Category Archives: Personal management

Wellness tip #004: Don’t say yes to everything

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Practice saying yes! but don’t say yes to everything. That’s a madness bent on activity; an itch never satisfied.

Saying yes to everything merges activity and need into an addictive cocktail that, once sipped, desires more. It is the bottomless glass that never ends and never quenches the thirst.

Needing to please, to impress, to accommodate, to keep the peace, we say yes when we want to say no. Women do this well. Sometimes too well.

Practice saying no. Some things just aren’t meant for you to do.

But how to know yes or no? Wellness tip #005 (coming soon) ponders that very question.

Wellness tip #003: Say yes! and trip the light fantastic

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Opportunities arrive and then hesitation pulls up a chair and sits beside us. Old patterns of caution and subtle layers of resistance linger – decisions are delayed, thoughts analyse and check and question and move their familiar furniture around the mental landscape.

In our hearts we know what choice to make, but fear pins hesitation to our sleeve and weighs us down, drags our feet.

Trip with the light fantastic. Say yes! when opportunity arrives. See what happens. Notice the ease of all that unfolds.

Wellness tip #002: Remember to pause

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Don’t let life become a blur of activities.

Put some space between the things you do.

Stop.

Even it’s just for a few seconds, give yourself a moment to pause.

Feel where your feet are. Let them rest.

Breathe in some air.

Bring your attention to what’s next.

Then, be on your way.

Remember to pause.

Wellness tip #001: Be where your feet are

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Minds can be busy places. It’s better if they’re not. Creativity, productivity and joy all require space. Space to land. Space to be given life. If the mind is racing to the future or dwelling over the past or never still, where is the space?

Be where your feet are. Not thinking ahead or going over something that’s happened.

Be where your feet are.

I’m on a blogging break while I take my summer holiday

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It’s time for my summer holiday and that means going to the beach, riding my surfboard, eating watermelon and enjoying plenty of time with my partner.

So, I’m on a blogging break until mid-January.

Feel free to read the posts here on worklearnlivewell.com and if you want to leave a comment, I’ll be sure to reply when I’m back online.

And if you haven’t already, click on ‘follow this blog’ so you can receive posts by email or subscribe to the RSS feed (at the bottom of the page).

I hope you find time for plenty of the things you enjoy over the next few weeks and remember to work, learn and live well! 

Worried about social media? Some questions, some answers and some more questions…

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Blogging, tweeting, posting to Linked-In, posting to Facebook – I’ve wondered if I’m creating a hungry beast that I have to keep feeding? Where’s the time for delivering my service, making my product? How do I manage it all?

These are all valid questions, particularly for a micro-business where you’re the owner, producer and printer-cartridge changer. And they’re concerns that I hear from people who are already in the swing of social media. Last week, though I found a few answers that set my mind at rest.

Some of those answers arrived via a free webinar about Facebook marketing delivered by Amy Porterfield, Darren Rowse at Problogger and Lewis Howes. It was an information-rich hour and it was rich information. Here are three takeaways that are key if you’re a micro-business owner who’s considering Facebook or if you need reminding about why you are on Facebook!

If like me, you’re a micro-business owner, then you’re audience is on Facebook

Facebook has 800 million active users and about one third (31%) are on the social media site multiple times each day. So, it’s a big pond to swim in. Facebook has at least 98% coverage across all generations. So, your potential customers are there.

Facebook marketing is ideal for the micro-business because it costs less

As a business owner, you’ll know what it’s like to pay (in time and money) for advertising, direct mail, telemarketing or trade shows. These traditional marketing channels are all outbound where we’re trying to ‘interrupt’ potential customers.

In contrast, inbound marketing channels like Twitter, Facebook and Linked-In, focus more on being ‘found’. Through social media sites, we create places where potential customers or referrers can arrive and connect and give us permission to market to them.

The point is, inbound marketing channels are more cost effective. Three out of four inbound marketing channels cost less than any outbound channel. (1)

For a micro-business, they are ideal.

