12. Recurring Tasks

When I check off a recurring task in Asana and it automagically holds space on my calendar for Future Me I could squeal with joy. . . and I want you to feel that way about your business planning tool too. Let’s think of some ways you can leverage recurring tasks inside your business.

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Transcript

Janice Cook: 0:00

Welcome back to Your Win-Win Teacher Business. When I check off a recurring task in Asana and it automagically holds space on my calendar for future me, I could squeal with joy, and I want you to feel that way about your business planning tool too. Let's think of some ways you can leverage recurring tasks inside your business. You're listening to Your Win-Win Teacher Business, a podcast for teacher authors who want to make a big impact in the world for teachers and students and have fun doing it. I'm your host, Janice Cook, here with a pep talk to start your week off strong. Some seasons of running a business feel hard and sticky, but it shouldn't feel like that all the time. Let's make your business a win-win together. Before we get started with today's episode, I wanted to give a shout out to Chanty for leaving such a sweet review for the podcast. She said "Loving hearing these heart to heart, real talk conversations about entrepreneurship, prioritizing tasks, and making your business thrive while living your best life. Janice is a wealth of info and expertise, and I can't wait to listen to all of the episodes in this show. So proud of you." Oh, it made my heart so happy. I really want this to be our podcast, so please know that it means the world to me when you log into Apple podcasts and share your thoughts about the show. It's so helpful for other teacher business owners to know what to expect before they push play. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Recurring tasks aren't unique. I know you can mark your birthday on a Google Calendar and receive a reminder every year. I realize you can set a phone alarm at 2:45pm every weekday to pull you out of hyper focus and send you to the carpool pickup line. Recurring tasks aren't unique to Asana, but there was a light bulb moment for me the first time an Asana trainer demonstrated all the ways they were using recurring tasks to support their business brain. And I love recurring tasks enough to give them their very own episode. Let's talk about how recurring tasks work, specifically in Asana. Step one, when you create a recurring task, you tell Asana when you want that task to pop up on your calendar next. Step two, you do the task and check it off. Step three, after the task is completed, it pops up on your calendar the next time you'll need to do it. Sounds simple enough. Why is that so magical? You don't have to remember every little detail involved in running a business. We have technology for that. Remembering is not a CEO task. All the links, passwords, and notes from doing the task this time can travel with the task. They can be there to support you the next time that task pops up on your calendar. A paper planner would never! And my favorite feature, it's literally holding space on your calendar to block you from over booking. So when I look at my calendar to book an appointment at the pediatrician or I'm fielding a volunteer request at school, my calendar already says, "Hey, you have this thing you plan to do on that day", even if it's 10, 11, 12 months from now. It's blocking off time to help me not overbook myself and say yes to so many things and that is a gift. Let's talk about some of the specific recurring task reminders that I have inside my business. We have the daily tasks. This would be a swipe through my inboxes or a swipe through team feedback. You better believe those are scheduled for a specific time on my calendar, and you better believe I always head into an inbox with a timer. Those are daily tasks on the minimum days in my business. If I'm traveling, if I'm sick, I still need to swipe through my inbox, and I still need to check on team feedback to make sure I'm never the bottleneck in my own business. You also might have new habits that you're trying to build in your business, and this is not me saying you should come into a shiny new year with that new year, new me energy and add 12 new daily tasks for everything you need to do in a day to be your most aspirational version of yourself. This would be a cautionary tale to place one habit at a time, right? If you are trying to build one new habit, like clean the screenshots off your desktop at

