How to be productive over the summer holidays

Summer holidays are fast approaching and it’s so easy to focus less on your business and feel guilty about enjoying time with family and friends on warm summer evenings.
Probably one of the reason you started you business in the first place, was to spend more time with your family, right? 

In this blog I am going to share with you how to beat the summer overwhelm and stay productive over the summer holidays. I will be sharing my tips on planning your content, scheduling your social media and being realistic with your time for July and August. Meaning days out and warm summer nights can be enjoyed without the guilt of spending less time on your business. 

Planning your social media
If you want to spend less time working this summer, I recommend planning your content for the six weeks holiday. It can take away a lot of stress. Yes, you need to put in the work first, which can be a little time consuming but you only need to do it once and it’s done for the six weeks.

If the thought of planning out six weeks worth of content strikes you with fear, break it down.
Plan one week out at a time. You could have weekly themes or daily themes e.g Tuesday Tip, Wonderful Wednesday etc. 

Another way to plan out your social media is with content buckets. Each “bucket” (or word document) should contain a different subject that you talk about within your business.
E.g Tips, Products, Blogs, Quotes, Services

Fill the content buckets up with tips you can share with your audience, blogs that you have written, quotes you like your audience will resonate with etc.

This comes in really helpful when you aren’t sure what to post. You pick something from your content bucket and you have something to post, you stay true to your business and you say consistent.

Don’t forget to repurpose your content, especially your blog posts. I reuse content on a regular basis which is fine to do, just because you post it once doesn’t mean that everyone in your audience will see it.

Scheduling your social media
Scheduling your social media is a great way to stay consistent and show up for your audience. Social media is such an important part of any business and an incredible way for us to connect with our audience we don’t want to drop the (social media) ball over the summer. 

There are many different third party schedulers that you can use, for all different budgets. 

For Facebook posts I highly recommending only using the schedule feature within Facebook. Facebook will decrease your post reach if you use a third party app. 

Scheduling your social media will save you lots of time over the summer. Ideally you want to take 10-20 minutes everyday to reply to any comments or messages that you receive on your social media accounts. It’s also very important to engage with other accounts.

Be realistic with your time
If you are planning to reduce your work hours over the summer be realistic with how many hours per week you will be able to spend on your business.

For example if you know you only have five hours per week, plan out what you can do in those five hours. It’s surprising how much you can get done when you know you have limited time. But planning your tasks and what you need to do is essential. Know what you need to do before sitting down at your desk.

At the start of every week I look at my goals for the week and check in my monthly goals. I plan the week out in my planner, day by day. This process allows me to get focused on what I need to achieve during the week and helps me stay on track and motivated.

If you don’t have a planner you may find my mini daily planner helpful. You can check it out here>>>
It’s defiantly helped me be more productive on a daily basis by setting my three most important tasks of the day and writing in any appointments, meetings or blocking off time for tasks.

Self care for you and business
If you want to work on yourself over the summer which will also help you in your business I recommend reading or listening to a self development book. Self development books don’t need to be boring or dull. Most are very inspiring and thought provoking. Here are my top four for the summer:

Chillpreneur by Denise Duffield-Thomas
The Power Within You Now – Sue Stone
Becoming Rich- Genevieve Davis
The War of Art- Steven Pressfield 

All of the above are also available on Audible (listening to books is totally not cheating by the way, It’s just another way of consuming the content. Perfect for a plane journey)

So before school is out for summer, try to plan out your content, schedule out your social media and determine how much time you will be able to spend working on your business every week. All of this will help you stay you on track over the summer and avoid the overwhelm of starting back on your business in September. 

I hope these tips will help you feel less stressed and overwhelmed over the summer holidays!