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How to Survive the Shift to Management
May 14th
To many, a manager title means increased pay and prestige. Sometimes, you’ll get a new boss and a new office too. You’ll also get a totally new job.
You got to this point because you were good at your work, but now you will have to let the details of the work go. Your job now is to grow and position your organization so that others can perform the work in a way that positively impacts the bottom line.
There are many mistakes that new leaders make, but the biggest is refusing to operate at a higher level and spending too much time personally attending to their prior tasks. In this, they limit their contributions as a leader and fail to grow the people on their team.
Patty Azzarello, a Silicon Valley management consultant and the author of Rise: 3 Practical Steps for Advancing Your Career, Standing Out as a Leader, and Liking Your Life, calls this phenomenon missing the “level transition” and claims that it leads to the following management problems:
- Leaders compete with subordinates about who is smarter
- Leaders torture their teams for inappropriate amounts of detail
- Leaders fail to hire smart people beneath them because they feel threatened
- Leaders fail to develop team capacity to do more
So if you’re no longer supposed to do the work that you’re good at, what should you be doing? Ms. Azzarello suggests working on the business instead of in the business and spending more time thinking and less time doing. This includes:
- Building a plan to drive the overall strategy for your team and its role in the business
- Tuning everyone’s workload so that your team delivers on the most important priorities
- Ensuring that there is alignment of your team, peers and managers
- Assessing your organization’s fitness for what it needs to do, and making changes, training, and/or upgrading talent where necessary
- Creating systems and frameworks to execute, track, and measuring the work so that you feel comfortable that you know what’s getting done without getting mired in specifics
- Supporting your team members in becoming better leaders themselves by promoting continuous learning
- Finding ways to steadily reduce the cost of things you do every year to make room for new approaches
- Improving communication and relationships inside and outside your direct organization
- Making connections outside your direct organization to generate positive visibility for your team and create a broader base of support
- Finding senior-level mentors who can advise you on how to raise your focus
Hopefully, if you’ve made the transition to management already, you’ve realized that you enjoy this work, maybe even more than what you were doing before. But if you are still in discussions to advance to the next level, it is worth considering whether or not this is how you want to spend your days.
There is nothing wrong with remaining an individual contributor, and if you truly love what you do, who is to say that you have to advance up and out of it? The desire to rise to the upper echelon of an organization is a matter of preference, so give it some serious thought and don’t allow others to sway you to their point of view.
(Photo credit: businessman writing leadership via Shutterstock)
Alexandra Levit is a career and workplace expert at the Intuit Quickbase Blog , a daily source for advice on how to be exceptional at your job. You can follow her on Twitter at @alevit.
5 Things to Consider Before You Go Back to Your Old Job
Apr 19th
At my old PR agency, Edelman, we used to have a so-called “Comeback Club.” The club was reserved for those who left the company in good standing and returned a few years later. Edelman was a great place to work, so the Comeback Club was popular.
I myself was a member. After working there for two years, I left Edelman New York in 2000 to work at Computer Associates in eastern Long Island. When my husband and I moved to Chicago in 2004, I went back to my roots as a digital PR strategist in the Edelman office there. It was the right decision, and I stayed with the firm another four years before going out on my own full time in 2008.
A question many employees have faced is: “should I go back to my old job?” Maybe the new job wasn’t as wonderful as you thought it would be and you are now able to see your old situation more clearly. Maybe you have gained some experience that has opened up a new opportunity with people you trust. Maybe your personal circumstances have changed.
When deciding whether you should go back to your old job, consider the following five questions before making your move.
1. What Led You to Leave in the First Place?
It is really important to assess whether the reasons for your departure still exist. For example, if you clashed with your manager, will you be working with that person again? If the organization’s culture was toxic, are you better prepared to cope this time around? You must assume that nothing (and no one) has changed before you go back to your old job.
