How do you divide your work time?
How does everyone divide their time between working directly on client stuff and business development? It’s a constant battle for me. If we’re really busy then the business gets pushed to one side and all my focus goes on client projects. But it’s important to work on the business too, isn’t it? Need to make sure that our own site is kept up-to-date (even more important now that we’ve launced the redesign!), that we’re actively working on attracting new clients, and that we keep on top of the endless admin.
I guess it all comes down to time management in the end. Organising yourself so that you know that you are keeping up with the important stuff. It’s not easy though. And stupidly I can feel guilty if I’m working on our site as if it’s not ‘real work’ and I should be doing something else. That’s silly isn’t it?
Fear and networking in Cornwall
We had a less than satisfactory networking experience last night. We went to a seminar/networking event run by one of our local business networks. These events are always pretty good with the seminar bit being really worth going to so we had decided to both attend. Big mistake. We’ve noticed it before but keep trying again - we’re just no good at networking if we go to an event together. We always end up talking ourselves out of it and leaving early.
As usual the speakers were excellent and we got a lot out of that, but as soon as it ended we went all unsure of ourselves and couldn’t bring ourselves to go and talk to anyone else. Pathetic isn’t it? I’d been all geared up to meet new people, but there is something about being with my partner that holds me back. On the way home we did the usual disection and came to the conclusion that I should go to stuff on my own - being on my own makes me much braver and I get a lot more out of it.
So a bit of a knock to our confidence, but I’m not letting it completely do away with what confidence I’ve gained over the last few weeks. I just have to go to more stuff and build on my networking skills. I know I can do it, it’s just unfortunately something that I have to do without my partner.
Feel the Fear and Do It Anyway
In theory this should have been just the book for me at the moment, with my goal to become more confident. There is undoubtedly a lot of good stuff in there and some techniques that I’ve read elsewhere and taken onboard.
However, for some reason I just couldn’t enjoy reading it. Over the last few years I’ve become much more open to ‘personal development’ but in my mind there is a distinction between personal development and self-help. I would say that this book definitely falls into the category of self-help. It put me off because it seemed to be for someone with very low self esteem who needed help in all aspects of their life, rather than for a reasonably confident businesswoman who needs a bit of help with confidence in certain situations (which is how I see myself). Maybe I need to open my mind a bit more and not cringe away from ’self-help’.
If you really do feel that you have a self-esteem/confidence problem then you may well find this helps you, but if you’re looking for something to help you feel more confident at meeting new people when networking then I would look elsewhere.
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Still working on being brilliant
I’ve just completed the fourth week of my 90 days of brilliance plan and I’m still hanging in there. I started off by preparing very detailed weekly plans and sticking to them very closely, but that has tailed off somewhat. Instead I’m now setting overall goals for each week, giving myself much more flexibility day-to-day. I’m feeling pretty good after four weeks:
- We’ve launched our new website and are actively working on expanding it
- I’m feeling much more confident about networking and as a result more enthusiastic about going to stuff
- I’ve prepared a 28-day marketing programme and started it (today in fact)
- We’ve defined our vision for 5-years and are actively working towards it
- I’m reading on average one book a week
- I’m signed up for an SQL course which will be starting in a few weeks
It’s all good stuff. Tomorrow will mark the end of the first 30-day plan so it will be time to sketch out what I want to achieve in the next 30 days.
The Confidence Plan
I was immediately absorbed by it and made the mistake of starting it without a pen and paper to hand and then found myself champing at the bit to start writing my thoughts down. Now that’s a sign of a good book! I was impressed with how it started with laying the groundworks - encouraging you to start taking the smallest actions as taking action in itself can help build your confidence. The chapter on increasing your energy was also an eye-opener. The idea of dealing with the energy drains in your life - things that might seem insignificant but that drain a little bit of energy every time you notice them (like my leaving things piled up on the sofa - if I just tidied them away I’d feel so much better). Brilliant!
To be honest quite a bit of it is stuff that I’ve read elsewhere but in a ‘getting things done’ or ‘improving your effectiveness’ kind of way. Applying it to building my confidence was an interesting take. And of course the more times you read something the more it reinforces it in your mind. If you feel like you could do with working on your confidence I would highly recommend reading this book.
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My second week of brilliance
I’m at the end of the second week of my 90 days of brilliance. The highlight of my week was joining the A1 Business Forums and I already feel like I’m settling in there. I’ve stuck to my plan pretty well - I’m not always doing everything on the day that I’d planned to do it but everything on the list seems to be getting ticked off. One of my tasks for today is to plan the next 7 days. Must remember not to cram too much into each day.
The most ‘non brilliant’ thing this week is continuing problems with the bloomin’ car. I’m hoping to try a speed networking event next Friday, so fingers crossed that we’ve managed to get it fixed in time.
Confident Networking for Career Success and Satisfaction
The book easily passed the ‘easy to read’ test - it grabbed me straight away and kept me interested throughout. I liked the way that it didn’t jump straight in with the ‘you need to talk to as many people you don’t know as you can’ kind of stuff that usually goes hand in hand with networking advice. It acknowledges that not everybody is comfortable in networking situations and offers practical advice for how you can feel less daunted by it. I was also pleased that the authors recognised the value of online networking and offered some advice specifically about that (though best to ignore their description of ‘forums commonly known as blogging’).
What I wasn’t so satisfied with is that I didn’t feel like I came away from the book with a solid plan of action. I could go back through it and work through the different pieces of advice to slowly increase my confidence and skills, but the book doesn’t offer a particularly structured approach to this. Maybe I’m wanting to have my hand held a bit too much, but I do like it when practical books set you particular goals to achieve.
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Start of another 90 days of brilliance
One of my favourite ’sorting your life out’ books is How to Be Brilliant by Michael Heppell. I’ve mentioned it before and I’ll probably mention it again. The book helps you plan out ‘90 days of brilliance’ to help you achieve or work towards achieving your goals. It’s a brilliant motivator.
Last week I came to the end of a 90-day period, which started well but kind of petered out into unbrilliance - though I did manage to get through my planned reading list, so it wasn’t a complete wash-out. So, I’ve spent the weekend working my goals and planning my next 90 days. This time I will stick to it! Helping me along is my good friend Sparkatrician, who is going to be my ‘brilliance buddy’. He’s also starting out on a 90-day plan so we will egg each other on and generally provide support. Have got our first phone call booked in for tomorrow night.
It’s been quite an intense weekend doing the prep, but I now have 90-, 30- and 7-day plans printed out and in my ‘brilliance folder’. Despite intending to limit my goals to a manageable amount, there’s quite a lot on there. Still, got to aim high! First step will be to get up at 6am tomorrow and do yoga.
Taking my own advice
After feeling a decided lack of oomph when I got up this morning I decided to take my own advice and did Tip 10 from my 10 tips for staying motivated - I gave myself a break. I decided that if I got through as much as I could before lunch time that I could take the afternoon off. That in itself was a great source of motivation and I actually got quite a bit done. Then when I stopped for lunch I turned my pc off and enjoyed a work-free afternoon. What did I do with it? Slept mostly, then watched a DVD and did some reading. Lovely, could get used to that! Of course I won’t though. Tomorrow it will be back to work and hopefully feeling a lot more with-it.
New article: motivation for home-workers
Another article is now in place: 10 tips for how to stay motivated when working from home. This is a particularly relevant one for me today as I haven’t been feeling brilliantly motivated. Will start tomorrow afresh having reminded myself of the techniques that work for me.
Is there anything that you do differently? A brilliant tip that could make all the difference. Leave a comment below, I’d be delighted to hear from you.
