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Three Things I Do When In A Time Crunch

Three Things I Do When In A Time Crunch

by | Feb 11, 2025 | Mindset, Uncategorized

 “You can’t calm the storm, so stop trying. What you can do is calm yourself. The storm will pass.”
~ Timber Hawkeye

 

I want to share with you three things I do when I have more things to do than time available to do them in.

I know that in crunch times, it’s all too easy to fall into a state of overwhelm but I learned long ago that overwhelm is a choice and so staying out of overwhelm is also, therefore, a choice. Here’s what I do instead.

 

I reject overwhelm

I’ve written about overwhelm as it effects business owners several times over the years and I always talk about my belief that overwhelm is a choice.

If you think about it, it makes sense. If it weren’t a choice, how is it that some people can feel overwhelmed having far less to do than other people who don’t feel overwhelmed with far more to do.

It’s a bit like rain, one person can look out of the window see rain and feel down, whilst another person (me!) can look out of the window, see rain and feel uplifted. It all depends on how we think about rain (or overwhelm!) I learned many years ago that if I succumb to feelings of overwhelm, they paralyzed me and make it certain that I will in fact get far less done than if I choose to think about things differently.

So rather than collapse into thoughts of “this is impossible, I’ll never get everything done!!” instead, I get strategic and practical and I breakdown my list into priorities and start to take focused and sustained action.

 

I manage my energy

When feelings of overwhelm and stress are circling, I know that the easy route is to try and bury those feelings in food, netflix and doom scrolling. Believe me when I tell you that I am in no way perfect and have taken the easy route more times than I care to mention. It’s precisely because I’ve been down that road and know where it takes me, that when push really comes to shove I know that I need to do everything I can to protect my mindset and my energy. Something neither of those easy options do.

So instead of checking my phone first thing in the morning, listening to the news while I make breakfast, and then rushing around trying to do a million things (all while feeling heartbroken at the state of the world), I actually seriously slow the f*ck down.

The busier I am the more likely it is that I’ll take the time to write in my gratitude journal first thing, then when I get to my office, I’ll burn some incense, savour my cup of coffee and listen to calming music, usually from either Satnam Kaur or Beautiful Chorus before I even think about work.

The impact this has on my ability to stay calm, centered and focused is huge. Only then will I allow myself to tackle my workload.

 

I bend time

Years ago when working with my first Business Coach, I was working on a email course for my audience and in a session, when my coach asked me why I hadn’t done all of my homework, I complained that the lessons for my email course were taking forever to create. I was at that point taking nearly a whole week to create each lesson’s email.

My coach, who was fond of giving me meaty challenges, invited me to create the next week’s lesson in just 90 minutes. As you might imagine, I laughed in response. “not possible” I argued but he persisted. He told me to put aside 90 minutes the following day and use my phone to set a timer, the goal was to complete the email lesson before the 90 minute timer went off. I agreed to try but I couldn’t help feeling like he was setting me up to fail.

The next morning, I did as he told me and something miraculous happened. I did it. I finished the lesson in 90 minutes. I was amazed, it felt like magic and I haven’t looked back since.

I later learned that this is a tool called time-blocking and I’ve been a convert ever since.

My time-blocking game has advanced over the decade since that first experience with it and I now follow the 52/17 rule.

This means using a timer, I spend 52 minutes working on a specific task followed by a 17 minute break.

When I am working I am 100% focused on the task at hand and if I feel tempted to do something else, like check my email or scroll on social media, I only need to look up at my timer and know that soon I’ll have a 17 minute break in which I can do anything I want.

When I’m lucky enough to get a whole day to work on things I’ll plan out my whole day like this using a time calculator. It’s a full day but with plenty of breaks.

And there you have it, 3 things I do to stop me falling apart when I have more work than I can possibly handle! Is there anything you would add to this list? Or anything on this list you would love to try, hot reply and let me know.

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Once a week, in the form of an e-letter, I share the best of what I know about building a business with integrity for conscious business owners.

