Trying a Twitter tool
I’m trying out a WordPress plugin to automatically update my Twitter account whenever I post here. It will hopefully save me having to remember to do it manually each time.
The plugin is called Twitter Tools
Here goes…
Another event, another tourist attraction
I went to another conference-type-event on Wednesday. This time it was the annual promotional event for Cornwall College Business, held at Pendennis Castle in Falmouth. Another fantastic venue for an event, shame it was such horrible weather. The theme of this year’s event was basically courses that the college are running - we had a presentation from a business that had benefited from training and then a series of seminars on specific courses.
The three courses that I chose to hear about were:
- Growing your business
- Finance
- Management skills
Funnily enough they were all run by the same tutor, so by the end of the afternoon I felt like I was stalking him. However, I was really pleased that I had chosen those sessions as he was excellent - managed to make potentially dry subjects very entertaining, which bodes well for the courses themselves.
Now, it’s true what they say about people buying people. Our previous experience of Cornwall College Business has been a bit frustrating as last year we selected a few courses that we might be interested in, but could we get any actual information out of the college (like when they started etc.)? Could we ‘eck! But, having seen one of the tutors in action I suddenly feel a lot more confident in the college and am actually quite keen to sign up for something (though I am still in recovery from the last management course). I’m torn between ‘growing your business’ and ‘finance’. Would I be mad to sign up for something else so soon?
Coping with busy workloads
Part of my renewed motivation for learning new stuff is reading other blogs to see what others are up to and what I can learn from it. Here’s a blog post that I can certainly learn from: How do you handle busy workloads?. We’re busier than we’ve ever been at the moment and it can be a struggle (not to mention stressful) to keep on top of everything.
James is right that the temptation is to do a bit of this and a bit of that to try to keep everyone happy, but this can result in very little of anything getting done. James’s advice is to:
DO ONE THING AT A TIME, DO IT WELL, DO IT TO COMPLETION AND MOVE ON TO THE NEXT THING!
I couldn’t agree more. It’s something that I find it difficult to have the discipline to do but when I have managed it then I’ve had fantastic results. The trick is to turn everything else off (yes, Emily, even your email) and clear your desk so that you only have what you need for that one task/project in front of you - in other words no distractions. If it’s something that needs complete concentration then try putting the answer phone on as well, you can always catch up on any important messages when you’re done. You then work at that one thing solidly until it’s done. The magic is that once you are completely concentrating on that one thing you can get into your zone and achieve great results.
Tomorrow is the start of a new week and I know that there are going to be many things competing for my attention. I really must try to follow this advice. Great article James!
Continuing professional development … but what?
Following the web conference yesterday, I’m all fired up for working on my continuing professional development. But there’s so much that I could cover, what should I concentrate on? Should I concentrate on the business side of things and do some reading up on how to improve the business, or should I focus on my web design skills? My problem is that I want to do everything all at once. How do I get the right balance between the two main areas of what I do?
Here are a couple of options:
- I could make a list of everything I want to learn and prioritise it, concentrating on one thing at a time
- I could alternate between the two - read a book on web design, followed by a book on business, followed by web design etc.
One thing that I know is that I find it very difficult to stay focused on one thing for very long - not because of a lack of interest, but because there are always other things fighting for my attention. I might try the second approach and see if I can keep some kind of log of what I learn so that I don’t lose track because of too much chopping and changing. Do you think I can manage an hour of reading a day? I can but try. Hopefully I’ll start having a few things to review on here again.
How do I keep space for blogging?
I don’t even want to look at when my last blog post was. What I’m finding is that as soon as work reaches a certain level of busy-ness then I completely lose the inspiration to blog. It’s a space thing - space as in time to blog, but also mental space to think about what I want to write about. I then end up feeling guilty about not blogging which isn’t good for stress levels.
So, how can I keep on top of work (of course it’s great to be so busy, I’m not complaining!) but also leave myself the space for blogging?