2: 5:05

30 every day, one tiny baby step at a time. I could make a case for a daily task, for that that recurs every time I check it off, it pops up on the next day to hold space and remind me to do it. Then we have our weekly tasks. For me, this would be a weekly co-working appointment where I get together with ladies who are in a similar stage in their business, and we do some tasks for our own business to make sure we're balancing pouring into the businesses of others and also keeping our business growing and healthy. This would be for behind the scenes business tasks that no one wants to do, like WordPress plugin updates. This would be like reconciling your business bank account - different CEO tasks that have to happen and you need to keep an eye on. They're not fun. You don't want to do them. But having a weekly task reminder makes sure they get done before you turn the page on a new week. This also might be things you do to wrap up at the end of the week, or things you do to set up the next week for success. Weekly tasks will hold space for that in my calendar to make sure I actually save time to do them. Then we have our monthly tasks. This might be a monthly check in on your personal calendar to make sure your work calendar and your personal calendar match, to make sure you didn't forget about something that's going to interrupt the middle of a time block when you're usually at work. Just a quick check to make sure both the calendars are in alignment. It might be a seasonal storefront refresh so that we're not showing Easter resources when it's the middle of summer. It might be a question for yourself, when's the last time you shared a freebie with your audience? When's the last time you shared out about some fresh feedback? It might be a reminder to pay yourself or pay your team to make sure that happens on a metered schedule, and it might be a chance to check in with your books, whether either providing documents to a bookkeeper or making sure your books are caught up if you do them yourself. We have quarterly taxes, and I've got a reminder for it on the day it's due, and even more importantly, a reminder T minus one week before that due date, so I can actually do it and have it in in plenty of time before the due date. And then we have yearly reminders like actually filing the taxes or preparing the taxes, or making the appointment with your CPA, so you can prepare the taxes and file the taxes. You might have a time of year where you need to go through your contractors and swipe through for 1099s. You might also need a yearly reminder for team member birthdays, anniversary milestones for your business, a chance to check in with contractors to do a review on their performance, and their capacity, and their pay, and make sure that it's still a win-win working arrangement. You might choose to block off times you never work like for me, Christmas morning. It never hurts for me to hold space to look at the calendar and decide how many days do I really need and desire to block off for winter break. I also love using yearly recurring task reminders for annual subscriptions. I love to set one for the day the subscription renews, but also T minus one week or one month. A gentle question, do I still need this tool in my business? Am I even using it? Has my business changed? I want the chance to evaluate that before it renews at high cost for another upcoming year. When I make a big list like that, it sounds like a lot, and so if you're feeling overwhelmed when you sit down to run your business for the day, no wonder why! You're probably trying to keep a lot of those reminders in your brain, and that's not the best use of your CEO brain strength. When we release these tasks and set them up as proper recurring tasks in a digital project management tool, we can let the tool remind us of those, and our job is just to remember to use the tool and open the tool and check in with it every day. It gets so much easier over time to make decisions on what you can say yes to and what you have capacity for when you can see a true picture of all the little things you're already committed to just by owning a business. So I wonder, are you spending time writing these types of events and reminders over and over and over again in a paper planning tool when a digital project management tool could give you a set it and forget it experience? Could these tasks take less time if we gathered all the things you needed to execute them into one place? Do you ever want to write something in your paper planner for the next year, but you have to pause and wait because your paper planner for that time period hasn't yet arrived yet. In my personal experience, there just came a point when my paper planner wasn't cutting it, and I realized there was probably a better tool for what I was trying to accomplish. Moving into a proper business project management system tool - it removed so much friction in my day, and I'd love to see that transformation for you too. If you're even 1% curious about what my project management tool looks like, I'll leave a link in the show notes to a free course preview that gives you a sneak peek, glimpse into the free digital tool that helped me fall back in love with running my business. Thanks for making this podcast a part of your day. I'd love to help you find clarity with your next step in business. Go to cookfamilyresources.com/hiring-guide I'll also leave that link in the show notes for you. This guide is packed with good news for those days when you feel like you can't possibly do it all. It might be time for you to invest in paid support, but the truth is, there are a lot of free steps to explore first. After you dive into that guide, I'll be in your inbox every Monday morning with more actionable tips to help you enjoy running your business again. See you in the next episode.