How to find time for hobbies as a business owner (sample assessment)

Now let's get into this video: How to find time for hobbies as a business owner. This can be tricky! So again, we have four areas of assessment for you to kind of go through in order to find that time for your hobbies.

Number one: Assess your time and energy requirements for this hobby. 

How much time is needed for it? Is this the type of hobby that can be done within 15 minute chunks, or do you need a full day or full weeks set aside in order to work on it? Is it something that happens daily on an ongoing basis, or is it more of like a one time sort of thing like maybe once a quarter? What does it kind of look like and what are the time and energy requirements for it? What kind of energy and bandwidth do you require for this hobby? 

(Just because something can be done within 15 minutes, doesn't mean that it feels like it!. Some hobbies require a lot more energy and bandwidth than others. So in that case, you might need extra buffer time, extra space built out around it. So you want to take into consideration both the time and energy commitment required for whatever hobby you might have.)

Number two: Assess your business model. 

Does it fit your lifestyle? Does your business model currently accommodate for your lifestyle wants and needs, including your hobbies? For example, if you need a full week to work on your hobby — if you need a full week at a time to have fun with it and prioritize it — then can your business model handle that? What will happen if you take a week off from working in your business? What needs to change within your business model to be able to make that happen so that there is that room for your hobby?

Question number three: Assess your schedule. 

Is your schedule, is your calendar, jam packed? Do you have multiple things going on every single day? What kind of space do you have in your schedule? 

How much flexibility do you currently have in your schedule? And what kind of flexibility could you create in it moving forward? Where are there areas that you can shift and move things around in your schedule? 

Number four: Assess your reality. 

Do you really not have any time for your hobby… or are there internal mindset blocks that are holding you back? Do you maybe need fresh perspectives on it? 

For example, I have a solopreneur client who is starting her business while working a nine to five job and raising two little kids. That's a lot! And she loves reading books. But a couple months ago when she first came to me, she was 100% convinced that she had absolutely no time or space for her hobbies for reading books. She's like, “Nope, there's just no room for it. So I just can't do it.”

And recently, I was so delighted to hear that she was able to take an entire weekend off of work to do personal things which included reading books. And this happened the same week as she had put together an entire business plan — so, not only was she able to make really awesome progress with her business (without dropping the ball at her nine to five job and without dropping the ball on her family), but she also had the time and the energy to enjoy her weekend for herself. She had not done this in a very long time! Over the course of the last few months we've been working together and really unpacking a lot of her beliefs around what was realistic and doable for her. And a lot of the internal bottlenecks that she had put up that were preventing her from allowing herself to read books — and even allowing herself to see the time and the space that she could create for doing a hobby such as reading books. 

So there you have it: Those are the four areas that you need to consider if you want to find time for your hobbies as a business owner. 

And I hope that you can see with this last example that even if you feel like you have no time whatsoever, even if you're really busy even if you have a lot going on in your life and your business, there often are ways that you can create that time and that space for your hobbies. Sometimes this involves getting really creative, and this also might be something that you don't necessarily implement tomorrow. This took my client a couple of months to be able to get to this point. That was a couple of months of coaching, of working through this, of working through a lot of other aspects alongside it to be able to get to this point where she could take that weekend off, feel great about it, read books, and enjoy it fully. 

And we can do this together! These four assessments that I mentioned today, we can do this together, we can unpack the different things that are going on and we can ensure that you actually have time for your hobbies again, when you join my Solopreneur CEO coaching program. These assessments and mapping out your plans and coaching you through your internal bottlenecks is exactly the type of thing that I work on with my solopreneur clients. 

And my clients do include busy parents and sole proprietors who are wearing all of the hats in their business, and people who are neurodivergent and business owners who are also juggling nine to five jobs. All of them are able to create the time and the bandwidth for their passion projects — and I know that you can do it, too, when we are working together. Let me show you how: visit SaganMorrow.com/ceo and book your spot in my Solopreneur CEO coaching program today.