The intention behind these letters is to be a voice for integrity within your (undoubtedly) cluttered inbox. To be the one email you can count on to contain strategic and soulful advice for building a business without selling your soul.

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Is This Stopping You From Taking Action?

Is This Stopping You From Taking Action?

by | Oct 13, 2024 | Mindset, Uncategorized

“Being detached allows us to stay balanced and free from the anxieties that arise from success or failure.”
~ Pundarika Vidyanidhi Das

 

I want to talk to you about something that comes up in my client calls all the time. The struggle to take action on important business activities. In today’s letter, I’d like to share one reason that I think that might be.

Take a moment now to bring to mind something that you want to do in your business but that, for whatever reason, you struggle to take action on.

It could be getting your content marketing up and running, launching a new product or service, reaching out to someone who you know could be a great collaborator or any other thing that you know will move your business forward, but, for whatever reason, you’re stalling on.

Now ask yourself this?

 

What outcome are you attached to?

Is it that the content you write is well received and impactful? Is that your launch goes really well and you get a certain number of sign-ups? Is it that the person you reach out responds enthusiastically?

Now take that outcome and consider the fear behind it.

Is it that people won’t like your content or that they’ll criticize it? Is it that no one will buy your new offering and it will look like you don’t know what you’re doing? Is it that you won’t get a response from the person you reach out to and worse still, they’ll be annoyed that you did?

Can you relate? Do you have these sorts of thoughts running through your head? Perhaps you’re conscious of them or maybe this is the first time you’re giving them attention.

The key is that many of us become attached to a certain outcome and the fear of not getting the outcome we desire then gets in the way of taking action.

I get it, I used to do this all the time and I can still fall into this same trap but I want to share something that really helped me.

Years ago, when Joan and I left our home in Mexico (where we’d been housesitting for a year) and moved to Valencia, Spain, we were both excitedly working on our businesses. Joan had, since meeting me, really got into personal growth and was keen to start his own coaching business.

In typical Joan style, he dived right in and decided to run an in-person workshop on stress. He found a venue, found a partner to help him promote it and set a date. On the morning of his workshop, I couldn’t believe how calm he was. “Aren’t you worried that nobody will show up?” I asked him. Well aware that if it were my workshop, that would be my greatest fear.

“Not at all” he replied and went on to explain that his only goal was to become a person who had run a workshop on stress in Valencia. Essentially, to have gone through the process of finding a venue, getting all the equipment, marketing the event, creating his slides, delivering the workshop and gaining all the knowledge that doing so would bring. “I’ll do the workshop even if nobody shows up.” he said with a smile.

I’m not going to lie, I was stunned by this and being who I am, I wanted to understand how he could be so calm, when I might be a nervous wreck. The more I thought about it, the more I realised that my stress in similar situations came from my attachment to a certain outcome. I realised that whenever I wanted to try something new in my business, I wanted to be sure that I would succeed and my fear of failure was often enough to stop me even trying.

Since then (that was 9 years ago!), I’ve largely got over this habit of getting attached to outcome. I’m much better at spotting the desire for success and feeling the fear of failure and going for it anyway. Knowing that who I will be on the other side of just doing the thing will give me more knowledge, confidence and true feeling of accomplishment (regardless of the results).

When we start to do things for the sake of doing them, rather than as a means to an end, we get to enjoy them a whole lot more.

Let’s go back to my earlier examples.

What if, instead of attaching to the outcome of people like our content, we created content because we enjoyed the process of creating? What if, Instead of worrying about what people might say, we focused on expressing our ideas and point of view through content, knowing that over time our content marketing skills would improve?

What if, instead of obsessing over how many people might sign up to our new thing or not, we focused on the skills we’ll deepen as we lean into launching and selling our gifts. One of the things I always tell myself when I’m launching is that nobody knows if it fails. I don’t have to announce that I didn’t get any sign ups and my efforts will likely have got some people ready to buy next time.

