The Scheduling Habit That Protects Solopreneurs When Life Falls Apart | 132

(Note: This is a formatted and slightly edited, AI-generated transcript to make it easier for you to read through. Please excuse any spelling, grammar errors and filler words – it’s just how I speak LOL)

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You never know when life is going to ask you for a safety net you didn’t know you needed. A few weeks ago, mine asked, and because of this one habit, I didn’t even have to think about it.

Are you tired of competing priorities, a messy task list, and constantly feeling behind? Hey, I’m Lucy Reyes, and I help overwhelmed solopreneurs embrace faith-led productivity through simple systems for life, home, and business. So if you’re ready to clarify your priorities, honor your energy, and feel accomplished every single day, welcome to the Cheers to Better Systems podcast.

Hey, hey. Welcome back. If you’re the kind of person who’s already stretched thin, juggling a business and real life and everything in between, this episode is for you. Today, I wanna talk about something that sounds simple but can genuinely save you when things fall apart, and that is pre-scheduling your content and systems well before you think about it.

This isn’t just about being ahead for the sake of being ahead though. It’s not just another thing that we’re adding to your plate. It’s about building in a little bit of protection now so that when life inevitably lifes on you, you’re not scrambling to keep everything running. And I say inevitably because we know that life curveballs happen all of the time, and that’s exactly what happened to me.

So I talk about what happened in episode 129, so go back to listen to that if you wa- if you’re curious and you want to know. But basically, before all of this had happened, before I went through my moment of crisis, my situation, I already had a handful of things pre-scheduled out in advance, and thank God that I did because even though some of the things I’m about to share that I had pre-scheduled were simple, they sound simple, like I had already written, I already had the copy written, the emails written, the episodes recorded, and all I would need to do is copy and paste and schedule If I had not done that part and I had just waited to actually do the copy and pasting from my systems into the relevant platforms, because of what happened, I would not have been able to do it.

Even though the process, the process itself, the steps itself was super simple and easy, it would’ve taken only a few seconds, I wouldn’t have done it. So I had already pre-scheduled a bunch of episodes, just as I’m doing with this exact episode. So this episode that you’re listening to now, I recorded it about four weeks back, and, and that was when I right when I came back from the situation.

So I decided to, um… Anyways, let’s go back. So before I actually stepped away from my business for a few weeks, I already had episodes pre-recorded and scheduled. I already had a few emails to my audience scheduled out, and a few posts inside of my Skool community scheduled out to go as well. and I had done this before even I knew that there was going to be a crisis that happened, like, before I knew that this unfortunate situation was going to happen.

But pre-scheduling things is already a habit of mine. Um, I know that some people don’t like to pre-schedule for different reasons, which we’ll cover. But in my situation, like, I love having this habit because again, I’m not just pre-scheduling content and episodes and things in advance just for the sake of being ahead.

It really, you know, this situation really opened my eyes to how much this is actually a safety net that I didn’t even know that I needed until I, I realized that I needed it, right? Um, so this season really proved that this super simple habit is incredibly valuable to have because again, even something as small as copying and pasting an email from my Google Doc to my email provider kit, and then formatting it and scheduling it out, it felt like too much to do in my situation.

So if I hadn’t already scheduled the things out, the emails wouldn’t have gone out, the podcast episodes wouldn’t have gone out, things would’ve just completely stopped. So I’m very, very happy that I had things in advance because I didn’t know that I was going to actually need it, right? And so batching is what makes this possible for me.

So batching is when you do a lot of the similar tasks together, and that way you’re preventing a bunch of task switching. So as an example, recording these episodes, I had three episodes that I batched, and the order of batching that I did just as like a super short guideline for that was I brainstormed and I outlined each one.

That was like one batching process. Next in the batching process is recording. So before I even edit the episodes or do the marketing for each episode, I’m recording all the episodes first, and then the next batching session would be like editing all the episodes. The next batching session from there would be, um, creating all the marketing material for it.

So batching is super helpful, and it’s what helps me, and tying it to this pre-scheduling, right? So batching is when I write the things in advance, and then I schedule it. So again, I have heard the argument of some people say that they do write things out in advance. So I’ve heard people say that they do write their emails in advance, but they don’t go ahead and schedule it because Of different reasons.

Everyone has their own reason. Some reasons that I’ve heard are, you know, if something comes up and they need to make changes, or they want to really incorporate some real timeness, right? So they have an email scheduled four weeks out in advance, you don’t really know what is happening in four weeks. So they want to, you know, have that email just be partially ready, but not fully ready so that they can add in a little bit of what happened in that given week.

