who manages multiple businesses to manage time.
Lee Matthew Jackson
And I want to be totally honest right now, it’s a journey running your business, being an entrepreneur, having a team, having responsibilities, working on projects, etc. I’ve yet to find the Holy Grail where I can have everything just running like clockwork, I can go and sit on the beach and sup a cocktail and do all the other cool stuff that people will have you believe happen. You know, I laugh often when people say, oh yeah, I’m going to go into business because, you know, screw the 9 to 5, I’m going to work for myself so I can choose my own hours. But honestly, guys, when you go into being an entrepreneur, a freelancer, or running a business, the whole 9 to 5 thing, it’s true, you don’t do 9 to 5. Sometimes you actually do 7 AM till 7 PM or beyond.
Lee Matthew Jackson
Because you’re having to put all this time in to grow your business. Now on the flip side, you’re actually doing something that you love. So that’s awesome. And I gotta be honest, sometimes I have worked 50, 60 hours a week. But I’ve been doing work that I absolutely love.
Lee Matthew Jackson
It’s a business that I own, I’m solving problems that I want to solve for other people. And I’m gonna see my clients benefit from those problems being solved. You know, I have not nailed time management. I definitely get stressful weeks. I definitely have weeks where I have to work way more hours than I want to.
Lee Matthew Jackson
But at the same time, throughout all of that, that thing that stops me from potentially having a breakdown is the fact that this is actually my business. This is my baby. I am doing what I love to do, and I’m being paid by people to You know, to code, to solve problems, all those things that really fire me up. Now, if you think about it on the flip side, when you’re in a 9-to-5 job for somebody else, you’re being paid for, you know, 7.5 or whatever it is hours, including your break— sorry, plus your break— to do something that somebody else wants you to do. It’s their baby.
Lee Matthew Jackson
It’s not your baby. You’re doing what you’re being told. You don’t really have the passion for it, etc. So those 7 or 8 hours a day just feel like hell. They feel boring.
Lee Matthew Jackson
They feel oppressive. They feel awful. When you’re working for yourself, spending tonnes of time on things can actually become a pleasure. All right. So like I said, being honest, I’ve not nailed time management.
Lee Matthew Jackson
There are often times when I still have to do really long weeks, or I might have a little mini meltdown because things are just getting on top of me. And I really wish that I could, you know, spin all the plates. Maybe there’ll be a few unexpected things like a member of staff will need to go to the hospital for a reason, or maybe somebody’s off ill, or maybe we’ve got some holidays coming up where several members of staff are on holiday, you know, so there’s all sorts of things that can kind of crop up as well that just, you know, really put a kibosh on some of those plans. So there’s the disclaimer, I’ve not got it nailed. I do have to work some really long weeks to be able to achieve everything that I achieve, but at the same time I am doing what I love, and most importantly as well, I’m still managing to make time for the other really important part of my life, which is family, and that is spending time with the girls and having holidays, etc.
Lee Matthew Jackson
How do I do all that? Flippin’ heck, I’m gonna tell you. So sit back, relax, and enjoy. And as you listen to me, remember, like I said, I don’t have this sorted, but the things that I have been doing over the last year have really helped me reduce those really long work weeks down to regularly only working 5 days a week, 9 to 5, for myself, and actually having evenings or afternoons off with my family as well. That’s not to say, i.e., this week is a good example, that I haven’t had to pull a few late-nighters because certain projects have been coming up to their due dates and I’ve just got to put in some extra hours, or maybe someone’s been off as well.
Lee Matthew Jackson
In fact, that’s happened some— a couple of absences this week have meant that I’ve had to put in some extra hours as well, you know. So this week would be an example of one of those times where you just can’t get it right all the time. Okay, so what do I do to manage time? How do I seem to achieve everything? How do I get the podcasts out on time?
Lee Matthew Jackson
How do I meet project demands and all those sorts of things and stay sane? Well, this took quite a lot of writing, but I’ve written down everything that I get up to. And the first thing I have in my box of tricks is a Things to Do Today book. Yes, it’s literally called Things to Do Today, and you can get these on Amazon. It’s like a binder booklet where you rip out the pages.
Lee Matthew Jackson
And there’s a whole load of lines with a gorgeous square for a tick. And you can write next to each one of those boxes what you need to do today. So it’s a list of things you need to achieve. So what I’ll do is at the beginning of every single week, I will put out throughout the week all the things that I need to achieve. Now that could be recording a podcast, it could be mixing a podcast, it could be making some progress on a project, it could be sending a quote, it could be following up with somebody, all of these things that I know I do not want to forget to do, and I also need to have down on a piece of paper.
Lee Matthew Jackson
Now, why do I do a piece of paper when I’m a technology buff? Good question. There is something so satisfying about ticking off something on a piece of paper and also putting a line through it. But also, the sheer act of writing something down actually helps ingrain it in my mind as well. I’m one of those people that when I’m learning, if I can make notes on the key points that have been made, the act of kind of thinking that thought through and processing it onto a piece of paper really does help as well embellish that in my mind and kind of almost makes it real.
Lee Matthew Jackson
So it’s something else, you know, that it’s, it’s a way of ingraining it on my mind so that I can focus on that thing for the day or for the week. So obviously at the beginning of the week I’ve got all of these things on my to-do lists. I split it out into 5 pages, Monday through to Friday, and then what I’ll do is obviously hit on with Monday. Now when I’m making the list at the beginning of every day, what you need to do is review that list. I review my list and I look and I go, okay, how can I order this?
Lee Matthew Jackson
How can I put some priorities in? And I’ll put some numbers in to say, right, well, I’ll do that first, that second. And I’ll look for all the quick wins, you know, what are the quick wins that I do and what are the tougher items that I know I need to schedule within my day a good hour to do to nail those items. And then, like I said, being realistic, I’ll then also say, what do I need to push until tomorrow as well? Because sometimes I could have a to-do list that’s 20 items long, and that can feel really overwhelming.