What if, instead of not reaching out to people for fear of rejection, we told ourselves that rejection is an inevitable part of the journey. Some of the greatest success stories in life have come about after countless rejections. I’m currently starting the Harry Potter series with my son and so it feels apt to share how the first Harry Potter book was rejected by 12 different publishers before an obscure literary agent took it on.

The truth is, if we adopt an attitude of play, experimentation and exploration in our work, we enjoy it a whole lot more and actually achieve success all the much faster.

Another truth is that while we’re worried about what other people will think, they’re not actually watching us and waiting for us to trip or fail because they are too busy worrying about their own potential missteps.

And let’s just say for argument’s sake, that we do fail spectacularly. What’s the worst that can happen? If you publish that piece and no one comments or someone writes something rude? In a few days you’ll have forgotten all about it — trust me I’ve been there. Or if you try and launch a new offer and no one buys, who is even going to notice?

The worst that can happen in my opinion letting our hopes and fears about what might happen stop us from even trying. So please, ditch your attachment to outcome and consider what might be possible, if you just did the thing for the sake of doing the thing.

Care to share with me the one thing you’ve been procrastinating about moving forward with? I’d love to know so feel free to hit reply and let me know.

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Once a week, in the form of an e-letter, I share the best of what I know about building a business with integrity for conscious business owners.

The intention behind these letters is to be a voice for integrity within your (undoubtedly) cluttered inbox. To be the one email you can count on to contain strategic and soulful advice for building a business without selling your soul.

If you want to receive the Soulful Strategies Weekly, simply share with me your name and email address below and you’ll start recieving emails right away.

Five Things To Include In Your Next Launch

Five Things To Include In Your Next Launch

by | Oct 9, 2024 | Selling, Uncategorized

“The future depends on what you do today.”
~ Mahatma Gandhi

I want to share with you my 5 of my favourite launch activities, just in case you are planning a Fall/Autumn launch.

With launch season (as I call it) coming up, now is the time to be thinking about our launch plans if we are thinking of launching something in September or October. It can be tempting to leave it until the other side of summer but getting into planning mode now will make for much better launch results.

I teach a whole course on launching, which includes several activities I recommend you take when launching a new product or service but in this piece, I’m simply going to share with you my top 5 activities you can include in any launch to make it more successful.

Let’s dive in.

1. Conduct audience research

This one sometimes gets a few groans. Many people resist doing the research before getting too deep into launch mode because they either see it as a waste of time (because they believe they already know what people think) or they worry that the people will tell them things that they don’t want to act on.

The reality is that audience research is foundational to the success of any new offering. Conducting audience research in the form of calls early on in the launch process (aka the pre-launch phase), is a great way to do the following:

  • Test your idea to see if it’s really what people need and want. They might need something and not necessarily want it and therefore won’t pay for it.
  • Get the exact language your audience is using to describe their struggle or challenge. This is great for copy and sales pages.
  • Let your audience know what you are creating before you even begin asking for the sale.
  • Let’s your audience know you care about what they think and value their input into your creative process. This is great for building stronger relationships.

Check out the bottom of this piece for an example of how to invite people into research calls.

2. Use takeover graphics

When we’re in launch mode, it’s easy to think that we should be posting about our new offering all the time and yet as conscious business owners we don’t want to do that, because we don’t want to bombard our people.

My solution to this is to use takeover graphics on social media. What that means is changing the cover photo for my Facebook Business Page and Facebook groups that promote my offer with a link in the description to my sales page.

This is also possible on LinkedIn and for platforms that don’t use a cover photo, like Instagram, I simply change my bio so that it let’s people know I am launching something and links to the sales page. What this means is anyone visiting your channel can immediately see that you are launching something, without you needing to post that fact EVERY day!

See below for an example of my last takeover graphic on my Business Facebook Page.

3. Launch partners

This is one of my favourite launch strategies and probably the one that gets most overlooked. Whenever I start planning a launch, I think of a few colleagues, clients or mentors who I think might be willing to share about my new offer with their audience.

I then reach out to them, as early in the process as possible, to ask if they would be willing to support my launch by sharing details with their people. I do this early to give them time to plan it in and so that I can approach other people if they say no. I’m fortunate to have created some great relationships both with colleagues and former clients and in part I think this is because of my generosity in sharing about their offerings.

