Channelling TYPE A Energy

Week 12: The Juggle is Real

One of the hardest things about getting started on building a project is probably the getting your shit organised part. If not the hardest, it’s at least the first hurdle to clear. Before you can do anything, you need to get your ducks in a row, and this is where being TYPE A anal comes in handy. But if that’s not naturally you, you’re not doomed. I’m here to share how.

When you’re starting out, you’re usually juggling your time between new business, existing career and work, and whatever is left for your personal life. Finding a manageable, streamlined way to get your tasks organised and on schedule is essential, not just for your sanity, but for the personal accountability that makes you actually do what you planned to do for your venture.

The success rate of ACTUALLY checking things off your business to-do list is directly correlated to how well you manage your everyday priorities. I’m speaking from experience when I say it takes time. I would have started this tech venture probably two years earlier, because at that time I had already:

a) reached the most final version render of my business idea (where it basically sits today as it’s being built)

b) was emotionally prepared to dedicate time and energy to it

c) felt confident enough with the network I had to support my journey

But ALAS, bills needed paying and life needed living, so the business had to wait a little longer.

The central idea that all of this stems from is ultimately one thing: your TIME. And figuring out how to take ownership of it back. Because if you need more time, you have to learn how to make more time, and that comes through optimisation.

For me personally, running my own marketing consulting business meant I had to figure out how to streamline workflows and delegate more. That meant training people to take on more responsibility for client work, so I could step back from doing and focus my time on overseeing and signing off.

So how do you actually get there? Here’s what worked for me.

1. Audit where your time is actually going

Before you can fix anything, you need to see the problem clearly. Spend one week tracking how you’re actually spending your working hours, not how you think you’re spending them, because I promise those two things are rarely the same. You’ll likely find a handful of tasks eating up a disproportionate amount of your time that, honestly, don’t need to be done by you. That’s your starting point.

2. Delegate properly

Most of us overestimate how many tasks genuinely require our specific involvement. Go through your to-do list and ask: could someone else do this with the right briefing? Your time should be reserved for decisions, relationships, and high-level thinking. The rest you can probably let go. Real delegation means investing time upfront, briefing people thoroughly, setting clear expectations, and yes, letting them make mistakes and learn from them. It feels slower at first. It isn’t. Once someone truly owns a task, you free yourself from it for good. That compounding return on your time is everything.

3. Streamline your workflows

Look at the repetitive tasks, the things you do the same way every single time. Can you template them? Automate them with AI? Build a process around them so they don’t require your full brainpower every time? These tools exist for a reason: to create breathing room for you.

4. Make meetings with yourself

This is the personal accountability part that people skip, and then wonder why nothing changes and their business doesn’t move forward. Once you’ve clawed back some time, you have to consciously ring-fence it for your venture. PUT IT IN THE CALENDAR. Treat it like a client meeting you cannot move. Because if you don’t protect it, life and work will immediately fill it back up.

To be clear, this is a process. None of it happens overnight. Getting to a place where your day job runs with less of you in it takes months of building trust with your team, tightening your systems and being honest about where you’re the bottleneck. But once you get there, even partially, you’ll feel the shift.

The goal isn’t perfect balance. And personally, I don’t think that exists. The goal is flexibility. Ownership over your own time, so you can take it back and point it where it matters most.

A Final Note

I shared what worked for me, but now I want to hear from you. Where are you losing time, and what's one thing that's helped you claw some of it back? Leave me a reply and let me know. I’m always looking for hot tips and am very curious to see what resonates with you.

xx KP