Build Your Business in Your Spare Time Without Burning Out | 128

(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)

    Just because you find a pocket of time to work, it doesn’t mean you have to fill it up with business tasks. Today, we’re talking about how to build your business in your spare time, but without burning out.

  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. 

Welcome back. If you haven’t listened to the previous episode yet, go check that out first because it’s all about the pockets of time that you might not be using for your business. Today’s episode is for the solopreneur who’s also juggling a day job and feels like they have to fill every single pocket of time that they have with business tasks just to make any progress, and I get it.

I- it feels like that’s the only way to stay productive, but that’s not actually the right move, and that’s what we’re gonna be talking about today. Before we dive in, though, I want to make sure that you know about my free weekly reset GPT. It’s an AI-powered planning tool that helps you reflect on your week and plan the next one in just 10 to 15 minutes without the overwhelm.

It pairs really well with today’s episode because once you start being more intentional with your time, you’re gonna want a simple way to plan it. All right, so let’s get started with something that doesn’t get mentioned enough when people talk about finding time to work on their business. So Whenever you are juggling a day job and a business, it is so easy to fall into the trap of doing too much.

Ask me how I know. Ask me how I know. You find this pocket of time that we talked about in the last episode, and you’re like, “Yes, I should use this.” And then you find another pocket of time, and then another, and then you’re trying to fill out every single pocket of time that you have with something business related, with business tasks, with getting more things done and crossed off from your to-do list.

And then before you know it, you haven’t actually gotten some real genuine rest, peaceful rest, in weeks. And that’s how burnout sneaks up on you. It’s not usually just one big thing. It’s a lot of small yeses that add up over time. So if you go back to, way back to episode 10, that, in that episode, I help you recognize some burnout signs before you actually get there.

So go check that out if you feel like you need that. But when you burn out, it doesn’t just affect your business, it affects everything else around you. It affects your relationships, your health, your faith, every single thing, your job, your business, everything gets affected. So before we move on to these three things, I want you to keep this in mind.

I want you to keep in mind that we don’t want to fill, fill up every single pocket of time, because that can absolutely lead to burnout. All right? Okay. Let’s get into it. I’ve got three main things that I want you to keep in mind as you start finding and using your pockets of time. So point number one, I’ve said it over and over and over again.

I mentioned it in the last episode. I mentioned it already, but it’s so important that I’m gonna mention it again, in the last episode, we talked about finding these pre, these pockets of time, and also just because there is a pocket of time that exists, it doesn’t mean that you have to use it for business.

A pocket of time can be used for anything that fills you up. Self-care, a hobby, socializing, quality time with your kids, doing absolutely nothing. All of that, all of those are great ways to fill up this pocket of time that you just found, the goal is to be intentional about how you’re spending this pocket of time.

It’s not to maximize every free moment. So give yourself permission to use some of the time that you just found, and use it intentionally. Use it for yourself, for your family. Use it in a way that is not just for your business, the second point is resting and actually taking a day of Sabbath. So if you are waking up early to work on your business, in the last episode, we talked as, we talked about as, um, we ta…

Can’t talk. We mentioned waking up early as one pocket of time that you might have. But when you do this, you need to do the math, the backwards math. Hey, where’s all my moms? You know that backwards math. You need to do the backwards math to make sure that you’re getting at least seven hours of sleep, and I’m talking about actual sleep.

I’m not talking about the amount of time that you lay in bed. If you are spending… If it takes you about 30 minutes to fall asleep from the time you lay down, then you need to be in bed seven and a half hours. So that way you’re getting at least your seven hours of sleep, okay? So resting doesn’t make you lazy, but it is what’s going to help you keep going and actually stay productive long-term.

So I have a whole episode on why rest is productive, Episode 58, if you wanna check that out. So make sure that you’re getting plenty of sleep, plenty of rest. And then I do highly, highly recommend that you take at least one full day off each week, a Sabbath day, where you’re not thinking about your business.

You’re not checking emails. You’re just resting. You’re just decompressing. You’re spending time with yourself, with your family, doing things that you love. You are genuinely off. That day doesn’t have to be Sunday. It can be if you want it to be. If you’re working like corporate America… Corporate America.

Corporate hours, then, yes, Sunday. But any day that works for you, just pick a day a week and stick to it. And this day, I genuinely want to encourage you to take the full day off, physically and mentally off from your business, rest and Sabbath. This is point number two Now, the final point that I wanna mention here is to really, really protect your non-negotiables.

This could be your family time, your faith, your self-care, your downtime, whatever your non-negotiables are. It can be so easy to let those things quietly disappear when you’re trying to build something, when you’re trying to build your business from the ground up. But these are the things, these are likely your why, so they’re the things that you need the most.

And it is so common and so often where we start a business, we… Our why is our family, our time freedom to travel more. Fill in the blank with what your why is. And then we’re just working, working, working, working, working, that we don’t even get to enjoy the things that we said were the reason why we started our business in the first place.

So you have to be super intentional about protecting your non-negotiables. Decide ahead of time what your non-negotiables are, and treat them like appointments that you cannot cancel, for me, this past week was my daughter’s birthday, actually it was two days ago from the time of recording this, and that was a day off on my calendar that I’ve had scheduled in.

I already knew. I’ve asked my daughter before if she wants to go to summer camp on this day. She says no. It’s like, “All right. This is gonna be your day. I’m taking the whole day off. I am not doing absolutely anything work-related.” It’s the same thing for me, certain holidays. Christmas time, I’m barely working.

I’m working less during that season, and Christmas Day, Christmas Eve, the day after, Black Friday, these are all days where I am not working. I am not physically working. These are my non-negotiables, birthdays and holidays, along with a few other things, right? So your business really should fit around your life, not the other way around.

All right? So let’s recap. Building a business in your spare time is hard, and burnout is so real. It sneaks up on you through a lot of small yeses that add up over time. So here’s what I want you to leave with today. You don’t have to use every pocket of time that you find for business. Use them for something else.

Protect your rest, and take at least one full day off if you can. And know your non-negotiables and protect them. Protect them, protect them. Now, if today’s episode resonated with you, I want to make sure that you have a simple way to plan your week without overdoing it. My free weekly Reset GPT is going to help you do exactly that.

Reflect on your week, plan the next one, and leave with a clear, doable plan in just 10 to 15 minutes. All right. That’s a wrap on today’s episode. I hope this gave you a little bit of breathing room and a reminder that your business doesn’t have to come at the cost of everything else. All right? If you haven’t listened to the previous episode, go check that out.

It’s all about the pockets of time you might not be using to If you haven’t listened to the previous episode yet, go check that out, and be sure to follow and subscribe so that way you know once the next episode is released. All right, talk to you soon

  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.