Having a small group of people supporting your launch can be the difference in a handful of people hearing about it and several hundred or even several thousand people.

4. 1:1 invitations

When we’re launching something new, it’s easy to become focused on our one to many marketing. Social media posts, newsletters etc. What I’ve found to be especially effective is actually taking the time to send personal and thoughtful 1:1 invitations to people who you would personally love to be involved (if it’s a live program, for example) or who you think might really benefit from your new offer.

We tend to think this will come across as pushy or salesy but when done with an attitude of service, with zero attachment to outcome it can actually feel like a compliment by the recipient.

Before I even get into launch mode, I like to think of 10 people would love to have in my workshop/program or who I think would benefit greatly from my new offering and if they haven’t bought as we get near to the end of the launch period, I might drop them a brief note to let them know that I’m offering something I think they’d be a great fit for. No pressure of course! I also never send any links and prefer to say something along the lines of: if you’d like to know more, let me know and I’ll send over details.

5. Final Call communications

I’ve been launching stuff online for a decade now and one thing I’ve learned is that people like to leave their buying decision until the last minute. I can’t tell you how many times, I’ve had a launch, only to get a flurry of sales on the first announcement and then nothing for the rest of the launch period and then another flurry of sales when I make the final call.

It can be tempting to think that if people have stopped buying/signing up that we’ve made all the sales that we’re going to make but sending a reminder to people that the deadline for purchase is approaching (if there is a deadline!) is often all it takes to have people make a decision. I would say that in most of my launches, an equal number of people sign up at the end as they do at the beginning.

Now gently reminding people is different to many of the FOMO inducing tactics we see online like countdown timers and messages like “last chance” and “don’t miss out!” Instead I prefer to send an email titled “Last call to sign up for xxxx” and I’ll also do some last call posts on social. That way hopefully those people who were considering buying but hadn’t yet decided get the opportunity to buy before the deadline passes.

And there you have it 5 of my favourite launch activities.

As I mentioned there are many other launch activities just like these that I cover in my 4 part training series but I hope that these 5 will at least give you some ideas to be getting on with. Hit the button below to access the sales page.

BUY LOVING LAUNCHES

That’s it for today, other than to let you know that you can comment and let me know if you have any questions about what I’ve shared in this piece.

 

5 Elements Your Freebie Needs To Be Successful

5 Elements Your Freebie Needs To Be Successful

by | Jul 9, 2024 | Ethical Marketing, Uncategorized

“Your true worth is determined by how much more you give in value than you take in payment. Your income is determined by how many people you serve and how well you serve them. The most valuable gift you have to offer is yourself.”
~ Bob Burg (The Go Giver)

I want to share with you my best advice on how to make your freebie a success.

Here’s the thing. Not all freebies are created equal. You’ve no doubt experienced the disappointing freebie. The pithy PDF that promised you all the answers to your greatest struggle, only to find it didn’t contain anything you didn’t already know. If you’re anything like me nothing has you reaching for the unsubscribe button quicker.

I gave up on freebies like these many years ago after handing over my email address countless times, only to feel disappointed at first and then deeply irritated after being bombarded with sales emails thereafter. Not cool.

As you might imagine, I offer a different approach.

What I recommend to my clients instead is what I call the “Generous Freebie”. Something that is blow your socks off useful for the people who sign up for it.

What follows, are the key elements I believe any freebie worth it’s weight should include plus some examples of the types of freebie that tick all of these boxes.

1. It’s actually free

If you are going to offer something free, please don’t make it a hidden sales pitch. Don’t offer a gift, only to bombard people with sales emails afterwards.

For years now I have even been offering freebies without making people sign up to my newsletter as a prerequisite because my thinking is that it’s not really free if people have to pay with their email address but I’m changing that.

I think as long as you are super clear up front that people will be added to a mailing list and given an easy way to unsubscribe afterwards if they want and you don’t then use this as a means to send lots of sales emails, then I don’t think it’s a biggie to add people to your list. The key is to be clear and transparent.

