Crafty Business: Part 4: Every once and awhile routines

I the last Crafty Business post, I went into how a weekly task list can be a really helpful tool for staying on top of those “not quite daily” tasks. Today, we are going to explore the options for those every-once-in-a-while tasks.

In many ways this is similar to finding your weekly and daily tasks. Like the rest, make a long list. Make this list as long as possible, every task you might ever want to hit up in your business month or quarter.

I brain dumped everything I could think of into one long list:

There were just a few categories that all these things fell under. I jotted those down, used a different color for each one, and started mapping it out.

I realized that three things: update homepage, update homepage feature, and enter sales should be weekly items.

Then I also realized that I only have 1 item for “long term cl growth” and that’s not a good thing. I do have “project development” as a weekly task, so maybe I should just include “look for places to submit work” as one of the things I can do as a weekly thing and eliminate that category all together.

And this list may be the hardest because it’s filled with all those things you forget to do and they fall to the way side until say, cough, taxes are due in just a few weeks. Or you’ve let the fabric get so out of control you can’t make anything without it falling off the shelf.

In cleaning terms, which is where I got this idea to begin with, it’s like cobwebs in the corners, washing of the baseboards, or purging all the “where the heck did the bottom to this lid go to” in your food container cabinet.

It’s all the things we don’t think about. That being said, you should leave room on your list so you can add things later.

Here’s how I wrote up my new list:

1. Use one page per category.

2. Leave loads of extra lines for adding more things to each category.

3. Leave space between each item so you can list sub-categories if you want.

Here is where it all comes together. Each week you just focus on one category for 15 minutes a day. You can increase the time of course, but just start out doing 15 minutes a day. It’s kind of hokey, but set a timer and just start with the first item on your list. You can check them off as you go, make notes on where you left off, and add more items to the category as you think of them.

Just remember that these are the things you don’t normally work on, so any work done on them is progress. I mean, really, when was the last time I filed receipts (no, dumping them into a box does not count as filing btw)? Last April!

Each week move on to the next category and get done what you can. For me each rotation is a month and a half, but for you it could be monthly, quarterly, or weekly. If you want, you can spend 2-3 days on each category instead of a whole week. It’s totally flexible and it’s totally up to you. You will find what works best once you get going.

I have to admit, while I’m pretty good with this at home for cleaning, I have yet to fully implement it here at the studio.

I just started consistently doing my daily and weekly tasks, so I’m going to keep that up for a few more weeks, maybe the whole month of feb. In March I’ll start up with the every once and awhile lists.

How do you keep track of those every once and awhile tasks? What’s your routine like? I’m totally curious and would love to hear about it!

Happy crafting and good luck!
Kristin