Running off to join a circus
I’m thinking of running off and joining a circus. What do you think? I’ve been doing so much juggling this week that I’m sure I’d make an excellent clown. Seriously though, it’s one of the skills you need to run a business isn’t it … juggling that is? There’s never just one thing to do and it’s impossible to ever sit down and just work solidly on something because there are always interruptions. It’s just one of those things when you run a business.
The trick I guess is to keep all those balls up in the air without getting phased and dropping any of them. Can I claim to be able to do that? Not always entirely successfully. Especially towards the end of the day when I’m just trying to tie things up for the day but people keep popping up with more things for me to do/sort out. But on the whole I do think I’m pretty good at it. I can keep quite a lot of information in my head at one time so that if I get an enquiry about something I have a pretty good idea of where we are with it. I’ve also been developing various ways of dealing with things – spreadsheets for tracking projects etc. and something as simple as making a list if the ‘urgent’ tasks seem to be mounting up and I feel myself loosing my cool a bit.
Has anyone else got any good techniques for coping with multiple tasks under pressure?
A more positive start to the year
When I blogged yesterday I think I was feeling a bit disparaged by what I’d discovered in our finances. It’s certainly not all bad but let’s say there’s definitely room for improvement. I often get frustrated by the feeling that we’re not moving forward – I work incredibly hard but the business can feel like it’s just standing still.
However, later on after a bit more thought (and a small glass of whisky which may have helped) my fighting spirit kicked in and I decided that 2009 is going to be the year that we turn things around. So there! I know what I want to achieve and have the beginnings of how I’m going to achieve it, so it’s now just a case of knuckling down and doing it.
I think my motto for the next few months will have to be “don’t be afraid of a bit of hard work”. Is it possible for me to work harder than I was already doing? Let’s see, shall we?
New year, new me?
I suspect not. Still the same Emily, still dreaming of running a successful business and having a comfortable lifestyle. After a month of no blogging I’m back determined to post regularly – I’m not going to promise every day but at least a couple of times a week.
We’ve actually been having quite a long break over the Christmas period. We stopped work on the 19th December and are opening for business again on the 5th January. And, miraculously, I’ve mostly managed to keep away from work. Hopefully this will mean that I’ll have lots of energy for the coming weeks.
Over the last couple of days I’ve been easing myself back into a work frame of mind by updating our accounts and reviewing our incomings and outgoings for this financial year. I’ve found some good things and some not so good things. We’re getting to the point where we really need to start taking more money out of the business, but unfortunately things aren’t looking too brilliant on that front. So, the next few months are going to be all about turning things around and seriously improving our turnover. Could be interesting…
Need more time!
Another week whizzed by. Absolutely chocka-block with work at the moment. If I had more time I’d be reading up on time management … and a bit of stress management thrown in. I’m working really hard at planning each day and week to keep on top of everything. I think it’s working to a certain extent, the job list is long but I don’t think it’s getting any longer, which must be a good sign.
The weekend is going to be spent catching up on coursework. Got the next instalment of my management course on Tuesday so need to do some stuff for that. Hope I’ll also have time to do a bit of actual management of our business – see what an impact our busyness is having, apart from making me work flat-out. Oh yes, and mustn’t forget to fit in a bit of relaxation.
Very satisfying day
For once I’m not going to complain about not having a productive day or not getting through as much as I’d wanted. Today was a good day! I planned out my day carefully, choosing A, B and C tasks for the day (A being essential, B desirable and C nice to get done) and worked through them. I think this is the first time that this has ever happened but I got through everything on the list and even made a start on some things I had earmarked for tomorrow. How satisfying is that?
I think the secret was that I’d estimated how long each task would take and planned 4 hours of billable work. I must be getting better at this because for once things took less than I’d estimated rather than more. So, even with interruptions I still managed to get through everything. I’ll have more days like that please!
Brilliant mind mapping tool
I made a real find yesterday morning and haven’t been able to stop playing with it since. It’s free mind mapping software. We were talking about mind mapping on the course on Tuesday and that inspired me to have a go, but not being that great with pen and paper (have lost the ability to write because I use the computer too much) I thought I’d see if there is a way of doing it on the computer. An lo and behold there is!