2. Did You Leave All of Your Bridges Intact?
Take honest stock of how your departure was received. Was your behavior universally professional? Did you go above and beyond to leave your job in good hands, and was this noticed and appreciated? Before you go back to your old job, you want to be absolutely certain that there are no lingering hard feelings.
3. With Whom Will You Be Working?
As a former employee, you have the benefit of knowing the organization better than any brand new recruit, and you must harness this insider intelligence. Is the department you’ll be working with productive, efficient, and interpersonally mature? Ask yourself if your new manager is someone with a strong reputation, and if your team members are people with whom you can easily collaborate.
4. Will You Have to Start Over?
Presumably, you had to work a while at this organization to earn respect and increasing levels of responsibility. You’ve also gained more experience since you last worked there. Will your new position reflect these developments, or will all of your previous accomplishments be for naught? No matter how desperate you may be feeling, don’t take a job that’s a step backward.
5. Will the Work Be Meaningful?
In making the decision to take any new job, you should reflect on what the work will be like day-to-day. Will it be a challenge you can sink your teeth into? Will you have the opportunity to make a real difference in the organization? If your progress was hampered by red tape or endless consensus building kept you from getting anything done before, it may well again.
Many of us leave organizations because we later realize the old but true cliché – the grass is always greener on the other side of the fence. Sometimes, it takes a change in situation to realize just how great we had it. However, it’s important to objectively evaluate what we’re getting ourselves back into and not rush into a boomerang.
(Photo credit: Businessman sitting on an armchair via Shutterstock)
Alexandra Levit is a career and workplace expert at the Intuit Quickbase Blog , a daily source for advice on how to be exceptional at your job. You can follow her on Twitter at @alevit.
5 Things to Consider Before You Go Back to Your Old Job
Apr 19th
At my old PR agency, Edelman, we used to have a so-called “Comeback Club.” The club was reserved for those who left the company in good standing and returned a few years later. Edelman was a great place to work, so the Comeback Club was popular.
I myself was a member. After working there for two years, I left Edelman New York in 2000 to work at Computer Associates in eastern Long Island. When my husband and I moved to Chicago in 2004, I went back to my roots as a digital PR strategist in the Edelman office there. It was the right decision, and I stayed with the firm another four years before going out on my own full time in 2008.
A question many employees have faced is: “should I go back to my old job?” Maybe the new job wasn’t as wonderful as you thought it would be and you are now able to see your old situation more clearly. Maybe you have gained some experience that has opened up a new opportunity with people you trust. Maybe your personal circumstances have changed.
When deciding whether you should go back to your old job, consider the following five questions before making your move.
1. What Led You to Leave in the First Place?
It is really important to assess whether the reasons for your departure still exist. For example, if you clashed with your manager, will you be working with that person again? If the organization’s culture was toxic, are you better prepared to cope this time around? You must assume that nothing (and no one) has changed before you go back to your old job.
2. Did You Leave All of Your Bridges Intact?
Take honest stock of how your departure was received. Was your behavior universally professional? Did you go above and beyond to leave your job in good hands, and was this noticed and appreciated? Before you go back to your old job, you want to be absolutely certain that there are no lingering hard feelings.
3. With Whom Will You Be Working?
As a former employee, you have the benefit of knowing the organization better than any brand new recruit, and you must harness this insider intelligence. Is the department you’ll be working with productive, efficient, and interpersonally mature? Ask yourself if your new manager is someone with a strong reputation, and if your team members are people with whom you can easily collaborate.
4. Will You Have to Start Over?
Presumably, you had to work a while at this organization to earn respect and increasing levels of responsibility. You’ve also gained more experience since you last worked there. Will your new position reflect these developments, or will all of your previous accomplishments be for naught? No matter how desperate you may be feeling, don’t take a job that’s a step backward.
5. Will the Work Be Meaningful?
In making the decision to take any new job, you should reflect on what the work will be like day-to-day. Will it be a challenge you can sink your teeth into? Will you have the opportunity to make a real difference in the organization? If your progress was hampered by red tape or endless consensus building kept you from getting anything done before, it may well again.