So it all makes sense. Everyone has their reasons, it makes sense. But for me, if it’s already done, I’m scheduling it out. That is just how I operate. I can still go back and unschedule something, make an update, add a little bit to the email of the real timeness, and then reschedule it if that were to happen.

I also make sure that my things are a little bit more evergreen. So there are certain emails that I send out that are very much that real timeness mixed in with some of these other emails where I added my personal story into the email, but it doesn’t have to be something that just happened that week, but it’s still a personal story.

And so that is my strategy behind it and like clearly in this exact, uh, in this situation it really saved me. So It’s so easy to schedule and unschedule if needed. And yeah, like you just don’t know. You just never know what’s going to happen. So none of this, though, I wanna also throw this out there, is that none of this works if you don’t even know where all the links are, what the status is of these, these things that you’re working on.

If you don’t know how many you have already scheduled or for what date you scheduled the episodes out for, like this will not work if you don’t have a system. Okay? So yes, I’m gonna bring it back to systems. That is what this, what this podcast is all about. My systems tell me at a glance how many episodes are recorded, which of the episodes have a blog post written, which ones have a marketing post or email schedule.

I have my other system that tell me all the emails that go out on which dates. Like, all of these systems will help make it so much easier for you to not only pre-schedule the things, but if you have a situation where you want to unschedule it or make an update or tweak it, you can easily go back, you can go into your system, figure out what you have scheduled out, and make the appropriate adjustment all within a matter of seconds.

Okay? You’re not scrambling. So systems make it possible, make it easier for you to pre-schedule and to go back and tweak that scheduling thing if you need to Without holding everything in your head. So yes, systems. It’s the magic of everything. It’s the thing behind everything that helps just make managing our business so, so much easier.

So here is my challenge for you for this week, okay? I have a little, itty-bitty challenge for you. I want you to pick one thing that you could pre-schedule. Whether or not you are a pre-scheduler, whether or not you feel like you’re just barely keeping up, you’re like, “Lucy, I can barely keep up with, like, one thing at a time.

How the heck do you have, you know, three episodes batched out from in advance? Like, what?” It doesn’t matter where you’re at, okay? I still want you to go ahead and just think about all of the things that you do in your business, and what are those things that you could pre-schedule? What would make it easier for you to pre-schedule in advance?

And then really just pick one. Pick an e- like, if it’s emails, if it’s community post, if it’s a certain piece of content like podcast episodes or

YouTube videos or, um, blog post or even social media post, whatever that is for you, I want you to think about what that is, decide on it, and then look at your workflow and see if you have a system for it, if you have a way to even be able to pre-schedule that thing out in advance and then be able to go back to it in case you need to make any updates, okay?

I want you to look at those things because the status of everything that you’re working on is going to be recorded in the system. The system is going to have what the links are for all of the things. So the Google Doc links, the social media links, the platform links, everything, it’s going to tell you what the status is, whether you’ve written it, whether you’ve scheduled it, whether you’ve updated it.

You’ll set up the system in a way that makes sense for you. But if you’re keeping all of that information, if you’re keeping all of those links, that information, the dates that you scheduled, what the topic of what you scheduled out, if you’re keeping all of that in your head- It’s gonna be so much harder to, one, even pre-schedule the thing out in advance, and two, it’s gonna be harder for you to be able to work ahead, period, because you already feel so far behind, and you don’t even know what’s ready to go out and what’s not, what you’ve already done, what’s left to do.

Oof. We have several episodes on this. So either way, this is where systems come in. Okay? So if you don’t have a system that can tell you at a glance where everything stands, then I really want you to go and sign up for my free workshop, Three Steps to Say Goodbye to Task Overload. The link is in the show notes.

Because remember, a safety net only works if it’s actually in a place, AKA a system, before the storm hits. If you’re having to scramble last minute, getting a system created while you’re in the middle of chaos is gonna be so hard and not productive.

So you definitely wanna take time in advance to get those systems created that make it easier for you to do all of the things in your business, including what we talked about today, which is to pre-schedule and then be able to go back and tweak whatever it is that you scheduled out, um, without driving you crazy.

So that is today’s episode. Be sure that you’re following the podcast so that way you know once the next episode drops. I will be back soon with another topic, so I’ll talk to you in the next one

If this episode inspired you, challenged you, or gave you a fresh perspective, I want to encourage you to take one small action today. And if you want to go deeper and connect with other solopreneurs on a similar journey, come hang out with us inside of our free community. It’s where we keep the conversation going. And be sure to follow the podcast so you don’t miss what’s next. Talk soon, and cheers to more peace, faithful steps, and steady progress, one system at a time.