One thing I’m trying to get significantly better at is saying no. If I’m being honest with myself, I’m terrible at context switching. For example, today I had 3 in real life meetings. I had to travel back and forth across manhattan and brooklyn multiple times. I had time in between but wasn’t able to get anything done. The context switching kills me.

A meeting or a quick chat might only take 30 minutes, but the 30 minutes it takes to get into a creative or productive zone only gets added onto that. A half hour meeting might take away 2 hours of creative time just because I need to get my brain into a productive zone, which is destroyed anytime I have to focus on something new

I’m definitely an empath. I feel a deep level of guilt whenever I disappoint someone or don’t get them what they want. If someone asks to meet with me but I know I need to get something done or I know it’ll totally disturb the flow of my day, I say yes anyway just because I don’t want to disappoint anyone. I try to be in service to everyone but myself.

As I make the transition to full time content creator/business owner I don’t have a safety net. I don’t have the backup plan of a steady paycheck that will come even if I don’t produce content for a few days. My business needs to come first. One of the most challenging shifts I’m going to have to make is eliminating context shifts by saying no to people. I simply need to take better control of my days.

My strategy I’m going to go with starting next week (it’s NFT NYC this week, I’ve surrendered to the context switching) is I’m not going to take any meetings before 3pm EST. If I can keep to this rule that means every day I’ll have from the moment I wake up until 3pm EST I’ll have complete creative freedom with no context switching. As long as I wake up early enough, I can get to the gym, have a healthy meal, and have plenty of time to get creative work done and move the ball forward for my brand and business.

This is going to present some challenges though. It might mean I have to neglect people in timezones that don’t fit into this itinerary. It might mean I miss important calls or Spaces that take place earlier in the morning. But this is a sacrifice I’m going to have to make.

I truly believe discipline = happiness. I know for a fact that days I’m the most mentally off, is the days I haven’t been keeping to my routines. It’s the days I haven’t had good habits, or haven’t been quite as productive. Days like today for instance. Because I had these meetings I had to run around to, I haven’t been able to stick to the habits and routines that are critical for me to move the ball forward. It’s now 3pm EST and I haven’t been able to interact with my community once today. I haven’t been able to get any creative work done. And some of this is definitely my fault. I’m still bad when it comes to efficiency between tasks. If I have 20 minutes between meetings I might use that time to doom scroll. I could have used that time to engage or respond to DMs and emails. Now I’m going to have to respond to DMs before bed which always stresses me out. I could always be a little more efficient.

I’m going to need to get better at saying no. I have a lot of meetings I go into that I know will only be in service to the person I’m talking to. I took a meeting this morning where I knew I was just going to be sold to for an hour. It took me half an hour to get there and a half hour back. That’s 2 hours gone plus the time it took to get my mind back into a creative space. I need to not be as afraid to say no to these meetings.

If me saying no to a meeting is enough for a person to dislike me then maybe they didn’t have the best intentions for our relationship in the first place.

One really big reason I wanted to quit my job for so long was to get back control of my life. Be able to control every second of the day. Now that I’ve actually taken back control of my day by quitting my job, I’m losing that control again because of accepting too many meetings.

The context switching is leaving me in a place that was as unproductive as I was when I still had my day job.

How will I get better at saying no and eliminating context switching?

When someone asks me for a meeting I’m going to ask for an agenda every time. If the agenda is completely selfish and in service to the person, I’m going to ask to tackle the agenda asynchronously. If it’s just to chat I’m going to ask to put it over an email.

There are definitely times where I need to be in total service to other people. It’s how I got to this point, doing nothing but giving value. I’m going to need to still be flexible and help others out at different points. But I need to find that middle ground where I can still make sure I keep my efficiency and keep control of my calendar. My responsibilities have shift dramatically over the last couple of weeks. The only way I put dinner on the table is if I grow my business. When I was in Web 2, I could put in 50% effort for the most part, as long as I did the bare minimum. It’s not that way anymore. The only way the business moves forward is if I’m the one pushing. This is what I wanted when I became a solopreneur, and so now I need to shift my behaviors to match that.

I don’t think this advice is just relevant for solopreneurs. I think I would lose control of my calendar too when I was an employee for my old company. I’d take meetings at work I could have probably avoided, which would have given me way more time.

It’s cliche but it’s true, time is truly the most valuable asset you have. The bigger the platform you get, whether it’s by moving up the corporate ladder, gaining more social status, or growing a following on social media, the more people are going to want to try to take that asset away from you.

Being kind to others is always critical, but being kind to yourself is always rule 1. If you’re not kind to yourself you can’t be kind to others. You’re mental health will be in a place where you won’t be capable of being kind to others. In fact, the way you treat others is a direct reflection on the way you treat yourself. You have to be able to serve yourself before you serve others.

This is probably the first major challenge I’ve ran into as a solopreneur. I’m sure I’ll run into many more. I’m really excited to document all of these challenges and share them out. The way you look at your time when you work for yourself is way different than the way you look at time when you work for others. When I worked for others I’d count down the seconds until the day ended. Until that meeting ended. Until the weekend came around. Now that I work for myself, every second is an opportunity to grow. Now all of a sudden I want time to stop. I want it to slow down so I can take advantage of each second.

Now all of a sudden I dread spending a single second on anything that doesn’t push me an inch closer to my goals and dreams. That’s one of the most powerful parts of the entrepreneurial journey. It feels like you gain a sense of control back that you didn’t have before. All of a sudden you feel like you have control over your life. It feels like the amount of success you achieve is a direct reflection on the effort you put in. When I was in my Web 2 job it never felt like that. It felt like someone else always had control. It felt like there were politics in play that stopped it from being a total meritocracy. Someone else would kiss up better than me or market what they were doing at the company better so they were more in favor with my boss. Entrepreneurship totally changed that. I look forward to figuring this whole new chess game out.