Lee Matthew Jackson
And sometimes, to be realistic, there are some small actions that could be done tomorrow because there is not necessarily the stress or the requirement to get those done particularly for Monday. So that’s really helpful when you’re making your to-do lists in advance. That means that you’re not trying to do a to-do list that’s all full of last-minute items. This is just to-do list full of things I need to do this week. So if on Monday I feel like, you know what, there’s 2 things there that I could just move on to tomorrow to take that extra pressure off me today, then I’ll do that.
Lee Matthew Jackson
And what I’ll do with those is I’ll put a line through it and then kind of do an arrow at the end of that line, and then I’ll turn the page and write that to-do item onto tomorrow’s page. So that kind of helps Again, it’s that kind of physical act of writing or putting a line through something and then writing it onto the next page. So I know that I physically moved a responsibility that I had set myself for that day onto tomorrow. So that’s super, super helpful as well. And then as I’m obviously going through my list, I’ll be putting a big tick in that tick box and I’ll be putting a nice line through it as well, because again, just crossing it off, it’s so therapeutic.
Lee Matthew Jackson
All right, so that is my things to do today book. Really, really useful. And there’s probably technology that you can do this with. You could probably use Basecamp for this, etc. But again, nothing beats, for me anyway, paper and pen and having that physical book.
Lee Matthew Jackson
Now here’s a top tip: you really need to get into the habit of taking this book with you everywhere. Especially during the work weeks, because when you’re without it, you feel like you’ve lost your right arm. Because for me, I have pretty much everything in there that I need to achieve for that day. And I’ve definitely had times where I’ve driven down to the office in Wellingborough and then had to turn full round and go all the way back home, go and grab the to-do list because I, I was reviewing it and I forgot to pack it, and then go back to the office. So top tip.
Lee Matthew Jackson
Okay. And that noise in the background is just me patting it. Good, good old book, you beautiful book, you. Um, okay, I’ll try and remember to put a link in the description to the book that I used to Amazon, and then you guys could order one for yourselves if you think you’d like to try this. Okay, so let’s unpack what I do with my work hours.
Lee Matthew Jackson
So there are only 5 days in a week. As an entrepreneur, it is really tempting to work way more than 5 days a week. It’s really tempting to be able to work on the Saturday and the Sunday as well. So let’s first of all unpack what I do in an average week on an average day. All right.
Lee Matthew Jackson
So the first thing I’m going to do is I’m going to wake up. What time do I wake up? I’m an early riser. You may not be, but I certainly am. And I am my most productive really early in the morning.
Lee Matthew Jackson
So I’ll usually be up around 5 or 5:30 in the morning and I’ll usually spend that first 30 minutes, you know, wash my face, have a drink. Water is usually a good start, although coffee is very tempting. And just kind of ease myself into, um, into life, into waking up. Probably have a shave, just make myself feel fresh. And then I’ll spend some time either in meditation— I do like to meditate now and again— that’s a little bit just listening to some music or listening to some sort of relaxation tape and just focusing on things.
Lee Matthew Jackson
Or I might be doing some time in prayer as well. So you all know I’m a Christian, or a Godbotherer, whatever you want to call me, Bible basher. So I do like to spend some times in prayer as well, just kind of praying about the day or what’s going on. So all those sorts of things that just kind of help kind of de-stress me, because sometimes I’ll wake up a little bit kind of wound up from dreams, or my brain will have been firing off all night. And it’s just really nice to spend the first kind of 30 minutes just slowly but surely getting ready, having a wash, doing some meditation, doing some reading, doing some praying, just kind of a chilling out.
Lee Matthew Jackson
And because I’m up so early as well, everybody else is asleep. The girls are always asleep, and I’ve got the whole house to myself. It’s a wonderful feeling. May even go for a short walk because we live near the country as well, so it’s just a quick step down the road and I can head out on into the fields there. Okay, so once I’ve done that, I am going to spend then the first few hours of that morning up until 9 o’clock, so that’s 6 through 9, nailing some real big focus things.
Lee Matthew Jackson
So that’s the big things I’ve talked about that’s on my things to do today list that are going to require me to have some real undivided attention so that I can focus specifically on those. So it might be an hour of research, it might be an hour of coding. It might be an hour of setting up, say, a WordPress theme from scratch where I’m doing all of the code base and just setting up the header and footer from a PSD so that I can hand that over then to a member of my team to carry on. Anything really that just requires my sheer focus and not be interrupted. And when I say not be interrupted, let’s just imagine what happens from 9 o’clock onwards, 9 o’clock in the morning onwards.
Lee Matthew Jackson
Your phone rings, people want to talk to you, your staff are about, they want to ask you questions. There are all sorts of things that are competing for your time. So for me, that 9 till 6 in the morning is just a beautiful time. Did I just say 9 till 6? That’s 6 till 9.
Lee Matthew Jackson
I can’t time travel. Sorry. That’s 6 till 9 in the morning is just that beautiful quiet time where I can really focus on those items and just get them nailed. So that means by 9 o’clock, I’ve sometimes got 5 or 6 things done on my to-do list, which is an amazing feeling when 9 o’clock hits and the rest of the team are in the office. And you’ve already done 5 or 6 things that required focus.
Lee Matthew Jackson
So that will be the first thing that I’ll do. Then normally what I’ll have is I’ll have some calls that will have been scheduled in advance. So I’ll probably have an hour or 2 hours maximum of telephone calls in a morning. So that’ll be from 9, 10, 11, sometimes till 12. And they’ll be to discuss projects, get updates, etc.
