Management
Leadership
Work & Finance
Health & Wellness

Set Your Time Free

Freeing time is a skill, and it's one you can get better at.

“Stress is a systems problem,” at least when it comes to business and creative pursuits. If you’re getting bogged down by the Burdensome B’s (bored, bottlenecked, burned out, or buried by bureaucracy), this guide is for you. Free Time is not about working as little as possible. Nor is it about creating a lifestyle business purely for one’s own gain. Life-giving businesses energize everyone who participates in them, from owners to team members to clients and the community. You can, happily and strategically, work less. In fact, working fewer hours is often harder than working more. It requires building sophisticated systems and trusting a Delightfully Tiny Team to handle the details.

1. What are your biggest strengths and energizers? What bottlenecks are getting in the way of expressing these?

2. Consider The Fiji Test: If anyone on the team were to get whisked away for three weeks, with no access to devices or ability to give notice, could a stranger to the business seamlessly step in to do the work? 

Think about how you can further externalize your business mind by getting all information about running the business out of your (and team members) heads and onto a shared internal Manager Manual. 

3. How can you systematize values like “surprise and delight” to ensure clients and community members have a joyful experience working with you?

4. Do you identify with the challenge of stepping out of the “Chief Everything Officer” role or even “All-Seeing Question Answerer”? What sub-roles seem hardest to give up?

5. What stops you from doubling what you delegate? Are there areas of life or work where you delegate better than others? Worse? What work do you find most draining that you can run a small experiment with?

6. How can you earn twice as much in half the time, with ease and joy, while serving the highest good? Or how can you replace this with an even more expansive question?

Open Guide in Reflection.app

Jenny Blake

Author and Podcaster at Free Time & Pivot
Jenny Blake is a podcaster and the author of three award-winning books, including Pivot (Portfolio, 2016) and Free Time (Ideapress, 2022), with a podcast for each that has over two million downloads combined. While at her corporate alma mater, Jenny co-created Google’s global drop-in coaching program, Career Guru, which is still thriving today. She is a lifelong bookworm living in New York City and aims to work 10 to 20 hours each week so she can play in the grass with her German shepherd Ryder every afternoon.

Related Journal Prompts & Guides

Explore other journaling guides to help you on your journey.

Journal Prompts & Guides by Collection

See all →

Get clarity and peace of mind, wherever you are.

Download Reflection.app to start your journey. (It’s free!)