Summer Refire: 7 simple ideas to enjoy your workweeks as a solopreneur

Jun 27

So far in the summer refire, I’ve talked about how you can create a schedule that works for you, and I’ve hopefully helped you shift our thoughts from feeling like schedules and plans are boring to seeing just how helpful they are in making it possible for you to spend time on the things you actually want to spend time on.

I wanted to bring in this episode, as I 100% believe that it’s important for your productivity that you feel enjoyment in your workweeks – not just on the weekends or not just when you get to go on your once-a-year vacation.

And if you have no idea what I’m talking about when I mention the productivity ecosystem, you can go back a few episodes (to episode 31) to get the basics, or read the blog post here.

Giveaway

You can win a one-hour pick-my-brain session with me. You can ask me aaaanything when it comes to your productivity, schedule, work-life balance – anything within the realm of things I usually talk about here on the podcast – and get personalized advice.

There are two ways you can enter the giveaway:

1. Share about the podcast with a friend or on your social media, and either send a screenshot of the share to my email jenna@jennahellberg.com or DMs, or share about in IG story and tag me @thejennahellberg so that I can see. (If your account is private I may not see the story; in this case, send a screenshot of it to my DMs)

2. Write a review about Building Balance on Apple podcasts, and send me a screenshot of the review. If you don't have access to Apple podcasts, you could leave me/the podcast a note here: https://jennahellberg.com/note

If you do both, you get two draft spots in the giveaway.

Out of everyone who shares and/or reviews within the month of June 2022, I’ll pick a winner on July 1st and get in touch with them (hopefully you!) by July 5th to schedule the pick-my-brain session.

Show notes

The topic of enjoyment falls under the WHOLENESS part of the productivity ecosystem, because research shows that when we feel well, when we’re happy, we do so much better with everything we put our energy intop. (And if you have no idea what I’m talking about when I mention the productivity ecosystem, you can go back a few episodes (to episode 31) to get the basics. I’ll also link to a blog post about it in the shownotes.

So let’s dive into this summer refire:

I used to have this problem that I’d plan my business tasks for days, weeks, months – and suddenly it felt like I had already “lost” that time. Like because I knew exactly what my next few days or weeks were gonna look like, I didn’t look forward to them as much anymore because they were already spoken for, so I might as well fast-forward to that point in time that I hadn’t planned for yet.

And well, that didn’t feel that great – and I knew that something had to change. I didn’t want to wait for something like a vacation to feel excited, right?

This is something I talk about with a good chunk of my coachees – the thing about our amazing ability to imagine the future, is that when we make plans, our brains often already feel like we’ve *done all the things* because we’ve imagined it, we have these imagined memories – but then we still need to do the things for them to actually happen.

So today I thought I would tell you about some things that I did to get back to feeling more excited about the days, the weeks, and the months – even if they were centered around everyday work weeks.

1 – reflection

I journal most mornings*. Checking in with myself in the morning helps me catch how I’m doing, and what feels important that day. Sometimes it’s not any of the stuff that’s on my task list, and that’s when it feels extra important to incorporate that thing into my day.

Journaling might not feel right for you, but there are a lot of ways that you could check in with yourself, like taking a walk, doing a quick yoga practice, or just taking a moment to reflect about how you’re feeling and what you’d like your day to look like.

*As of June 2022, I’m journaling less than I did when I recorded this in 2021. I may pick it back up daily, or I may not – am figuring out what works for me each season.

2 – plan time for fun

Making time for some fun things throughout your weeks is a good way not just to stay motivated to get through tasks, but feeling good overall (hopefully) spills into the time you’re working.

3 – try to have some enjoyable things to do every day

So things don’t always have to be “fun”, but I do believe every day needs to have some enjoyable elements. For me it’s good food, going for a walk, moving my body, and listening to music. It’s those little things that build up; we don’t need to chase something super-indulgent or grand. Actually, often doing things that are in-the-moment indulgent doesn’t really give us a lasting high.

4 - “work” towards something that matters outside of your tasks

Whether your tasks center around a business or your job or any other responsibilities, I feel it’s important to have something outside of that to “work” towards. If you’re a creative person, maybe you plan to create something on a weekly basis. If you want to strengthen your relationships with friends, decide on a set of actions you take every week that will help you stay in touch.

5 – purpose

If you feel like there’s no purpose to doing the things you do, you either need to find the purpose in them *OR* chuck those out the window and find things to do that would actually feel purposeful to you.

6 – unplanned time

The best cure to feeling like your time is all spoken for, is to plan for unplanned time. On a daily basis you might want to have an hour or two of this, on a weekly basis it might mean a full Saturday or Sunday. I’m also debating doing a full week every two months, or a full month twice a year.

Also just having white space built into your days can be helpful.

7 – people

You can’t even begin to measure how much other people can influence and enrich your life – and the time you spend with them isn’t *that* predictable, right? Especially having deep connections with others brings my life a lot of meaning.

I would love to hear what you do to make your work weeks more enjoyable – so write an Instagram story about it and tag me at @thejennahellberg so that I can see!

Alright friend – that’s it for this summer refire series. I hope that hearing these three episodes in a row has given you some new ideas on how to look at schedules, how to not feel bogged down by them, and instead see the potential structure and routines have in actually making your life more flexible and enjoyable, in addition to training the brain to be productive when you want to be.

Hei did you know that if you share my podcast with a friend or on your social media within the month of June 2022, you can win a one-hour pick-my-brain session with me. You can ask me aaaanything when it comes to productivity, schedules, work-life balance – anything within the realm of things I usually talk about.

So if you share with a friend, grab a screenshot of that and send it to me in am email or on my IG, or if you share on IG maybe you can take a screenshot of your favorite episode and say why you liked it. And don’t forget to tag me so that I see it!

And if you’d like an extra giveaway possibility, you can also write a review for Building Balance on Apple podcasts. I would really appreciate a review, because hearing what has been helpful to you about the podcast not only helps me create better content but it also helps others decide whether they’d benefit from listening to the podcast. So if you write one, take a screenshot of your review and send it my way because I can't see the content of reviews that have been written outside of the US – I can only see the ratings, so please send a screenshot of it my way. That would mean so much to me.

I’ll pick a winner out of everyone who shares by July 1st, and get in touch with the winner by July 5th.

Jenna Hellberg