How To Minimize Stress and Get Organized For Your Next Event
According to numerous of online studies, researchers have found that happiness is directly related to stress. Avoiding stress or minimizing it can not only maximize your happiness but keep you organized and ready for your next event. We create a great amount of unnecessary stress in our lives. If you consider a little bit of planning, getting organized and staying ahead, you can remove a large part of that stress in your life.
Time Management
Time management is your friend when it comes to getting organized and staying that way. Time management is something you have to plan and continue to manage. This skill is planning how to divide your time between different activities and how to work smarter to save time and get things done faster. This is your first step to eliminating the stress that comes with planning events and creating more efficient workflows.
Somethings you can do to manage your time more effectively is the following:
Know your daily and weekly goals
Plan ahead and know your deadlines
Eliminate any distractions around your work space
Say no to impossible tasks
Make to-do lists
Declutter and organize
Use a calendar
Prioritize
Delegate
Take care of yourself; mentally and physically
Plan Ahead
A popular and efficient way to reduce your stress is to mark your calendars and plan ahead! If you don't have a calendar, buy one and start making your to-do lists and reminders. Try to book your vendors, catering, venue as in advance as possible to get early bird deals, discounts and have another thing to mark off your calendar.
Building an online presence whether that is social media or your website and brand is very important for marketing your event. The earlier you start building your followers, the more time you have to advertise your event, grow your audience and hopefully sell more tickets.
Budget
Knowing your costs before planning and booking your event necessities is a crucial to keep you on budget and on track to avoid the stress of managing your money. The complete guide to event planning on a budget provides tips and tricks to creating the perfect budget for your next event.
Find Reliable People
Whether it’s your volunteers, staff, vendors, catering, or even your venue, make sure you are working with reliable people. Working with people you can trust and expect to show up for your event is crucial in eliminating a lot of stress when it comes to event planning.
One way to ensure finding great people and companies to hire is to search around inside your existing networks. If you have strong connections you should use them, instead of hiring random names for your event with no feedback. By having a strong team supporting you, this will make for a better event day and a better experience as a whole for you and your guests.
Backup Plans
Being prepared means you have a backup plan and a backup plan for that backup plan. The following are the most common situations that you can prepare for.
Too many people
Speaker/Artists Cancel
Venue Cancellation (extreme case)
Bad Weather
Technically Issues
Lack of Amenities
Catering Cancels
Electricity goes down
Road Closures
Know your backup plans before they even happen. Be prepared physically, but remember mentally is just as important. Remember these 10 steps in case a backup plan is needed:
1. Stay Calm, panicking won’t help anything.
2. Stay in control. Don’t drop the reins if something goes wrong.
3. Be flexible. Things will go wrong, adjust quickly.
4. Find the problem so you can fix it.
5. Move quickly when there is an issue.
6. Be honest. Lying will only make things worse.
7. Announce the solution at the same time you announce the problem.
8. Test everything and always have a contingency.
9. Get everything in writing.
10.Put procedures in place for every situation
Automate everything and anything you can!
Technology is here to make your event management easier, so use it! Registration, marketing tools, automated tasks and calendars, and so many other online and automated resources are available today.
Here are some ways you may be wasting your time by not saying yes to automation:
You have multiple databases storing your data instead of one main spot.
Your apps and insights are not connected to one another.
You are using a variety of different online tools that you have to continually update and maintain.
Make a list!
Check-lists and spreadsheets are probably my favorite ways of staying organized when planning an upcoming project or event. Whether you create one online or write it down, having your thoughts and upcoming tasks written out is the best way to visualize and manage what needs to be done and when.
Going through your list and checking off what is done helps cut down your stress more and more after each thing is checked off for the day. This is also a for sure way to stay organized and not overlook anything that needs to be done.