Many of us leave organizations because we later realize the old but true cliché – the grass is always greener on the other side of the fence. Sometimes, it takes a change in situation to realize just how great we had it. However, it’s important to objectively evaluate what we’re getting ourselves back into and not rush into a boomerang.
(Photo credit: Businessman sitting on an armchair via Shutterstock)
Alexandra Levit is a career and workplace expert at the Intuit Quickbase Blog , a daily source for advice on how to be exceptional at your job. You can follow her on Twitter at @alevit.
Is Flex-tirement the New Retirement?
Apr 10th
My father is 66 years old. Over the last forty years, he has worked in both Corporate America and academia, and his identity is closely tied to his job. How could it not be? He has spent the better part of his life commuting from one office to another, and he’s somewhat of a workaholic.
The original plan was for my dad to retire at age 66, but now that it’s here, the idea seems preposterous. He has lost money in the recession, and like many Baby Boomers, the thought of moving down to Florida to play tennis and mah jong all day makes him a little ill. My dad wants and needs to keep working, but he knows a 50 hour a week job is putting his health in jeopardy. What’s a Boomer to do?
Finding a middle ground
My father’s situation is not unique. As tens of millions of Boomers approach traditional retirement age, organizations must contend with how to downsize valuable employees without completely cutting the cord. Enter the notion of flex-tirement.
Hard as it may be to believe in today’s market, we are actually on the cusp of a demographically-induced labor shortage that will leave organizations with far more green employees than seasoned ones. Smart companies know that it’s wise to use flex-tirement to hold on to experienced employees so they can effectively train and transition the younger generation into leadership roles. In an ideal scenario, a company would allow a fifty or sixty-something employee to keep the same job, which they enjoy and are good at, with reduced hours and pay.
No longer an ex-president’s benefit
If you think about it, flex-tirement has been available to some types for a while. For former presidents or CEOs, “retirement” often equals plum consulting jobs and advisory board service. But increasingly, such opportunities are presenting themselves to average people too.
Even the government is on board with the idea. Says Camille Tuutti in Federal Computer Week: “The Obama administration has acknowledged the potential of flexible retention. Its 2013 budget for the Office of Personnel Management included a proposal that would allow eligible employees to reduce their work hours at the end of their careers and receive income partially from a reduced salary and partially from retirement annuity. These employees would be required to mentor others, sharing institutional knowledge and helping with succession planning.”
Make them want to retain you
So, if you’re a Boomer who wants to continue to work while enjoying some of the benefits of retirement, how should you position yourself? Your first goal is to make sure you are someone worth keeping. This means staying current in your job-specific training and skills and being at the top of your game productivity-wise. It also means going out of your way to showcase your value and results to the higher-ups and getting them to say, “Wow, losing Buddy Boomer is going to be a real problem. Who is going to do Task A, B, and C?”
Boomers who haven’t kept up with technology need to get with the program. You don’t want to be considered irrelevant because you don’t understand how business operates in a highly networked, highly virtual world. In addition, it’s imperative that flex-tirement-minded Boomers retain enthusiasm and passion for the job. An employer is not likely to offer you a desirable part-time arrangement if they feel your heart and mind are touring a castle somewhere in Europe.
Finally, be willing to chart the course. Remember that flex-tirement is new territory for many employers, and as such, formal policies and procedures might not yet exist. You should be prepared to use your well-honed negotiation and persuasion skills to obtain a situation that’s right for you.
(Photo credit: Retirement Savings via Shutterstock)
Alexandra Levit is a career and workplace expert at the Intuit Quickbase Blog , a daily source for advice on how to be exceptional at your job. You can follow her on Twitter at @alevit.
Dear Entrepreneur: It’s All Up to You
Mar 23rd
When you are in the first few years of business it can be a roller-coaster ride. This is the case whether you still have a day job and you’re trying to start a business on the side, or whether you’ve jumped in with two feet and are ready to make something of yourself.
