For most of my social media career, I've worn a lot of hats. In fact, some (me) might even say too many hats. In other words: I, one single human being, end up doing the jobs of multiple human beings. In a single word: overworked. 

Only recently have I developed the second best remedy for the Too Many Hat situation (because the best would obviously be having enough resources/teammates in the first place) and that is becoming really, really obsessed with time. And not in a like “what even is time, what are we all doing here,” sort of way; I mean in a literal, logistical way.

To get started, you first need to know exactly how much time your work takes. That way you can build a timetable that represents the full scope of your role. And I’m talking about all of your work. Posting that Instagram story really quickly? Track it. Setting aside half an hour to answer DMs and comments? Track it. Because all of the “little things that only take a second” quickly add up and if you’re not accounting for them, you’ll find your to-do list growing longer and your free time dwindling down.

Second, and most important, you need to make sure to never assign 100% of your time. At least 20% should be kept in reserve.

So how do you become a master of time? With a spreadsheet! 

Yeah! Maybe not the sexiest thing in the world, but you'll be happy to have it once it's finished, promise.

• It should cover a month/4 weeks (or whatever repetitive timeframe makes the most sense for your role) and include everything you regularly do in that time frame. (Remember—little things add up to big things!) 

• The layout should be something that works for you. What's worked for me is thinking of the tasks as a whole—noting their monthly frequency, and then further breaking them down via skill/work type, like admin/behind-the-scenes, research/prep, production, and posting/engaging. 

• When it comes to counting up the hours, only you know how much time your tasks take. You may have to do some guessing and/or go back later and make adjustments. When in doubt (or not), always round up! 

• BUT! The point here is to be realistic—remember there's only one of you and nobody has created a reliable, commercially-available cloning device yet. Under-selling how long things take you or trying to do too much in a day to impress/prove yourself to your managers creates unrealistic expectations and those only hurt you. 

Here’s that most important part again—buffer time. 

The completed spreadsheet will give you the total number of hours your work takes up in a month. Now, you may feel an urge to make your own work hours equal exactly how many monthly working hours there are. Resist. You should NEVER be at 100%. 

Instead, always have a reserve of about 20%. (For example, a typical 35hr week would be 140hrs in a month, so your regular tasks should take up 112hrs and leave you with 28hrs reserve.) This reserve time will be used for one-off work projects, life outside of work, when something takes unexpectedly long. Basically a buffer for everything/anything out of your control. And I promise, you will use it up. 

But why do you want to be time spreadsheeting anyway?

1. It allows for better personal time management, more efficiency, and (this is essential) helps set realistic boundaries and expectations for what you can reasonably accomplish.

2. It will become a vital tool for deciding the worth of a project or task since you will be able to compare the time it takes versus the pay off/results. 

3. It plainly illustrates to higher-ups the full scope of your role and additionally acts as evidence for making the case to bring on new teammates. 

Honestly, even if you aren't wearing too many hats (How? Where? Are they hiring?), figuring out your time like this is always a good idea. Because you never know when you may need to defend your work against someone who thinks, "it's just a 30sec Reel, how much time could it possibly take?!"