It’s a really quick download (just 8MB) and took literally seconds to install, so very lightweight. It basically works just like doing a mindmap on paper – you start with a central point and then work out, branching in whichever direction you want. If your map starts getting a bit on the big side (which my first one did) you can open and close the various ‘nodes’ (the bits branching off) so you can see everything or just the parent node. It’s fab. What I particularly liked about it was that I wasn’t limited to what would fit on a sheet of paper – if I’d tried to do my mind map on paper I would soon have run out of room, but this just lets you keep going. You can export in various formats (PDF, JPEG etc.) so that you can then use the resulting map in other documents.
So, having installed it for the first time yesterday morning I did a mind map of our business (that was a bigun), a mind map of what I needed to do that day (which I then kept up on the screen and ticked things off as I did them, lovely 
), and a couple of mind maps to work out the structure of client websites, one of which we PDFed and sent to the client to have a look at. Talk about being instantly useful!
Not the most productive day
Despite all my good intentions I didn’t have such a productive day as I hoped yesterday. I went to Penzance as planned, did the banking and picked up a few bits and pieces. Then back to the office for work. The morning went quite well, concentrated on getting the things done that definitely needed doing that day and also some of the quicker jobs to get them ticked off.
Then after lunch I decided to have a lie down for half an hour … 2 hours later a I woke up. Ooops. There went the best part of the afternoon. I guess it goes to show how tired I was but it wasn’t great for productivity. Means I’m going to have to work extra hard today to get through everything. I’m hoping to take tomorrow off but it’s not looking too likely at the moment.
Another full-on day
I survived another full-on day on the management course. 9-5 with very little let-up. Yesterday’s session was on problem solving and decision making. We went through some decision making models, which was interesting because I’d done some of that on another business course I did last year but most of the models we covered were different – actually seemed a lot more simplistic even though this course is supposed to be a higher level…
We’ve got an assignment to do for this module, which will count towards one of the qualifications. We have to take a problem we’re facing in our business, analyse it, work it through, choose the best solution and write an action plan for implementing it. I’m quite looking forward to tackling this one – hopefully it will be something that I can practically apply so will directly benefit the business.
So, with the course over and done with I can start bashing through some work again. Am heading into Penzance in a moment to do the banking and stock up on some office supplies then I’ll be chaining myself to my desk for the rest of the day.
Staying positive
I find myself starting this week with some trepidation. It just feels like there’s so much to get through and with me being out at my course all day tomorrow I’m not sure how I’m going to manage it. Got to stay positive and just work through it all as efficiently as I can.
I managed to polish off my course homework yesterday but not without a great deal of grumbling. I don’t know, it just seems to be asking an awful lot – it’s not that it’s particularly difficult, it’s just that there’s so much of it! I wish the course description had been clearer about what was involved. Oops, there I go grumbling again.
So, positive attitude! I’ve already planned out my day so it’s just a case of knuckling down and getting the work done. I’m sure once I get started I’ll be ticking the various jobs off in no time.
Definitely not in my comfort zone
Well that was quite a week. I’m pleased to say that the presentation went smoothly and we’ve already had a number of enquiries as a result of it so it’s really looking like it was worthwhile. It did rather dominate the week though. I spent the first part of the week frantically preparing for it and then the second part recovering from it. Well that’s what it felt like anyway. Friday was actually busy in its own right – one meeting, a hands-on session helping a do-it-yourselfer out with their website, and trying to catch up on the stuff that had been let slip because of the talk.
Now I’m not sure what I need most …. some time off to recharge my batteries or just some solid days of working so I can feel a bit more on top of things. Maybe a few days of solid work followed by some time off will do the trick. Not that I’m going to get either! Meetings, courses and a massive workload is what we’ve got waiting for us. Tuesday I’ve got the second session of my management course so today I really must get the great pile of homework polished off for that. Could really do without it! When I booked up the course a few months ago I had no idea we’d be so busy now. I really must concentrate on the benefits of it and stay positive.