2. It offers real value

If you are going to offer a freebie, have it be something that really is of value to your people. That means taking time to create it. If you can whip up a freebie in 5 minutes, the chances are it’s not going to have an impact.

So my advice, don’t just throw something together and slap a big promise on it.

Put in the work to actually create something that will support the recipient to make progress on the very problem you help people with.

It’s my belief that when we can offer real value to a person before they’ve spent a penny with us, they trust that we’re not just after their money and we actually care about them and their journey, which begins a relationship that in many cases will result in future sales and it’s such a lovely way to do business too!

3. It demonstrates your expertise.

Find it hard to explain what you do to prospective clients? A good freebie will show them the impact of working with you. No convincing pitch necessary.

Think of your freebie as a place to really shine. What skills and expertise do your ideal clients need and how can you bring these to the fore in your freebie.

My whole approach to business is to focus on demonstrating expertise rather than trying to manipulate and cajole people into buying from us. What could you create or share that truly demonstrates your gifts?

4. It’s generous.

Yes the clue is in the title — given I call it the generous freebie, what I’m talking about here goes above and beyond the pithy PDF. We’re talking about something that has actually taken you time to create or takes you time to deliver, something that people won’t quite believe you’re offering for free.

I’ll get into examples later on.

5. It’s visible.

It doesn’t matter how generous or valuable your freebie is if nobody knows it exists, so if you are going to take the time to create a truly generous freebie, you must also invest the time to promote it.

If you are struggling to grow your audience, a good and well promoted freebie can draw people in who otherwise wouldn’t be ready to buy. It’s a great way to take people from not knowing us to getting a better sense of who we are, what we’re about and how we can help, leading them to stick around (join our list, lean in etc).

So, now that you know what it takes to create a generous freebie, you might be wondering how on earth you’re going to package all of that into one free offering. Don’t worry, I have some examples.

The free workshop — why not create a free workshop that really helps people in your niche? You could run it a few times a year for your audience and even offer it out to other people’s audience. I’ve been teaching free classes for other people’s groups for years and they’re always a heap of fun and I nearly always get a load of new subscribers and/or clients.

The free challenge — this is one of my favourites and I’ve run several over the years, including my Outreach Challenge, My Content Challenge, My Spring Clean Your Business Challenge and many more besides. They’ve proven time and time again to help me to expand my audience, nurture those already in it and give generously to my audience.

The free session — for years, my most generous freebie was a 60 minute coaching session and when I had far less clients, I gifted these regularly. These days, I rarely offer gift sessions simply due to constraints on my diary but when I feel really inspired to, I do. Not only have these been an amazing way for me to meet and get to know people in my audience but I’ve also got lots of new clients over the years from people who loved the session enough to want to continue working with me.

And now for some examples from people I love.

My own brand designer and former client, Nathalie of Utterly Create offers people a free lite review of their brand. Something that definitely ticks all of the boxes.

My favourite copywriter, Lauren Van Mullem hosts free Craft and Copy hours, where you can hang out with her and do crafts while getting your copy questions answered.

I’m not sure he does them anymore but Tad Hargrave of Marketing for Hippies used to offer 60 second niche reviews in his stories on Instagram. You can see the videos of these here.

SIGN UP FOR MY SOULFUL STRATEGIES WEEKLY

 

Once a week, in the form of an e-letter, I share the best of what I know about building a business with integrity for conscious business owners.

The intention behind these letters is to be a voice for integrity within your (undoubtedly) cluttered inbox. To be the one email you can count on to contain strategic and soulful advice for building a business without selling your soul.

If you want to receive the Soulful Strategies Weekly, simply share with me your name and email address below and you’ll start recieving emails right away.