Lee Matthew Jackson
And I really do try and keep after that free, other than 4 till 6 in an evening on certain nights where I might be doing podcast recordings, where I’m doing interviews. So actual calls about projects, they will all be in the morning when I’m most fresh, when I’ve already achieved a whole tonne of stuff and I can focus on those telephone calls. And then that can help dictate what I’m going to pass on to the rest of the team or what projects I’m going to update. So, but then the rest of the day will be devoid of calls if I can at all help. And sometimes I have to have calls, you know, things happen, you have to have a call about it.
Lee Matthew Jackson
But, you know, I’ll try and keep that whole space as free as possible other than the now and again podcast calls that I’ll have. And they’re completely different. Having a meeting about a project with a client can be quite exhausting because you’re switched on, you’re listening to everything they say so that you don’t miss anything, so that you can then respond with questions to make sure you’ve understood it, or respond with value to really help them feel like they’ve experienced, you know, and got everything they want from that call. So, you know, those morning calls, it’s important for me to get all those sorts of calls done in a morning when I’m at my most energetic, my most attentive, and my most buoyed up as well, because I’ve just achieved so much in that 6 till 9. And now I’m doing 1 or 2 calls in the morning where, you know, hopefully I’m blowing away the client and they’re so happy with, you know, my energy and what I’m talking about.
Lee Matthew Jackson
And also Again, I’m still in that mindset. I’m keen. I’m writing down notes as well from these calls that are sensible notes, because when I’m tired, my notes become sloppy and then I have no idea either what I’ve written because I can’t read my own writing, or what the hell I meant when I thought, oh, if I just write this really short sentence, that’ll mean that entire paragraph that the client said. And then afterwards I’m thinking, what the bleep? So yeah, for me, mornings, get those calls in.
Lee Matthew Jackson
Now what I’ll have as well on my calendar are regular appointments. So throughout the rest of the day, I’ll have appointments that will hit on certain days to do certain things. So for example, I’ll have a— on a Monday, I’ve got an appointment that hits my calendar and will let me know that I need to be doing some things on the podcast. So that would mean I need to be doing some social media sharing on the podcast, um, or I’ll need to be doing some audio editing, or I need to be uploading it, etc. So all sorts of things like that There’s also things like, you know, content creation, like creating a blog post if I’m going to do anything like that, or a, another download that I might be creating, etc.
Lee Matthew Jackson
But there’ll be times throughout the week where there are key things that I know I need to do each week that I’ll then set appointments for, and then I’ll try and stick to those just like they are appointments with a client. So when my alarm goes off at 10 o’clock to tell me that there is some work I need to do on my podcast for 30 minutes, then that is what I’m going to do for those 30 minutes. And that’s really helpful to start to fill those gaps in your calendar with those regular appointments. And that means that if somebody wants to book a call with me at that 10 o’clock or that 11 o’clock or whatever time it is, and I’ve got that podcast in there, then my response to them, unless it’s going to be super urgent, is, no, I’m afraid I’m booked up, but I could do the following day in the morning. Now, you know, I did say that sometimes you have to have calls in an afternoon, You know, sometimes things are urgent.
Lee Matthew Jackson
So I’m not a stickler, I’m not going to insist that they discuss it with me the next day, because sometimes that’s just going to be unreasonable. So obviously, I am realistic. But, you know, the idea is, is to have the idea of the sorts of day that you want to have, and then to try and protect that as much as you possibly can throughout the day, but within reason, knowing there are going to be times when you have to go off the plan to help somebody or to push something forward. Okay, so what I’m doing is I’m describing the day that I envisage for myself every day. I don’t necessarily achieve it every day, and I won’t put myself down for that.
Lee Matthew Jackson
I just realise I’ve had to react because there are things that happen that you at times can’t control. And one day when I do have everything under control, perhaps I’ll do podcast number 3792 where I tell you about how I finally achieved the perfect day. All right, so we’ve talked about my early routine, we’ve talked about spending those first couple of hours when you’re kind of on point on calls, we’ve talked about my regular calendar appointments for things that I need to do regularly, and then I’ll talk about all the other work when I talk about projects. So when we talk about project work, I’ll cover those. But there are two other things that will happen in a day that are not optional, okay?
Lee Matthew Jackson
The first one is lunch, and this is not optional for any of my team. You have to have your lunch break, and it, it’s an hour’s lunch break. I make my team take their lunch break. I make my team make me take my lunch break, because if I am tempted to work through my lunch break, that is not cool. That’s a bad culture.
Lee Matthew Jackson
I need to have a break. 12 o’clock, we all will have our break. We’ll either go for a walk, go out for lunch. Even if we’re staying in, we’re away from our computers, we’re listening to music, we’re chatting, etc. But there is an hour in the middle of our day where we need a break.
Lee Matthew Jackson
You need a break. You can’t work all hours that God sends and stay energetic and stay focused. And in fact, if you think about this, if you just keep working for hours and hours and hours and you think, oh, it’s okay, I’m going to work 12 hours today, then that actually means that when you’re working on something, potentially psychologically, you’re going to maybe take your time a bit more because you’ve actually given yourself in your head these 4 extra hours, meaning you’re working on into the evening or whatever it is that you’re doing. So it’s really important to say, no, I’m working from 9 till 12, and I want to get all these things achieved before then. And then at 12 o’clock, I am totally having my lunch break.
Lee Matthew Jackson
And to follow that, the other thing that is not optional with our work week is a 5 PM finish. I’ll make me and my entire team finish at 5 PM. I book no meetings after 5 PM. That is a religious thing. It’s not religious.
Lee Matthew Jackson
It’s not my religion, but I mean, we stick to it religiously is what I mean. We all finish at 5. We will do a 9 to 5 day in our business and everybody heads off home at 5 because we need to go home. We need to have our dinner. We need to spend time with our family and relax and watch TV and do stuff and live.
