Why Recognizing Your Blind Spots Is the First Step to a Business That Works

This is an adapted transcript from the Love To Lead Podcast. Listen to the full episode Self-Awareness for Women Entrepreneurs: Why Recognizing Your Blind Spots Is the First Step to a Business That Works

When was the last time you actually looked at where your time is going? Not guessed. Not assumed. Actually, looked.

Because here's what I find with most women in business. We have a general sense of what we do all day. We know we're busy. We know we're tired. We know there's always more to do than there is time to do it. But we don't actually know, with any real clarity, what's eating our time. What's draining our energy. What's sitting on our plate that doesn't actually need to be there.

And that matters. Because you cannot change what you are not aware of.

That's what today is about.

The Problem With Trying Harder

When something isn't working in our business, the first instinct for most of us is to push more. Work more. Try harder. Get more disciplined.

And I understand that instinct. It comes from a real place of caring about what you've built. But what I want to offer you today is that trying harder is not always the answer. Sometimes the answer is just being more aware. Its not doing, its seeing.

Because here's the thing. If you don't know what's actually happening with your time, you can't make good decisions about it. You're just guessing. You're just hoping that if you push a little harder, things will start to shift.

And they won't. Not sustainably. Not in a way that actually frees you up.

Your to-do list is not an accurate picture of your time. It shows you what you intended to do. It does not show you what you actually spent your energy on. It doesn't show you the interruptions, the reactive tasks, the things that crept in and took over your afternoon. It doesn't show you the invisible work we talked about last week.

And if we're making decisions based on an inaccurate picture, we're going to keep getting inaccurate results.

Awareness is not about tracking your time forever. It's not about becoming someone who logs every minute of their day. It's about getting a clear enough picture, just once, to be able to make better decisions going forward.

Client Story

I want to tell you about a client of mine because I think this will land differently when you hear it as a real example.

When we started working together, she was a food blogger running her entire business alone. And like most women I work with, she had a general sense of what she did all day, but she had never actually mapped it out.

So we did a time audit together. We went task by task through everything she had worked on over the previous couple of weeks. And as we named each task out loud, I asked her a simple question: does this give you energy or drain you?

What happened next was one of those moments I wish every business owner could experience.

Task after task after task, she started realizing that things she had assumed were just part of running her business, things she had been doing for years without questioning them, didn't actually need to be done by her.

Formatting blog posts. Transferring content into WordPress. Updating plugins. Creating recipe cards. Managing affiliate links. Submitting links to Facebook groups.

And here's the quote that has stayed with me. When we got to drafting her weekly emails she said: “I find myself getting so bogged down with the minutia of just formatting and putting this picture in and copying this link. It's little dumb stuff but it adds up to take up so much time. It's not a good use of my energy.”

And then, almost in the same breath, she started describing exactly how someone else could do it instead.

That's awareness. That's what happens when you stop and actually look at what's on your plate. You start to see things you could not see when you were just moving through them on autopilot.

By the end of that conversation, we had identified that over 70% of the tasks she was spending her time on were things she could hand off. Not someday. Now.

She didn't need to work harder. She needed to see clearly. And once she could see it, she couldn't unsee it.

Here is some important context though. At that time she was just doing it all solo, but in the past, she’d hired some things out. She’d tried the outsourcing route, but never felt great about the process of it. She didn’t know what she should hand off first or how, so the investment of that didn’t feel like a relief. So she stopped working with them. This was a cycle she’d repeated multiple times. So again and again she kept being the one who was doing everything. You may see yourself in that pattern too.

The Time Audit As An Awareness Tool

So here's what I want to offer you.

A time audit is not about judgment. It is not about proving how productive you are or aren't. It is simply a tool for seeing what's actually happening so you can make better decisions.

And it doesn't have to be complicated. It doesn't have to be a perfect log of every hour of your day. Although that is a really thorough way to do it. But it can be as simple as looking back at the last few days or the last week and asking: what did I actually work on? What took up my time? Does this task require me specifically, or did it land on my plate because it's always landed on my plate?

That last question can be a sticky one.

Because a lot of what we're doing in our businesses isn't there because it needs to be there. It's there because we never stopped to question it. We just kept picking it up because we always have.

Awareness gives you the ability to question it. And questioning it gives you the ability to choose differently.

This is exactly what we're going to walk through together in the Find 10 Hours workshop. I'm going to take you through this process step by step. We'll look at what's actually on your plate, where your time is really going, and you'll leave with a clear picture of what you can start to hand off.

It's free, it's live, and we do the work together in real time. Link is in the show notes, go grab your spot.

I want to leave you with this.

You are not stuck because you aren't working more hours. You are not stuck because you don’t have a business degree or aren't equipped enough. You may be stuck because you are making decisions without a clear picture of what's actually happening. What makes you great at persevering could now be creating your ceiling.

And that is completely fixable.

Awareness leads to better decisions. Better decisions lead to more space. More space leads to growth that doesn't require you to give more of yourself than you already are.

It starts with curiosity. Really looking at everything and giving yourself permission to pause long enough to do that. That’s my challenge for you this week.

I'll see you in the next one.

Ready to get a clear picture of where your time is actually going? Come to the Find 10 Hours workshop. It's free, it's live, and you will leave with real clarity and a plan you can start using immediately. Register at offers.jilliandolberry.com/10-hours. I'll see you there.