How To Create Your Ideal Business Schedule

How To Create Your Ideal Business Schedule

by | Jun 26, 2024 | Productivity, Uncategorized

“A schedule defends from chaos and whim. It is a net for catching days. It is a scaffolding on which a worker can stand and labor with both hands at sections of time.
~ Annie Dillard

One of the very first things I ask all new clients about is their working schedule. More often than not, people readily admit that their schedule is all over the place and is something they know they need to work on. Even so, the vast majority of those will also admit that they feel some level of resistance when it comes to scheduling their day.

Rather than see having a schedule as liberating, they typically see it as something that will restrict their freedom and despite craving more structure, find themselves railing against having a schedule.

I totally get it. After well over a decade of working 9–5, I fully embraced not having a schedule when I first quit my career in pursuit of running my own business. For years I had to get up at 5.45am to catch a train at 7am in order to get to work for 9am, followed by feeling trapped in my place of work for the next 8 hours, only to repeat the same gruelling journey home again. I’ll admit, a schedule like that is enough to drive anyone to question their life choices, no matter how appealing the salary.

Despite this, I soon realised that having no schedule meant that I actually felt like I was either always working or never working and as a result doing very little to move my business forward. Having structure is what helped me to be able to really work when I’m working and rest when I’m resting.

The piece that people miss, however, when I bring up the topic of schedule, is the word IDEAL. Having a soul-sucking schedule is nobody’s idea of fun, but what if you could create a schedule that honours your passions and desired lifestyle and maximises your chances of creating a successful business doing work that helps you to change the world for the better? That’s what I’d like to show you how to do today.

Step 1 — identify when you don’t want to work

When designing your ideal schedule, given that life is more important than work (no matter how important your work is), I invite you to consider all of those times on a daily, weekly, monthly and annual basis that you DON’T want to work.

In my ideal schedule for example:

On a weekly basis, I don’t work on the weekend (Saturday and Sunday), this for me is FAMILY time. I also don’t work before 9.30am, this for me is MY time to exercise, shower and enjoy a slow and mindful breakfast.

On a daily basis, I don’t work over lunchtime, taking at least 1 hour for lunch on Mondays and Friday and on Tuesday — Thursday taking 2.5 hours as I have one or both of my sons home for lunch. I also don’t want to work beyond 6.30pm as my boys are home from school by then and that when we start family time.

I also have 2 x 30 minute breaks a day. One at 11–11.30am and one at 4.30–5.00pm.

In terms of annual holidays. I know that I want to take 2 weeks off in August for our family holiday as well as time at Christmas and Easter and I usually block these off for the year ahead. Most of the business owners I work with have never booked off their annual vacation time ahead of time. If that’s you, I highly recommend it. I typically take 7 weeks a year off.

On a monthly basis, I also usually take the 5th week of the month off on those months that have 5 weeks. This year, that’s March, May, August and November. I organise my 1:1 subscription and my group program so that I can take those off.

Now it’s your turn, when WON’T you work on a daily, weekly, monthly and annual basis? Once you’ve removed the times you don’t want to work, you should now have your working hours.

Mine for example are as follows:

Monday to Friday, 9.30am — 12.30pm and 3.30pm to 6.30pm.

That’s 6 hours a day, 5 days a week = 30 hours a week. 45 weeks a year.

I choose to work full-time because my boys are in school and I like bringing in a full-time income. I’ll share with you later how I bring flexibility into those full-time hours.

Step 2 — Identify what types of work you need to do

One of the most common questions I receive is what should I be doing to grow my business on a day to day basis? Of course, this will vary from business to business but I do believe there are some activities it’s important to incorporate into your weekly business schedule. These are:

  • Client hours — for me these are my 1:1 sessions and group program calls
  • Lead generation hours — these for me are my working together calls and times I am speaking or presenting to other people’s audiences. For many of my clients it might be when they are running gift sessions.
  • Admin — love it or hate it, we all have admin and inboxes to manage.
  • Content Marketing — this should include time to create, repurpose and promote your content.
  • Authentic outreach — if this isn’t something that you already do on the regular, I recommend scheduling time specifically for this activity.
  • CEO time — this is what I call the time I need to spend working “on” the business rather than “in” the business — it might be, for example, when I create the content for a new workshop or make changes to my website or create new systems or processes.

