Every now and then I try categorising my tasks as:

• Urgent & Important
• Urgent & Not Important
• Not Urgent But Important
• Not Urgent & Not Imporant

but end up with everything being ‘Urgent & Imporant’ or ‘Not Urgent But Important’. I guess everything seems important to me! Is that because I only do important things (probably not) or just that I have difficulty seeing anything as not important?

For example:

• making that update to a client’s website is obviously important and needs to be done as soon as possible (though isn’t necessarily urgent)
• however putting an invoice I’ve just paid through our bookkeeping software can wait indefinitely, but is still important – after all we need to keep our accounts up-to-date so we know where are financially

Both of those I would put in the ‘Not Urgent But Important’ box, but it’s clear which one needs to get done first. Problem is I end up with 50+ tasks in the ‘Not Urgent But Important’ box and then I start struggling with how categorising them in that way helps me. Oh dear, time for some time management angst…

Actually, the important thing is that I know what needs doing. I’ve got a system that I trust to record all my tasks, and, yes there’s a lot of them, but they’re not going to get forgotten. I just need to review the list regularly and make sure that the most important things get done first.

Think I need to find a different recording…

What I discovered this morning is that a load of what was in there has been duplicated and a load of other stuff has gone missing (and not because they’re tasks we’ve completed). Eek! I’m trying to figure out if it’s something I’ve done but there’s so much wrong that I can’t see how I could have accidentally done it without noticing. Or is it because I was using some filtering to inspect different parts of the list? But filtering a spreadsheet shouldn’t mess with the data should it?

What’s going on??

I’ve spent the last hour removing duplicate entries and brainstorming anything that should be on there … but the whole point of it is that I shouldn’t have to remember everything so I’m sure there will be things I’ve missed. Might have to dig out last week’s backup, but of course that will only give me what was included a week ago, a lot of which we would have done anyway. Am also going through emails from clients to make sure I’m not missing anything there.

What a nuisance!

The last year has been an interesting one. We moved into our office last June and our finances instantly took a turn for the worse. But we didn’t let that stop us. We tightened our belts and did some serious financial planning to make sure that we started bringing in enough money to cover costs and our living expenses. As a result I feel much more in control of our finances and have got a detailed budget for the different areas of running the business. And I’m pleased to say that business has picked up again and our finances are looking healthier than they have done for quite a while.

The last few months we’ve had a lot of work on, so we’ve mostly been keeping our heads down and working at keeping on top of our workload, but this week has sparked off a new phase of business planning. Wednesday turned into an “Emily you MUST do some business planning” day. First thing was my weekly business breakfast at Tregenna Castle, St Ives where we were given inspirational talk on branding by Joy of Approach (thanks Joy!). We (that is myself and my partner) then went off for a meeting with a business mentor – this was a guy we’d met a couple of times before but hadn’t seen for a loooong time. It was great to catch up with him and as always he was overflowing with ideas on how we can develop our business.

The result of this is that we’ve agreed to set aside a half day each week to concentrate on business planning and implementing the ideas – with the focus on taking action. It’s not that we haven’t been thinking about business planning for the last six months, but we do tend to get caught up in working for the business rather than developing the business. So, now we’re looking at things with renewed vigour. Let’s see what we can achieve!

But … the French decided to strike on exactly the day we were to fly out so our flight was cancelled! As there are only two flights a week from Newquay there wasn’t an awful lot we could do about it. So there went our Spanish holiday.

However, we decided to make the most of it. We live in Cornwall after all which is the perfect place to have a holiday anyway. And we’ve had some glorious weather. So we’ve been real tourists for the last few days – went for a wander round Newlyn and had an icecream from Jelberts; went for a walk along the coast to Botallack and had dinner at the Queens Arms (yum); and had a day out shopping in Truro, with lunch at good old Fodders.

Not quite what we had planned but a really chilled out few days. Back to work with a vengeance on Monday!

It’s a bit disappointing because I’d been sticking to it so well and I missed out on that feeling of satisfaction of having kept to it to the end. However, I’m still feeling very positive about the whole thing. I exceeded the goal I had set myself (certain number of new prospects) and could really tell that my activities were having a positive effect. Definitely worth doing.

So, I’m planning another 28 days to start in a couple of weeks time. I’m going to keep the activities that were obviously working and try out a few new things. Now that I’ve used the book a few times I’ve got to the point where I’m adapting it to suit how I work. I’m going to use my own tracking sheet as I wasn’t finding the book’s way of doing it to really worked for me – wasn’t giving me an idea of how much of the week’s program I’d completed. I’m also going to skip the daily pep talk. I can see what the author intends with that but I think that after having read it a few times it’s losing its impact.

Looking forward to making a start on the next 28 days!

Actually, from the point of view of the caller it was probably a cold call but at my end it was much warmer. Why? Because I’d already heard of the company and at one point had considered buying from them but for some reason never got round to it. He also phoned at exactly the right moment as I was needing to order some stationery (he was phoning from an office supplies company). In fact at that exact moment I had a slip of paper on my desk in front of me saying ‘buy printer cartridges’. So, he was onto a winner wasn’t he? I knew the company, I had wanted to use them and I had a need for their products.

So I ordered a couple of things on the spot. Not a massive order but we generally don’t need much stuff. The order promptly arrived the next day along with a packet of chocolate biscuits – now they know the way to a girl’s heart don’t they? And that’s really the point of this blog post. It’s the special touches like that that really make a difference. I’d already had a good experience through placing the order but I’m really going to remember them now aren’t I? And I found myself talking about it at my business breakfast on Tuesday – not because I consciously thought ‘let’s plug my new stationery supplier’ but because I wanted to tell everybody about the biscuits.

In case you happen to be in Cornwall, the company I’m talking about is Office Smart. I’ve only placed the one order so far but it was an excellent first impression. Now, I wonder if they can help us with our filing cabinet problem…

Last night I was trying to think of a subject for a blog post for our web design blog. As part of my 28-day marketing plan I’m writing at least one blog post each week – the last couple of weeks I’ve done a two-parter on how to make the most of your website. So, yesterday being the start of a new week I wanted to start planning this week’s post. But could I think of anything? Nope, not a sausage.

And then while I was waking up this morning an idea came to me. So much so that it stuck in my head and I had to get up and write it down. So, since 6.30 this morning I’ve been sat with my laptop drafting this week’s blog post. A productive start to the day but I would have liked another 30 minutes of snoozing. Now all I need to do is proofread and add it to the site – might even manage that later on today.