When you can do anything....

I have often been criticized for being too much of a planner. People say things to me like "you're so busy" and "I know you probably don't have time, but would you...." and those kind of comments make me crazy. It's like verbal punishment for being organized and intentional with my time. 

Let's face it, we're all busy. But when I look at the way my work life and my family life has evolved, I know I have to be intentional with my time and resources. 

I think the reason people say that I'm so busy is because I guard the time I have with my family. It is so hard to work for yourself and be able to set your own schedule and then have people think that you must be free anytime to do anything since you work from home. When you can do anything.....it doesn't mean you should. I'm learning that I absolutely can't do everything just because I work from home. I have to pick and choose and do the things that I know will make the biggest impact and be the most effective in my personal life, in my business life, and in the spiritual realm. 

This is something I've struggled with ever since I started "working from home." It's why I had to put boundaries in place. I don't answer my phone all the time. I don't respond to facebook messages and texts when I get them. I simply can't. If I did that, I would be working all the waking hours of the day and then some, and that's not why I quit my teaching job. 

So I try to have solid boundaries in place, but even that becomes hard. Because I try to spend the majority of my time working directly with the consultants that I've signed up and the directors underneath me, I have to be somewhat flexible to allow for our schedules to line up. 

And then I have to guard the time I have with my family. With evening parties and online training (which we always do in the evening), I'm left with very little time in the evenings to help team members. We do our very best to make the nights about our family. It's extremely important to us that we have margin, but it's often hard to make those boundaries stick. 

I'm the 1st to cave when someone wants to meet and it doesn't align with the boundaries I've put in place. But there are also other times when a friend wants to meet or there is a special event happening, and I want to be able to do all those things while being home a minimum of 5-6 nights a week with my family. 

Lately I've been thinking that to accommodate all my Scentsy peeps that work and can't meet during the day, I'm going to have to set up one night a month where I try to fit all of them in. I realize this won't work perfectly, but it's what I'm comfortable doing. I know that the one-on-one time I devote to my frontline and my leaders is one of the best uses of my time. That's why I have an assistant who does a lot of my computer work for me. It frees me up to be more intentional about building relationships. 

But just because I have the freedom to set my own schedule doesn't mean that I can do everything. I realize that I could do anything, but that I can't do everything. I really believe part of our maturity into adulthood is learning how to say no. I simply can't do everything that's placed before me. Nor should I. 

I want to have margin in my personal and family life, and when you're a direct sales consultant of any kind, that can be a tricky task. You could work all the time if you chose to. But that's how people get burnt out. Just because you can do anything doesn't mean you should. 

So I'm curious if you ever get overwhelmed with all the responsibilities you have on your plate, and if you do, what do you do when that happens? Do you step back and reevaluate how you're spending your time? Or do you shut down? Sometimes when we have done everything for so long, we simply shut down. I've seen a lot of businesses fail because someone was trying to do it all. 

Part of our responsibility as business owners and moms and wives is to put boundaries in place. Know what's important to you and guard it with your life. At the end of the day, your values shouldn't be compromised. It's the reason that I plan my week out the way I do, and the reason that I'm such a stickler for intentional planning and preparation. How do you guard your time?