Step 3 — Identify when during your working hours you want to do each type of work

When we work on what is important. Many people will, for example, argue that the best time to do creative work is in the morning, when our brains our the freshest, but what works for one person may not work for another. Taking time to explore what feels ideal to you is key here.

To give you an example, here are some of the things I have found work best for me.

I don’t like doing video calls first thing. I like a slower start to my day so I don’t allow clients to book sessions before 11.30am.

I don’t like to do more than 4 video calls in any given day so the maximum slots you’ll ever find available on my schedule is 4 and on many days it’s far fewer than that.

I also like a slower start and end to the week so I only have one 5pm client call on a Monday and the rest of the day is dedicated to content creation (and my new art class!) and Friday’s are kept call-free and what I call my CEO day when I can catch up on client work, marketing and product and service creation.

The beauty of having Mondays and Fridays largely free of calls is that when friends or family come to visit or we want to go away for a long weekend, I can usually book these days off without too much hassle. It does mean I have a pretty intense Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday but having a light Monday and Friday and the weekend off in between works well for me.

Step 4 — schedule these as recurring appointments in your calendar

It’s one thing to have your ideal schedule written down on a piece of paper and quite another to have it scheduled (and colour coded) in your online calendar. Personally, I recommend Google Calendar and here’s a screenshot of mine.

This image is my IDEAL schedule which I have as a seperate calendar inside Google calendar but my actual calendar looks pretty similar — I won’t share for confidentiality reasons.

If you are worried about having your days blocked off like this, know that you can mark appointments in Google calendar as busy or free so that you can have something showing in your calendar as for example “save for client session” but marked as free so it’s still bookable via a scheduler.

Also, your days don’t have to be as scheduled or as full as mine! Yours might look very different.

Having my schedule like this might look restrictive to some of you but actually the fact that I have a slow, leisurely start to my day, a long Spanish style lunch, morning and afternoon breaks and largely call free Mondays and Fridays is a dream for me after years of 9–5pm and hectic commutes through central London!

Step 5 — lean into your schedule with grace and compassion

Going from no schedule to following a full schedule is not something I would recommend. I’ve been working on my schedule for years and given much of my day is non-negotiable because it’s with paying clients, I have to stick to a schedule for the sake of my sanity.

If you have less client commitments right now, you’ll likely have more freedom to move things around and test and tweak your schedule to see what works and what doesn’t. It’s natural that it might take some time for you to fully lean into following your schedule so it’s important not to beat yourself up if you don’t follow it perfectly.

The most important thing is to give yourself grace and notice where you’ve scheduled to do something but consistently fail to follow through, looking at why that might be and making adjustments where necessary.

I often talk about building for growth. So even if you don’t need a schedule this defined right now, it’s easy to find yourself in a position down the line, where you’ve become a slave to your schedule. So why not design it to suit you now before you find yourself working evenings and weekends because you gave potential clients free reign to choose when worked best for them rather than you?

I’m curious, how does this land? Do you have a schedule already or has this piece given you food for thought? Feel free to hit reply and let me know.

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The 5 Strategies I Use To Beat Procrastination

The 5 Strategies I Use To Beat Procrastination

by | Jun 5, 2024 | Productivity, Uncategorized

“Tomorrow is often the busiest day of the week.”
~ Spanish Proverb

The dictionary definition of procrastination is this:

The action of delaying or postponing something.

If you’re anything like most business owners I know, you’ve experienced procrastination.

Most likely when you attempt to do something that will move your business forward. Common tasks that you might find yourself procrastinating on include: marketing, writing copy, creating new products and services and/or doing your outreach (cultivating connections across your network).

When we delay or postpone taking action on the very activities that will help us move our business forward, we are, in essence, sabotaging our chances of success. Overcoming procrastination, therefore, becomes an important endeavour.

Whilst I do still procrastinate from time to time, over the years I’ve learned various ways to minimise and even prevent procrastination from derailing my best efforts.