A clear strategy will help you ward off the hungry beast

There are many different ways to grow and engage fans but having a clear strategy will help focus your time and efforts. Some of the points, Amy Porterfield talked about are:

  1. Understand who you want to attract to as your ideal audience
  2. What do you want your audience to experience – are you entertaining them, educating them or both?
  3. Automate links across social media and your website to drive traffic to Facebook
  4. Have a custom welcome tab that immediately encourages them to opt-in so they give you a ‘like’
  5. Allocate 15-20 minutes daily to post and respond and engage..

Knowing that your potential customers are likely to be on Facebook, recognising that social media can be cost-effective and having a clear strategy establish a good rationale for using social media.

So, if you’re guessing that you’ll see me on Facebook soon, you’re absolutely right!

But here’s another point and I’m interested in your thoughts on it:

Fans, followers, subscribers expect you to engage with them regularly

Fans, followers and subscribers are only potential customers if you engage with them regularly, consistently and promptly. This means creating a relationship,valuing it, nurturing it and seeing these fans, followers and subscribers move from simply ‘liking’ your business to absolutely loving it! Engagement is critical. And it can be enjoyable and fruitful. It can also be consuming.

I had a conversation last week with a micro-business owner who needed to take a break from her 2700 Facebook fans – no more engaging until January 16. It was essential. She needed to take time out for herself and her family. The office was taking over. She’d given too much to engaging and not enough to herself. Taking a break seems to be a good strategy. I’ve read an article about taking blogging breaks.

The greater challenge seems to be managing it all along the way – keeping content and contact and all the other parts of life singing rather than screaming.

Is it all about personal management? Developing good work practices regardless of the medium?

What strategies do you use for managing it all?

SOURCE: (1.) Hubspot State of Inbound Marketing Report, 2011

Needing focus for next year? Step away from the madding crowd.

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Step away from the madding crowd and step into next year with focus. If you want next year to be better and brighter, give yourself a moment to see how this one’s travelled. 

Take yourself out for a cup of coffee or sit down with a pot of tea and cast your mind over the year that’s been.

  1. What did you enjoy most this year?
  2. Why did you enjoy it so much?
  3. What was the worst part of this year?
  4. If that happened again, how would you approach it differently?
  5. What successes did you have this year?
  6. What have you learnt?
  7. How would you improve on this year?

Don’t think too much, respond quickly with your answers and remember to travel lightly along the way.

I’ve listed seven questions…are there other questions you’d add to the list?

One easy step to start managing your professional development

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This post is the second in a series focusing on “How to make your professional development work for you”. The first post is Getting to Know Your Professional Development.  

We all know that professional development is essential for keeping our careers and businesses alive. Making wise choices with your professional development means your skills and knowledge will stay current, relevant and therefore valuable! So how do you make sure that your professional development works for you?

There are several things you can do to manage your professional development but one very simple first step is to: record your professional development activity.

This is the easiest of steps. Yes, perhaps boring but very useful. Create a spreadsheet where you can record your professional development activity. You might use an Excel or Numbers spreadsheet with columns for date, activity, focus, hours spent, provider or source (was it a university, a college, a private organisation, your employer, your industry association etc.)

The value in this recording is twofold.

Firstly, you get to see where you are placing your energy (or not as the case may be). With that information you can make some decisions about bringing a better balance or energising your professional development activities.

For example, you might have spent a lot of time developing industry-specific skills but it might be time to broaden your skills in business or management. Or perhaps you’ve been overemphasising formal studies over the past few years and now it’s time to relax into some conference sessions or reading some books on personal development. The value comes from being informed about your professional development so you can make good decisions about it, conscious decisions.

Secondly, this spreadsheet then becomes a great asset for when you’re compiling your resume. Have you ever been about to write or update your resume only to spend loads of time tracking back through your mind about what you’ve done and when and what the heck was that seminar I went to? This record of your professional development is the answer to a much easier writing of your resume.

So you’ve got your spreadsheet done, what do you do now?

Well, one obvious action is to keep it up-to-date. More immediately, though, use it to make some decisions about your professional development.

In the next post in this series, I’ll focus on what to consider when making decisions about what professional development you need to do. Read on…