Creating a weekly flow.
As a fellow sensitive, neurodivergent entrepreneur, I’ve had no shortage of difficulties with managing my time on my entrepreneurial journey.
And all of us who have been paying attention to the cacophony of voices in the time management realm can attest to the level of intensity with which business owners can approach scheduling and daily routines.
From waking up at 5am (no thanks) to starting your day with a 2 hour workout (again, it’s a no from me) to gratitude journaling, vision boarding, manifesting, and looooonng meditation sessions, most traditional advice simply did not align with the up and down energy cycles I frequently experienced throughout my week.
And the kicker is…I always thought I was doing it wrong. That I wasn’t disciplined enough. Or consistent enough. Or structured enough to be a successful entrepreneur.
Turns out I was just a creative, feminine energy dominant, highly sensitive human in need of a different strategy than the ones I saw plastered all over social media.
So I decided that if traditional scheduling tools didn’t work for my highly sensitive and neurodivergent nature, that I was going to create tools that honored my natural functioning. Because continuing to force myself to align with advice that honestly wasn’t made with my differences in mind? Not really a good look.
After some scheduling trial and error, here are the 3 scheduling hacks that have been most effective for me as a highly sensitive business owner.
Embrace the flow day.
What’s a flow day, you ask?
It’s a weekday when I have absolutely nothing scheduled on my calendar. No calls. No appointments. None of the things. And that day has become almost sacred for me.
It’s a day to unwind if I’m feeling a deficit of energy. A day to vision, create, and brainstorm if I’m feeling so inclined. A day to do non-business stuff if I need a break from staring at the computer.
In essence, the flow day can be anything you want it to be.
It starts with blocking out an entire day on your calendar. Waking up at a time that feels natural. And as you go through your morning, coffee in hand, ask yourself, “what do I feel like doing today?” And here’s the deal:
Whatever answer your intuition comes up with, no matter how small, no matter how silly, no matter whether or not it feels indulgent or selfish or non-essential, your only obligation is simply to go with your flow.
So if you wake up and want to play Mario Kart in the morning, that’s exactly what you should do. And then keep playing until it stops feeling good. At which point you repeat the process by asking yourself, “what do I want to do now?” Then follow that next breadcrumb.
Rinse, lather, and repeat this process through the whole day.
For those of you who feel like this can’t possibly work, I promise I come in peace with this suggestion. When I was able to let go of control and started implementing a flow day in the middle of my week (mainly as a way to regain my sanity and heal from burnout), I quickly realized that this became my most creatively inspired and productive day of the entire week.
Depending on your personal set of life and business circumstances, feel free to take what you need from the flow day structure and leave the rest.
Have a full-time job while starting your business? Little kids running around at home? Caregiving for family members? Whatever your current reality, if a full flow day just isn’t in the cards, start where you are.
Can you schedule a flow hour? A flow moment? Can you stop and get a scoop of your favorite ice cream on your way home from your day job? Can you start your day 15 minutes early with an activity that makes you feel centered? Can you let your nervous system rest in little pockets throughout the day?
There’s no right or wrong way. And regardless of how you choose to adapt the flow day to your lifestyle, always remember that done is better than perfect. And little steps? Waayy more sustainable than giant leaps.
Practice radical documentation.
Like many folks who identify themselves as neurodivergent and/or highly sensitive, my brain does not work in a linear way.
I make random connections in the middle of conversations with people. I often have to jot down an outline for a blog post (or podcast. or ebook. or workshop. it’s endless.) at the most inconvenient of times. While driving (not recommended). In the bathtub. At 2am when I’m about to drift off to sleep.
At this current moment, I have a grand total of 550 notes saved in my phone.
Yes, you read that correctly.
I’ve accepted that this is simply how my brain works, and one of the major shifts I’ve made over time is to write down as much of my ideas in the moment they come to me as I’m able to. This keeps as much of the energy around them as intact as possible, which then helps me build on the ideas when I ultimately refer back to them.
And believe me, this shift toward what I call ‘radical documentation’ was not without a fair amount of kicking and screaming over the years on my end.
Because quite simply, as an idea-rich human being, stopping a hike to write a poem or waking up in the middle of the night to outline an entire module of an online class feels tedious. And annoying. And often the last thing I wanted to do day in and day out.
But guess what happens if I don’t document all my wild, out-of-the-box, nonlinear brainwaves? Regardless of my insistence that I’ll remember it in the morning and how for the love of god, I would just like to go to sleep instead of pulling my phone out to jot down just one more thing….I never do. And if the idea doesn’t get documented immediately, well then….poof. It’s gone. Just like that.
And come content creation time, I’m left twiddling my thumbs and staring up at my office ceiling in a vague panic.
Since I started writing all the things down? I’ve literally never had this problem again.
But maybe you, lovely reader, are not the kind of person who has a ton of ideas all the time. Even if it’s true that original thoughts are hard to come by (which I wholeheartedly doubt), you can still use this tip.
On the phone with your best friend, who says something unexpectedly profound? Write it down.
See a fellow entrepreneur share a perspective on the Gram that you just disagree with? Write down why.
Talking to clients that all seem to be struggling with different versions of the same thing? Write. it. down.
You don’t need to know why you’re writing it down. You don’t need to know what your idea will become yet. There’s absolutely no need to rush it into maturity. It’s still just a seed, so simply write it down in as much detail as possible, and then give it space. Which ultimately leads us into tip #3.
Schedule integration time.
For the first 18-ish months of my business, I did not make this a regular practice. Because overwhelm. And anxiety. And procrastination. And a long list of reasons that many business owners can relate to, but that I won’t bore you with here.
But honestly, scheduling time at the end of the week to sort through all my wild ideas was the best thing I ever did for my business and my own sanity.
Every Friday, I set aside several hours to go through the randomness of my phone notes, ideas scrawled on notecards, and notes from Zoom calls and organize them into categories. As I do this, I inevitably scan the things I have written down to refresh my memory of ideas that have rooted themselves within me through the week.
Though the specific categories vary from person to person, here are some of the categories currently inside my phone notes: Website ideas, podcast ideas, marketing ideas, and idea tidbits (baby ideas that don’t yet have a home).
These are categories that intuitively make sense to me, so I encourage you to find your own version of this same thing: The categories don’t have to make sense to others, they’re for your eyes (and your non-linear brain) only.
One of the benefits of reviewing ideas that you’ve had throughout the week is seeing all of them side by side, which allows your brain to start a natural process of finding any links or patterns in the data you’ve collected.
For me, giving myself space to synthesize and develop certain thoughts into whatever they’re meant to become in my business is an essential ingredient in this process.
Because as an empath? I can’t create on command. That’s just not how I work.
I say things when I have something to say, and cultivating ideas requires giving them space to breathe. To blossom. To mature into thoughts that are worthy of an audience.
Is it the most efficient process in the world? Is it ‘batch create all your content in just 30 minutes a week’ worthy? Maybe not.
But what can I say? Efficiency is overrated.
But sustainable, nervous system friendly scheduling routines? Well, for empaths, sensitives, and neurodivergent creatives, they’re the new black.