Getting away from work occasionally helps. I went to a fab web conference in my part of the world yesterday and have come back feeling inspired to do all sorts of things. Need to keep hold of that inspiration and not let day-to-day stuff drain it!
How can I make sure that I don’t neglect my blog so much in future? Answers on a postcard please…
Knowing when to stop
I actually stopped work at 6 today. Problem is I’ve got so used to working all the time that I’m not sure what to do with myself. I know I’d like to chill out but seem to have forgotten how. Silly Emily.
Live to work / work to live
My work/life balance seems to be non-existent this week. Early mornings and late nights are what I seem to be up to. Just forcing myself to stop work for the day. It’s not good to work this late, especially when I was up at 6.30, but I did get one of those jobs done that kept getting pushed to the bottom of the list - so very satisfying. I’m hoping that leaves me with a clear day tomorrow to tackle some other important tasks.
Actually, I’m not usually one for working into the evening. Early mornings, yes, but come 5.30 I’m usually done for the day. I’m just much more of a morning person. But sometimes a bit of extra effort can help a lot - as long as it’s only occasionally. Generally I do like to chill out a bit more in the evenings, keep the stress levels down and all that. We just see to be so busy at the moment (and jolly pleased I am about it).
Some time to myself
I found myself getting up at 8.30 this morning thinking that it was going to be 11ish. I guess I haven’t adapted to the lighter mornings yet. It was good to have a head-start on the day. I spent the morning preparing the first draft of the presentation I have to do for my management course. I’m meeting up with my group tomorrow morning to have a run through. It feels good to have got to this stage as it’s been feeling like it’s been hanging over me for the last couple of weeks.
So, having done that I’m treating myself to some time to myself this afternoon. After a full-on week it actually feels odd to not have to be urgently doing anything. I think I’m going to do some work on goal setting, so I guess strictly speaking I will be working but it feels like it doesn’t count if it’s something that I actually want to do. Will intersperse with some mindless reading as well to make sure that I don’t overdo it. Tonight we’re off to my mother-in-law’s for dinner, so that will be a nice treat. Think we’re supposed to be round there for 5pm, so that will force me to stop doing anything remotely worky nice and early.
Stressy stress stress
I think this last week must go down as one of the most stressful I’ve had this year so far. We’ve had one of our bigger projects come to a head this week and I’ve been slogging away at getting it done. Full marks to the client for thorough testing but I did feel at times like I was being bombarded with questions. It didn’t help that we also had a number of meetings to go to, so I was run ragged going to a meeting and then rushing back to keep on top of the project work. Not to mention lots of previously quiet clients suddenly popping up with requests (it’s like they knew I was having a particularly busy week or something).
It goes to show that I still haven’t mastered stress relief. I felt like a gibbering wreck for most of the week. Thank goodness I’ve got my partner to chivvy me along and take up the slack as far as our other projects go, not to mention cook and do the washing up. Where would I be without him? I hope I can return the favour sometime when he has a busy week.
Lots of business planning has arisen from my experiences this week. This particular project ran over time considerably (to the point that I’m scared to look at the timesheet), which means that we will have ended up working for a very low hourly rate - not good at all. We’re reviewing how we approach these types of projects (ecommerce) to put a much more solid system in place. So, something positive will come out of the experience.
Am I a control freak?
For most of last week I was suffering with a nasty cold. I spent most of the time curled up with my duvet and laptop trying to keep on top of work. Probably should have given myself a break but if there’s work to do there’s work to do.
Now, I’m pretty much better but have been feeling a bit unsettled this weekend, kind of verging on the stressed-out. I think it’s because I feel like I’m not on top of things. There’s loads to do as always but I feel like I’m going to have to do some back-tracking to make sure that we’re where we should be with everything and nothing important has been forgotten.
Does that make me too much of a control freak, feeling like I need to be on top of things all the time? Maybe it means that I’m not trusting our project-tracking systems enough, so maybe I need to look at them and make sure that we have adequate systems in place so that if my brain stops functioning for a while I don’t need to stress out.
