I’m now self-employed, which means that I have to do my own administration, invoicing, accounts, correspondence, sales, marketing and maintenance (not to mention running the household, a sports team, and whatever else I’ve volunteered to get involved with lately). I am pretty organised as a person, which is a real gift now I have all this going on! I have some coping strategies and I thought I’d share one that has helped hugely – the office day.

The idea of the office day is that I block out a whole day every month or so where I’m not going anywhere, not on site with clients, not speaking, not delivering anything, just in the office, doing whatever needs doing. I tend to put these days in either day before or after runs of days away – either with clients or at events, just to give me time to catch my breath. Working this way means that when I’m working on something, I can just work on it, and know that there is time set aside for all the little things. Also the days where I’m just back from somewhere and the inbox is so full, it is ready to bite, then it gives time to get things straightened out and right, without feeling stressed because there is other work to do. Although it does mean that I’m not doing billable work that day, I find that splitting the work up like this works really well for me, and I thought I’d share – perhaps this suggestion will help someone else, and I’m always interested to hear how others fit in all the business bits and pieces around their “real” work.