Lee Matthew Jackson
It is so freaking important. You know, Larissa has worked with me for a year now, and only once have we done a late-nighter because there was a project that had a very specific deadline, and we agreed that we would do a late-nighter together to get all of that work done. So with it, you know, through that whole year, that 5 o’clock, she has never had to stay other than that pre-arranged late-nighter. And to be honest, what I did was I then gave her the next day off anyway, so it’s it made up for it. She wasn’t out of pocket.
Lee Matthew Jackson
Okay, so 5 o’clock finish. Now, as entrepreneurs, you know, we, we have to own specific projects, we’ve got responsibilities. So I did mention that, that means I might have to do some late-nighters. And it’s very common for me to do at least one late-nighter a week, because I do have a lot of responsibilities. I’ve got another company that’s just launched as well, on the side, which has added quite a lot of responsibility on me, and I’m having to do extra hours.
Lee Matthew Jackson
Now, that 5 PM finish though is still not optional. I will finish at 5, and I will take my downtime, and I’ll be home, I’ll be cooking, I’ll be spending time with the family, I’ll be going out, and then if I need to, and that is a massive if in bold, in red, in Comic Sans, centred, I’ll spend a couple of hours in the evening if I need to doing a few other extra pieces. Now, you’ll have heard me just tell you that I essentially work from 6 AM until 5, and that’s quite common for me. I will, because I enjoy what I do, I’m up early and then I’ll finish at 5. However, I am realistic again, and if I don’t have to achieve a whole tonne of complex, super focused things then that 6 till 9 in the morning is an optional thing for me.
Lee Matthew Jackson
So I’ll only use that 6 till 9 in the morning when there are those things that I need to do on my to-do list that are going to require that uninterrupted focus. Otherwise, that 6 till 9 in the morning is taking my daughter out for a daddy-daughter date, or it’s going for a long run, or it’s reading a book, or on a rare circumstance, it might even be having a sleep in. Okay. So this is what I do. I’m very flexible with what I’m working with, but I’m still trying to keep to that structure of work hours and keeping that kind of special time in the morning that’s either going to be for focus work or me time to recharge or, you know, to kind of better myself.
Lee Matthew Jackson
And the reading I’ll be doing is probably a business book or listening to other people’s podcasts, etc. All righty, there you go. There’s my average day, or at least the vision I have of an average day that I try and achieve. So what I would encourage you to do is maybe press pause right now and just write down for yourself what an average day in a week might look like. How could you structure your day so much so that you could enjoy every single weekend off like I currently do?
Lee Matthew Jackson
I do not work weekends. I haven’t worked weekends for years. And you can achieve nearly everything that you can possibly achieve, um, within that. So, you know, when are you the most productive? Is it an evening for you?
Lee Matthew Jackson
If it is, then when can you spend time with the family as well? You know, try and come up with some sort of balanced day where you feel like you can focus on some of the really super important non-interruptible items another time of the day where you can focus on the, the sorts of meetings that are still going to require energy, that can be quite draining, but they’re not near the end of the day when, you know, you’re going to be the least effective. And just, just have some time to yourself and try plan that out. And it’s going to evolve. This day that I’ve just described to you has evolved now over the last 3 years of working on Lee Jackson Dev, and it’s going to continue to evolve as I get more staff, hopefully I’m going to be able to reduce more hours that I’m working and maybe again, this workday will evolve even further.
Lee Matthew Jackson
Now what I’m also going to caveat this is, I sound like I fit a lot into a day. Yes, I do. What I also do though in a year is I do fit in a lot of holidays and minimum I’ll be taking 5 weeks off a year or more, okay? So I’ll certainly make sure that I’m getting regular holidays and that’s a lot harder at the early stages. So for the first year, that was very, very difficult to take that sort of time off.
Lee Matthew Jackson
And yes, I had to work a lot of hours to be able to, um, to keep the business going and to grow it. But now we’re 3 years in, I can certainly take off my 5 or more weeks off a year, and I’ll stagger them throughout the year. Maybe I’ll have 2 weeks off here, or I’ll take a week off there, etc. So as you can see, throughout this whole kind of constantly on cycle, I’m also taking off holiday as and when I need to. And I’m also being selective as to when I am working as well, you know, do I want to do that 6 till 9 in the morning on the business?
Lee Matthew Jackson
Or do I want to do that on myself and help, you know, improve myself, etc. And also another thing that I’ll do quite regularly is when there is no work to do, and I’ve also achieved whatever steps I need to, to a particular goal, I’ll take a day off. Okay, it’s so important. If there’s no work to do and you feel like you’ve achieved everything you need to do for future sales pipelines, etc., then freaking stop working and go for a beer. Go and take your wife or your husband out.
Lee Matthew Jackson
Go and hang out with your kids. Go for a bike ride. Go watch a movie. Do something that is not work because we’re all stuck in that 9 to 5 I’ve got to work, I’ve, I’ve got to perform, I’ve got to be doing something. And that’s totally not true.
Lee Matthew Jackson
If you’ve got this things to do today list in front of you and there is a line through everything, don’t be tempted necessarily to start trying to do all of tomorrow’s stuff. Take the rest of the freaking day off and give yourself a massive pat on the back. And again, that is something I’ll do. And you know what, if I finished everything and Larissa’s finished everything in a day, it is not uncommon for me and Larissa in the Wellingborough office to just shut up shop, put on the out of offices if we need to, redirect the phones to reception— that’s the virtual receptionist— and head off home. That’s not abnormal because it is totally pointless to be working for the sake of working when you’ve actually achieved everything that you need to do in a day.
Lee Matthew Jackson
And that’s why it’s really important to have this things to do today list, or to have some sort of way of tracking the things that you need to do in your day-to-day, in your business, etc., because Otherwise, you’re going to feel like you’ve never achieved anything. You’re going to feel like your list is just ever-growing and it’s always going to be this thing in your head of things that you think you need to do. And your day is going to be unstructured and you’re going to be trying to do a bit of everything everywhere all the time. And your days are going to drag and you’re probably going to get into this kind of mess of 12-hour-plus days, etc., because nothing’s written down. You’re reacting to emails, you’re reacting to all sorts of things.
