There’s no hiding it, thanks to time-stamps that don’t lie. I haven’t updated this blog in several weeks. While I find it irritating when I see bloggers who start out their blog posts with something along the lines of “sorry I haven’t posted in awhile,” I have to acknowledge this breakdown. This is the first time since I started the blog in 2007 that such a long time period has elapsed between blog posts. I’ve had an influx of paying clients over the last several months (a great problem to have), and this has led to somewhat of a time-management crisis. Yep, growing pains.

I thought I would use this blog post to share some insights that I’ve gotten from this period of my entrepreneurial development. Here’s the low-down.

1. Being too busy to do important things is a client-repellent.

2. Getting in the zone is the way to be effective in business.

3. Managing a million tiny things is a great way to get out of the zone.

4. No one respects a person who answers e-mail immediately.

That’s about all I have time to write for the moment, which is another key point that I’ll use to close this posting. In my old mindset, I would not have written this posting, because I didn’t have more than 5 minutes to spend on it. Successful entrepreneurs do what they can in the time that they have. I used to use “I don’t have time” as an excuse for everything. I’m using this blog post to mark the end of that era.

Social networking is exploding.  Blogs are exploding.  The possibilities for an introverted entrepreneur are exploding.  There are plenty of avenues to explore, and plenty of nooks and crannies to go looking on the Internet for Easter eggs.  That’s precisely our problem.  It’s causing time to implode on us.  There are only so many hours a day, and we introverts are often too creative for our own good.  We think non-stop, we pump out ideas faster than the universe could implement them, and then we wonder why we don’t get anything done.  Now, I’d love to get up on my soapbox here and talk about how you need discipline and focus, and how you need to just pick one thing and stick with it, but let’s face it.  We don’t want to live that kind of life.

A friend recently told me that she’d been to a personal development seminar where the leader recommended “living on the boundary between order and chaos.”  I think that pretty well describes the life of an entrepreneur.  So, time management for creative folks like us needs to look something like maintaining some degree of consistency in life, while not handcuffing ourselves to a schedule an a goal sheet.  It looks like doing things consistently, but maintaining a degree of inconsistency that’s enough to keep life juicy and surprising.

I’ve noticed that I have a tendency to get addicted to writing.  I promised myself I would only write one article per day, and today already I’ve posted six.  That’s an example of what riding the wave can look like.  I realized, today, that I could take off the rest of the week from writing articles if I really wanted to.  I’ve nearly filled my quota.  But, in any case, I have some serious goals, and a ball to keep my eye on.  The bottom line is this: I’m still aiming for getting my Renegade system up and running as quickly as possible, while balancing this with my job search efforts.  I’m still a barista at Starbucks, and I’m starting a year-long training program with Landmark on Friday.  I would think anyone else was crazy for doing this.  But I’m happily looking forward to seeing what comes out of the mix next.  I know that life is going to be full of surprises for the indefinite future, and I love that.

The point is this.  You can set a goal, and you can take action, but don’t get carried away with following your action plan every day.  Follow it every day if you can, and make the numbers add up at the end of the week if you must.  But make sure that you’re thriving on the chaos in the meantime.  Do this, and the numbers will work out.  Trust me on this.  I don’t know how it works, but it does.