1. Pay attention

Procrastination is one of most insidious companions to our attempts at productivity. It’s pretty common for procrastination to rear its ugly head the moment we try to do something productive or creative in our business.

If we’re not careful, procrastination becomes such an embedded feature of our day to day working lives, that we don’t always notice when we’re in its grips.

Raising awareness of the fact that we’ve slipped into procrastination mode and doing what we can to understand what lies beneath it is the first step to overcoming it.

When you notice that you’re procrastinating, try reflecting on what your procrastination is trying to tell you. Is there fear around the activity you are trying to undertake? Is there a reason you’re avoiding taking action.

Acknowledge the procrastination instead of giving into the habit of it is key.

Another line of enquiry you might take is to reflect on the importance of what you are trying to do, in essence, asking yourself, what are the consequences of allowing procrastination to win here?

The key is to not let procrastination become a habit. Notice the way it shows up for you and recognise when you’re dealing with procrastination to get better at overcoming it.

2. Block out time

When we’re not yet fully booked with clients, we often have a lot of time on our hands to work on our business. This should be a blessing but more often than not it becomes fertile ground for procrastination to bloom. I wrote about the consequences of too much freedom here.

My advice is to not give yourself hours to do something. Give yourself a deadline. No more than 90 minutes in one sitting — start shorter if you are not used to time-blocking.

For example, I block out most of Monday to work on content creation but I make sure I have regular breaks and clear actions for each chunk of time. Block #1 might be dedicated to drafting my newsletter, block #2 to getting it to a final draft and block #3, sourcing a picture quote, one last proofread and sending it out.

It’s far easier to avoid procrastination if I give myself 3 x 1 hour blocks with clear goals in each than to simply give myself all morning to write a newsletter.

3. Plan ahead

Don’t sit down at your desk to work unless you know what you are going to do or you’ll waste the time you’ve allocated trying to figure out what to work on.

This is especially important if you’ve got a lot of time each day to work on a high number of things (i.e. a long to do list!). I like to give myself no more than 3 tasks to complete per day and I plan these either the night before or first thing in the morning before I get into things.

Having a huge to do list plus countless hours ahead of you to work on things is a recipe for procrastination, so avoid it by doing the thinking before you sit down to do the working.

4. Work with others

Something that has helped me massively while working on my business is co-working. I find that if left to my own devices, it’s all too easy to get distracted and fall into a pattern of procrastination but when working with others, I get so much more done.

Co-working works especially well for me when I get to declare what I’m hoping to achieve (planning ahead) in the session (blocking out time) and when I have to report back at the end of the session how I got on (accountability).

Co-working can be done in person or online. My favourite online co-working tools are: The Cabin, Flown, LWS and Focusmate.

5. Take regular breaks

If you stack blocks of working time together without breaks, it’s as good as not blocking out time at all. The key is to have full breaks between your working sessions.

My mantra when it comes to being productive in my business is to “Work when you are working and rest when you are resting.”

Problems arise when we sit at our desk and engage in procrastination activities, like scrolling on social media or mindlessly searching the internet. We come to blur the line between working and procrastinating. If I catch myself doing this I immediately stop and take a break.

Taking a break for me means stepping away from my desk and going to do something completely unrelated to work. This might be watching something on TV, reading a book or taking a short walk to clear my head.

When we don’t do this the boundaries between work and breaks become blurred, impairing our ability to focus when we’re working and impairing our ability to really switch off from work when we’re on a break.

And there you have it, 5 things I do on the regular to stay productive, avoid procrastination and ultimately have a better work-life balance.

Did you find these helpful? I’d love to know which of these you might try. If you want to let me know simply comment and tell me!

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Once a week, in the form of an e-letter, I share the best of what I know about building a business with integrity for conscious business owners.

The intention behind these letters is to be a voice for integrity within your (undoubtedly) cluttered inbox. To be the one email you can count on to contain strategic and soulful advice for building a business without selling your soul.

If you want to receive the Soulful Strategies Weekly, simply share with me your name and email address below and you’ll start recieving emails right away.