Lee Matthew Jackson
And when it comes— when you think, oh, I think I’ve done everything, you’re not sure you’ve done everything. So then you’re spending more time messing around trying to find other stuff to do, etc., trying to fill that day. So if I can encourage you— sorry, I’ve talked an awful lot, a long time on that, but you know, this, this is very a big thing on my heart, is the idea of trying to plan that day, the average day that you would like to aim for. Remember, you’re not going to achieve it every day, but that average day that we’d like to aim for that has regular to-dos to manage those things that have to get done every week, and then also those per-day to-dos that you’ll have set up at the beginning of the week and evolved through the week where each day you can cross those off and finish your day by 5 o’clock and enjoy your evening. And if you can finish earlier, hey, We often try and nail all of our to-dos as soon as we can so we can go home early because it’s so cool to arrive at 4 o’clock or 3 o’clock, be able to pick up my daughter from school.
Lee Matthew Jackson
That is such a great experience. And, you know, for the last few weeks, not been able to achieve that. I’ve been so freaking busy. But on the times that I can achieve it, it is so awesome. All right, so there you go.
Lee Matthew Jackson
Work hours. Make that imaginary day that you would love and then try and aim towards that. All right, so how am I managing projects? So projects are a tough one. Let’s think about this now.
Lee Matthew Jackson
Most of the projects that we’ll work on as web designers or web developers tend to be very long-term. They might be over several weeks, they might be over several months. They also might require information to be provided, so content to be provided. Maybe designs need to be finished and signed off by clients, etc. There’s all sorts of things that can compete to therefore delay a project further and further and further.
Lee Matthew Jackson
And then before you know it, you’ve got multiple projects clashing with each other and due dates all kind of merging at the same point. And before you know it, October is going to be the worst month ever because you’re suddenly doing all the work you’ve been waiting to do for the last 3 months on 4 different projects, all within the same month, all with the same deadline. And I’m pretty sure I’ve just described most design agencies’ lives here because it’s something that we have often experienced. So what we do is we use a combination of tools to try and manage and avoid that sort of thing. The first one is Freedcamp.
Lee Matthew Jackson
That’s F-R-E-E-Dcamp, which is essentially like Basecamp but with a different pricing model. It’s free and then you’re paying for extra storage that you might need to use. So we will pay for the extra storage and you can buy add-ons, etc. As well for it. But out of the box it’s free, which is cool for freelancers especially.
Lee Matthew Jackson
And that’s a project management system which allows us to set up all of the projects, invite in the key members from the different businesses, and then we’ll set up tasks and assign different tasks to different people with due dates, etc. Um, the, they, once the task has been done, it will be able to be assigned to the client. The client can then cheque the work, make comments, assign it back, and then eventually, once you’ve played tennis with that task, the client will then sign that, that particular task off and close it for you, etc. And it can also be used internally as well for things like quality assurance on a web build. So Perhaps I’ll create up a to-do list because I’m checking some work that Larissa has done.
Lee Matthew Jackson
I’ll go through and create a whole load of tasks saying, you know, this is missing, that’s out of line, blah blah blah blah blah. And then Larissa, you know, will go through those herself, assign them back for me to check, and then I’ll close them all off. So that’s really, really useful for those tasks, those, um, and I’m not talking about the tasks of the things to do today, they’re the high-level things, but these are the sorts of tasks where, you know, you, it might be to code a particular function or to build a particular page or to fix a problem on a website site or to change some CSS, you know, those sorts of nitty-gritty tasks that are all part of a higher-level project, you know, all getting you towards the end goal of delivering something. What we then also use is iTask3, which is a Mac and I believe a Windows project— product, sorry— and it’s a really big project management tool to allow you to build up really clever-looking Gantt charts. And what they do for us then is on one big page we can see all of the projects that we have live, all stacked on top of each other and then we can see at what stage we’re at, who owns what stage, is it the client or is it us?
Lee Matthew Jackson
And also because we’ve got this nice big line down the screen, we can see where the potential classes are going to be— clashes, sorry— are going to be with other projects. So if a client is late on delivering something to us and we therefore say, right, we thought it was going to take them 5 days to deliver this, it’s now going to take them 10 days to deliver this, if we change that number from 5 to and it will push the rest of that project along, which means we can then say to the client, because you’re now late and you’re going to take another 5 days, this changes the delivery date because of your action, and it will move all the other actions that we’ve planned after that onwards. But what it also does, because we’ve got that big green line down the thing and we can see, hey, look, in a month’s time when that’s happening on that project, that’s also going to clash with a really big deal that we’ve got going on on another project as well. So that allows us then to say, okay, in October for this project. Now, because you, Mr.
Lee Matthew Jackson
Client, have delayed 5 days, not only has it pushed your project delivery date into October, but it also clashes with some annual leave for a couple of our team members, and it also clashes with another project. So we’re going to need to add some extra time to your project to push your project on into November so that we can still deliver everything for you, and we’re also not having a meltdown in October. So that’s a really, really useful tool, and that really protects us. Now I want to give a massive shout out here to Dan Connors, and he has been an absolute legend. Without Dan, we would never have been able to develop this system, and I’d encourage you to head over to dan-connors.com.
Lee Matthew Jackson
So Dan has spent absolutely weeks with us training us, training the whole team, and developing an amazing strategy with us. To essentially to do this, to be able to have weekly meetings as a team, to be able to communicate well with our clients, and to manage this project management software in such a way that we can control our clients’ expectations. And we can also manage our own expectations and our own time and our own sanity by being, being able to see everything visually. So that’s dan-conners.com, and you can see his offerings in there. He’s Absolute amazing guy.