I have some advice for you…it’s good news and bad news all rolled into one.
It’s all up to you.
The Good News
You control your time, you have the freedom to choose what to work on, you are an awesome person which means you have the opportunity to build an awesome company! Unlimited opportunity awaits!
The Bad News
You now have control. That’s like flying the plane after you have only read the manual. It is a different experience to read about business and actually have a business. You’ll also need to face the hard choices of working or being with your family. Or whether or not to take risks. Or how you are going to handle all of the requests of your customers and still do a good job.
It’s Scary!
Amos Winbush III was a songwriter, and started his own company. He now has a multimillion dollar company but here is what he said when he was first starting.
“I was extremely scared. I was excited and really frightened at the exact same time that this company that we had dreamt about and started to develop was actually a reality and people were using the service. And it was all up to me. It wasn’t an idea at this point. It wasn’t something that was remaining within the four walls of my apartment which is where we launched CyberSynchs and it was actually on the market and people were using it and we had the responsibility of keeping these individuals contents secure and safe and accessible at any given time.”
Your customers and clients will start to rely on you. Your family will start to rely on this income source that you control. The responsibility will keep growing and growing especially when you start having employees and start being responsible for other people’s families too.
But everyone is scared at first. I am willing to bet that every new entrepreneur has had some sort of freak out. Just know that millionaires and ultra-successful people have done the same thing.
You Are Not Entitled
But we also need to remember and prepare for a lot of hard work. Even if you get past the scariness of it, you’ll still need to deliver in order to feed your family.
I interviewed Michael Port, millionaire and best selling author of Booked Yourself Solid. I asked him about when he became an entrepreneur and he had these words of wisdom:
“When I left my corporate job and I just thought clients were going to fall into my lap. I left with my bonus. I figured okay I’ll be fine; it’ll give me a couple of months. Well here I am living in New York City, my rent was like $3,500 a month and that was like a small two bedroom in Long Island city and I’m blowing through my money.
It was just a huge big scary experience. I said this is wrong. So I really put the pedal to the metal at that point. I think the first sort of big change that happened was for me to realize that I’m not entitled to anything. I thought I was entitled. I’ve worked hard and I’m an adult and blah, blah, blah. When it didn’t happen, I realized I’m not entitled. You know what, that means… I have to work, I have to do whatever it takes – 18 hours a day, I have to get over my fears.
I‘ve got to be willing to be bold and fully self expressed and do things that I’ve never done before and really think bigger about who I am and what I offer the world.”
Many entrepreneurs go through something similar to this when they start. They are told that being an entrepreneur is awesome, and that it’s so great to have the control. They jump in all excited and ready to go.
Then that moment hits when you realize it’s going to be a lot of long and hard work.
That said, remember this quote from Ronco Johnson, a millionaire and President of L.R. Johnson & Associates:
“We all come with two days – a start date and an end date. What you do between it, you have to make sure that everything you want to do is taken care of.”
Well, I’m here to tell you that whether you draw the line in the sand and accept that it is hard or whether you decide it’s not right for you at this time…
It’s all up to you.
(Photo credit: Confident Businessman via Shutterstock)
After paying off $70,000 and quitting her corporate job, Jaime started her own business. Four years later she has been on CNN, MSNMoney, Success Magazine, Fortune, Yahoo's homepage twice and more. She is a business coach and speaker plus she interviews self made millionaires weekly for their tips, advice and stories. An Eventual Millionaire is a person with a goal to become a millionaire, eventually, but they are dedicated to an enjoyable life and an enjoyable business now. Download the Eventual Millionaire Manifesto.
5 Ways to Stay Productive During March Madness
Mar 20th
We have all read the articles that tell us how much time and money is wasted during March Madness. Chances are our supervisors have also read those articles as well and will be keeping closer watch on us. