I worried about coming across as patronising in this post.

Then I thought, ‘Well, it took me years to do any of these things. Maybe I’m not the only one.’ And then Dale Carnegie sent me information for a course entitled “How to make more hours in the day”.

Hmmm, maybe it’s not so patronising.

So, here are a few simple things you can do to start to create the space to work on setting your business up for a holiday:

Automate your invoices and payments. However you take payment for your services, make the process as automatic as possible. Use repeating invoices for regular payments, so you only have to set things up once. Sign yourself and your clients up to a direct debit service, so that even one-off invoices are simply paid on the due date. You pay a small percentage of the invoice value for this service, but that cost is more than offset by the positive effect on your cashflow and the time you save chasing. It also means that all your conversations with clients can be about the value you are creating together.

Use a calendar app to control who can book your time, and when they can book it. Most of these apps let you set up different types of meeting and different schedules for booking them. For example I have every weekday morning blocked out for writing, plus the rest of Mondays and Fridays for between-meeting client work. This doesn’t mean I can’t book anything at these times, it just means nobody else can, without consulting me first.

The other benefit of using a calendar app is that it removes all the to-ing and fro-ing of trying to find a good time to meet up. You know when you’re available, so you can put the client in control of their time too, and just send the client a link to your schedule.

You could go further and let your team set something similar up for themselves, so they can have time blocked out to concentrate on getting stuff done.

Get someone else to answer the phone. It doesn’t have to be someone in your team. A simple messaging service (such as answer.co.uk) works wonders, because the phone is answered promptly by a real person, and a message texted and emailed to you immediately. You get to choose when to answer, without making the caller feel like you don’t care.

You could of course get someone else in your team to answer calls, but until they know everything you know, all that happens is that you are interrupted later when they have to ask you a question.

So start a frequently asked questions (FAQ) list. Over time, you’ll make this redundant by designing out the need for questions, but for now, whenever someone has to ask you a question in order to answer a phone call, write the question and its answer to the FAQ list, ready for next time. Now everyone in your team can take calls. Set rules for how it’s done too:

Answer within 3 rings and use this simple but effective formula for greeting: “Good Morning/Good Afternoon <Business Name>, <This is <your first name>.” This gives the caller time to register that the call has got through, followed by friendly but unimportant data while ‘they get their ear in’ to your voice, followed by a ‘gap’ that will prompt them to tell you why they’ve called.

Set up autoresponders to messages. You can do this for Whatsapp and texts as well as for email. Use your calendar app to set aside times to go through and answer them, perhaps first thing every morning and first thing after lunch. Turn notifications off. If something is really urgent, people will call.

Some of these actions will save you time immediately. But the most important thing they all do is put you back in control of your time. So you can start actively carving out enough time and headspace to work on your business not in it.

None of it is rocket science and none of it is expensive. You just have to do it.

What would you add?

Next time, making some space.

Discipline makes Daring possible.