Lee Matthew Jackson
What we’ve done as a result of Dan’s help and his work is we now have a weekly project management team meeting that was originally chaired by Dan. At the moment it’s being chaired by Larissa as she’s growing into her role in the company. And then what we’re doing is getting regular advice as well off Dan Connors, and we’re going to be getting him in on a consultative basis quite regularly to help continue to evolve our project management and, uh, well, our project management skills internally, but also what our ongoing strategy is going to be. It’s an ever-evolving system. So head on over, dan-conners.com.
Lee Matthew Jackson
He’s also in the WP Innovator group as well on leejaxondev.com/group. So do feel free to hit him up with any questions that you might have about project management. The guy is a freaking legend, and I am so grateful for the work that he’s done with us over the last few months to help us go from a massive list of to-dos in Basecamp and a very stressed entrepreneur through to a smaller list of things to do in Basecamp and a much less stressed entrepreneur and a whole load of clients who know what to expect and who are being managed in such a way as that when they’re late with something, they have to own that and they’re accountable and they can see it visually that because of the action of them being late on something, the project is being pushed on and and, you know, by a few days, etc. And that therefore means, you know, there’s not lots of undue and unfair pressure on us, etc. So I can’t thank Dan enough.
Lee Matthew Jackson
Now, here’s a quick one. I’m just going to digress ever so slightly. When clients do do this and they do push things on too far, and that means that billing becomes an issue— you need to bill for the next stage, but the client is taking time, etc.— then there are a couple of things you’ll probably want to start considering doing, first of all, is building in some sort of clause into your contract which says that the next stage will be billed at X date regardless of the progress if the client has delayed. Okay, so that’s one good thing you can do. So you can still say to the client, okay, it is now the 1st of September, so we are now due to build the next stage.
Lee Matthew Jackson
Yes, we’re not where we thought we would all be, but we can show you that that is because you spent 10 days instead of 5 doing X, Y, and Z. Okay, so that’s very helpful. But then the other thing as well is if you don’t have that sort of agreement in place and you do have a client that’s taking a very long time on something, then you can explain to them that by their very actions it is now adding costs to you that you would essentially need to charge them for. So if they could please hurry up and do X, Y, and Z, or whatever it is you’re waiting for, by, you know, the next 3 or 5 days that will allow you to then push forward and get the rest of the project finished. And that means you won’t have to charge them any extra.
Lee Matthew Jackson
So that, you know, that kind of mild threat— it’s not a threat, but it’s just explaining to them that you will incur costs if they delay. Because there could be hosting costs, it could be extra staffing costs because you’re going to have to move staffing around, etc. But there are going to be costs associated with their delay. Therefore, you can explain that to them and those costs you’re going to explain will need to be passed to them if they want this project delivering, etc. So that kind of idea of, oh crap, I don’t want to spend a whole load of extra money, I better, I better get these documents done, or better get this content done that’s been asked for, then that will really help speed up a project and, you know, get it out the door and allow you to be billing sooner.
Lee Matthew Jackson
And hey, if they say, you know what, yeah, that’s fine, just bill me for some extra cash, hey, well great, at least that’s us the opportunity to get some billing in, because cash flow is key to any business. Okay, so that’s project management. Again, hit up dan-conners.com or cheque him out in the WP Innovator Facebook group on leejacksondev.com/group. And I promise you, Dan has not asked me to say anything. This is all of our own volition, and me, Karthik, and Larissa, all three of us especially, have worked closely with Dan are super appreciative of his time, his expertise, and his skill.
Lee Matthew Jackson
And, you know, really for this last year, for really helping us, you know, become a full— a fully fledged agency. We really feel like we’ve gone from being a group of developers who work very hard to being an agency who, you know, can manage their time and manage their clients and manage the projects a lot more effectively. Lovely. All right, what do we do with content generation? Well, I generate content every week.
Lee Matthew Jackson
I generate a podcast. Here I am sat here right now and we’re doing a podcast. That’s a calendar event for me. I do a podcast. It’s, it’s either I’m spending this hour recording my own or I’m editing previous audio in this hour, and I will be cleaning up that audio, writing some notes, and getting the post all ready and scheduled so that it can go out on the Monday.
Lee Matthew Jackson
Day. So I’m using this hour to actually do the recording. So here we are, I’m recording. It’s calendared, and it’s very helpful to have those things calendared. Also, what I’ll do is I’ll have monthly content goals.
Lee Matthew Jackson
So I might have the goal to create some sort of piece of content, a video or anything like that, and those I will achieve a little bit at a time throughout the month. And they will be things that I’ll have on my things to do today list where I’ve broken that big task down into lots of little tasks over the month so that by the end of the month I will have the next download that I want to offer to people for free, you know, the lead magnet, etc., or the next piece of content or the next recording. So for example, I’ve got a current goal to create 7 extra podcasts— that’s pre-recorded podcasts— which we’re going to launch as a 7-day podathon in a few months’ time. So I’ve been slowly building up towards that goal doing small recordings here or there, writing notes, doing planning, etc., and also planning— excuse me— the launch of that podathon. So things like that, bigger projects, breaking them down, setting those goals, and then splitting up those smaller to-dos into my things to do today list over the next few weeks.
Lee Matthew Jackson
Alrighty, social media. I believe that was in, uh, her request as well. Hey April, are you still there? I’ve been chatting for 41 minutes. I hope you’re following me.
Lee Matthew Jackson
I’m a waffler, guys. I appreciate you listening, and I hope this is all making sense because this is, this is just me shooting the breeze with you. I hope you’ve got a beer or a cup of tea or a Coke if you’re driving, and, um, and I hope some things are hitting home and you’re enjoying this. And at this point, I would say as well, if you’ve got time management advice or if you want to get on the podcast and share your storeys on how you manage time, we can all learn from each other because I’ve totally not got this nailed yet. I still need to evolve these plans.
