If I were to ask you what you did with your last 24 hours, would you be able to tell me?

Or to take it a step further, would you be able to tell me how many hours in the last week you spent on activities that will bring you income or move your dreams forward?

If not, you are not alone.

Most of us spend our days with constant activity, but we are pretty unaware of just where our time is going. However, for the creative small business owner or folks who aspire to start a business, this lack of self-awareness can be a key factor that prevents you from success.

This is because our time is so valuable.

If you think about it, time is the one thing in our lives that no matter how rich, poor, smart, driven, or lazy we are...we each only get 24 hours in a day. Many of those hours will be filled with responsibilities that have nothing to do with our creative ventures. Which is why I believe, the ability to make productive use of time is one of the biggest skills that separate those creators who build thriving businesses from those who struggle.

In an age of being endlessly busy, we often spend our time constantly “doing” but if we are honest with ourselves, we might be “doing” things that are not getting us anywhere near our goals, or even worse doing things that are merely a waste of our precious time.

But I’m here to share that I believe there is hope for the most time challenged among us. Time management is something we all can learn to get better at! One of the first steps is to get self-aware and learn where your time is actually going. By getting more self aware, you can gain a clear picture of how to prioritize the activities that will move you toward doing work that will make you money or move your dreams forward.

For this weeks Monday Motivation Challenge, I’m sharing a simple exercise you can try to help get more clarity on where you time is going so you can make better use of it in the months ahead.

TRACK IT!

Step 1: Spend a week tracking where your time actually goes.

Step 2: For maximum effectiveness, it is important to track all of your time, from that 20 minutes you spent in line getting a coffee to the 30 minutes you spent scrolling through social media before bed. The key to getting self aware is to be honest and make sure you capture everything.

Step 3: I’ve created a chart you can use to keep track of your days activities the low-tech way by carrying around a pen and paper for a week DOWNLOAD HERE, or you can try a digital method by finding an app that helps track your time.

Step 4: After a week, review your chart and see if there are any ways you can make better use of your time to prioritize activites that matter most to you.

Time management may seem like a simple secret to creative success, but the sooner you start getting control of your time, the sooner you will start making more money with your creative business.

We’re in this together,

Ashley