Lee Matthew Jackson
I still need to get better at what I do. So let’s all chat on the Facebook group, or let’s get you on the podcast and let’s drill you for all of your time management advice. So social media. I live on social media. You may have noticed, especially on Facebook and Twitter, I’m on there a lot.
Lee Matthew Jackson
And I’m on there personally a lot as well. I’m on— I’m logged on all the time. However, when I’m doing super focused things, it is closed. When I am on a telephone, it’s closed. If I’m working on things that require minimal attention, so perhaps I’m doing a whole load of CSS that just requires me to sit there for a couple of hours doing CSS, then Facebook will be open and I’ll cheque it every 20 minutes.
Lee Matthew Jackson
And I’ll use— it’s— I can never, never say it, but this is a— I’ll put it in the show notes. The idea is you set 20 minutes of focus, then take a short 2 or 3 minute break, and then another 20. Pomodoro technique, I think that’s it. Uh, 20 minutes of focus, 2 or 3 minutes off so that I’ll be Facebook or Twitter, back to 20 minutes of focus. 2 or 3 minutes off, you know, bit of social, and then back onto whatever it is I’m doing.
Lee Matthew Jackson
So I’m doing little short bursts, but then I’m also being able to be on social media. And the reason why I’m on social media quite a lot is because that’s a very important part of our business. I’m involved in different Facebook groups and networking a lot as well. And if you listen to the previous episode, you’ll also understand why I’m putting a lot of time into social media and, you know, keeping it open quite regularly throughout the day. Now, with regards to the regular posts and the regular content, All of that is done through Meet Edgar.
Lee Matthew Jackson
So if you head on over to meetedgar.com, I believe it is. Let’s just open the browser. Meet Edgar. Meet Edgar. Spell, spell, spell.
Lee Matthew Jackson
Meetedgar.com. Yes. If you head on over to meetedgar.com, go cheque that out. It’s freaking awesome. The idea there is we’ve been able to build a library of content and also integrate our podcast and our blog into this.
Lee Matthew Jackson
And give it a schedule of every 2 hours with different types of content. And Meet Edgar basically runs our social media activity. So everything that you see that goes out on an hour is something that we’ve prefilled and that we review only once a month. And when I say we review once a month, we literally are only reviewing what’s there and maybe adding some extra stuff where needed, because Meet Edgar will continue to reuse and recycle everything that is in the library at random, because it is totally not a sin to tweet the same thing twice or even share the same thing twice on Facebook, because the algorithms that they use, they’re not going to share it straight after each other. There’s going to be significant time in between the reshare.
Lee Matthew Jackson
But the idea is, if you think of Twitter for example, you know, the lifespan of a tweet is only so many minutes or seconds. So to share that tweet out again at a different time on a different day in a few days’ time time is totally cool. And Meet Edgar is an amazing system to do that. So that allows us to get all of our regular content out there, and that’s, uh, probably about 40% of our own content, and then the rest is content of other people’s, from influencers, etc., that is really useful and it’s going to add value to the audience that we have on social media as well. So that allows us to 24 hours a day be sharing content out automatically without having to spend tonnes of time refilling Buffer, for example, or another application like like that.
Lee Matthew Jackson
And then it also allows me, using my— the Pomodoro technique, to be able to, you know, spend those, you know, every 20 minutes going on and checking out what’s going on and replying to people’s comments, you know, and being present on social media as well. Also, with regards to social media, on the times when I’m locked away doing super focus thing, then I’ll make sure that Larissa is also keeping her eye on social media as well for us. She’ll be on Twitter replying to people, liking things, etc. And usually she’ll pop at the end of a reply, Larissa, so people know that it was actually Larissa that was saying it rather than me. Now, all of this advice and help came to us from Sarah Moore, and she’s from Eleven Lights Media, and again, we can’t thank her enough for the work that she did with us.
Lee Matthew Jackson
If you head on over to elevenlightsmedia.com.au, you can find out all about her there. She is a superstar, a social media superstar. She’s working working with some real heavyweights in the WordPress industry as well, but also heavyweights, um, in the entrepreneurial space as well, doing social media, doing videos, etc., uh, consultancy, etc. And she spent 6 months with us just last year, and I think the early part of this year, really helping evolve our social media strategy to the extent where we could then automate that regular sharing through Meet Edgar, and obviously then giving us all the other pieces, skills, and advice that we’ve shared in previous episodes. So if you go back, look for some of the Sarah Moore episodes.
Lee Matthew Jackson
The information that she shares and the things that I talk about as well with regards to social media has all come from Sarah Moore. And again, she’s someone that I can’t thank enough for being able to take us from an average Facebook slash, um, Twitter account right through to you know, almost feeling like pros at what we do and staying in touch and actually generating business. We generate so much business through social media. That’s why it’s so important that we are online, that we’re connected, and that we’re interacting with people. All right then, I’m gonna wrap this up really soon.
Lee Matthew Jackson
Thank you so much for listening this far in. Now the last thing we’re going to talk about is managing people. And the best way to manage people is actually to allow them to manage themselves. So I have adopted the things to do today list throughout the business. We all have our own things to do today book.
Lee Matthew Jackson
They all look the same, really pretty, and we’re all managing our time in a way that— and working in a way, sorry, that we we can work. You know, my super productive time, you know, we all know is between 6 and 9, and also, you know, I’m on fire for those meetings early in the morning from 9 till 10. But Larissa works in a completely different way. Karthik works in a little, you know, in a different way. So does Kane, and so do the other people involved, you know, as and when they’re coming into projects.
Lee Matthew Jackson
So, you know, allowing people to have the freedom to structure their day in a way that they feel they could be the most productive communicative is so important in our business. We have daily conversations. We’ll always have a conversation in the morning, all of us, to find out what everyone’s up to, um, to see if anybody’s struggling with anything. Can I take anything off someone’s plate, or can they take something off my plate? Those sorts of things.
Lee Matthew Jackson
And then lastly, with regards to the projects, because we’ve got those two pieces of project management software, we also know who owns what. So I know what projects Karthik or Larissa are owning, or what I’m owning. I know what tasks are being owned by who. So, you know, we all therefore become responsible for our own days, for our, you know, for what we’re working on, and responsible for, you know, if you think of those tasks on, say, Freedcamp, Larissa or Karthik, they’re responsible for achieving those and then assigning them to whoever needs to do the quality assurance to then close them off. Okay, so as long as we’re giving people the tools and the time to manage themselves and obviously the support, that allows me not to have to dictate what people do on a daily basis.
Lee Matthew Jackson
So I don’t have to sit down every single morning and tell Larissa what she has to do and to give her a list and tell her what order she has to do it in. She already knows what she has to do because of the project evolution and the lifecycle and what’s going on in those projects. And of course, I’ll be assigning stuff to her and asking her to do things, and then she will be planning those herself, so will Karthik as well. Now with Karthik, he does work a little bit differently. He does need some extra support on certain things because sometimes he has to do massive blocks of research which take longer than he expected.
Lee Matthew Jackson
So sometimes he does require a little bit more help, and at that point, you know, I’ll make an appointment with him to have a call. But they are few and far between, probably once or twice a month we’ll have to have like a major call and then, you know, those daily calls with everybody is usually enough. So I guess for how do I manage people, I don’t really manage them. I just try to respect them in such a way as they can and give them the tools as well so that they can manage themselves. And obviously, if I can see things are going wrong, then yes, we will, you know, we’ll get together and try and work out what’s going wrong there.
Lee Matthew Jackson
All right, I really need to shut up now because I’m actually starting to get a sore throat. I thought I was only going to talk for 20 minutes, so I’m going to get these show notes uploaded. So there’s a few bullet points that I had to talk through about what’s going on in my day, but let’s just do a real quick recap and then we’ll go. So first of all, we’ve got the things to do today list. We’ve got a list of things that we need to achieve daily, and we’re being realistic about that.
Lee Matthew Jackson
We’re getting those things done early in the morning. We’re moving things until tomorrow. That, you know, realistically we might need to. With regards to the work hours, I’m creating a, a plan for an average day that I would like to achieve, and then I’m doing my very best to stick to that, knowing that sometimes I might go off-piste slightly because of the requirements of a project or a client. We also know that lunch is not optional and 5 PM finish is not optional.
Lee Matthew Jackson
At least go home and have lunch and spend some time with the family before you start working again. If you really do need to do some work at 8 o’clock in the the evening. Okay, on projects, we understand that we’re using Freedcamp for the nitty-gritty, you know, the, the real super, uh, specific tasks. So not the high-level tasks that are only things to do today, but those little nitty-gritty things like change this, do this, do this, add that function, etc. So that’s all in Freedcamp.
Lee Matthew Jackson
We’ve got the super high-level project approach all in iTask3, or Microsoft Project, you might want to use that as well. So essentially a Gantt chart that allows us to manage everybody’s expectations and see all of the projects that are going on at the same him, and we have those regular project meetings. For content generation, we’ve got those monthly goals, and we’re just doing little bits here and there where we need to. And for podcasts, I got appointments that I do not cancel to either create content like I’m doing now or to have interviews with people. Social media, it’s there, it’s very important, automated with Meet Edgar.
Lee Matthew Jackson
And then one of us within the team are keeping our eye on the pulse every 20 minutes or so. To engage in small bursts of conversations. And then finally, people management. It’s about empowering people to manage themselves in a way and work in a way, sorry, that, you know, they will be able to thrive with. All of this is what we do.
Lee Matthew Jackson
It’s all a work in process— progress, sorry. We have not nailed it. We have stressful days. And if you’re on my Facebook account, you’ll have seen that earlier on today I did actually have a little bit of a meltdown because there was a whole load of things going off, and we had a member of staff off as well, which was really quite stressful to be able to manage everything that was going on. So there you go, unexpected things happen.
Lee Matthew Jackson
I am not, um, I am not the king of time management. I really do have bad days. But with all of this stuff that I’ve explained to you, that we’ve been evolving over the last few years, I really feel like I’m starting to get some sort of control and some sort of sanity with what we do as a business and as an agency And this storey is only ever going to evolve. So I’m a— I won’t be surprised if I’m doing another podcast in a year or two’s time about how we manage time as a business. And I hope to God I’ve learned some really cool stuff and I’m a lot further than I am now so that I can provide an even more amazing value podcast.
Lee Matthew Jackson
Guys, thank you so much for listening. Come and talk to us on the Facebook group on leejacksondev.com/group. It’s a great place to be. Share a cat picture if you don’t know what to say. Go and find the sticky thread and go and introduce yourself about what you do, your business, your website, etc.
Lee Matthew Jackson
Go and find some of the conversations that are going in and stick your oar in and tell us what you think. Let’s just have a wonderful time in there. If you have any questions, head on over to leejaxondev.com/contact. I really want to hear from you. If you want to test me and see how much I am on social media, feel free to tag me in something on Twitter.
Lee Matthew Jackson
And see how quick it takes me to reply. That’s @LeeJacksonDev. Come and add me as a friend on Facebook, just search for Lee Jackson, or find me in, again, in the Facebook group, and you can add me that way as well. I would really love to make friends with as many people as I possibly can. All right guys, don’t forget, have an awesome week and keep innovating.
Lee Matthew Jackson
And I’m definitely losing my voice. All right, All right, bye-bye now. Bye-bye. Bye-bye. Okay, I’m going to go now.
Lee Matthew Jackson
I’m going to hang up now. Will you hang up first and then I’ll hang up? Yeah. All right, forget it. I’ll hang up.
Lee Matthew Jackson
All right, have a great one. Bye-bye.
Lee Matthew Jackson
I’ve gone now. Bye.
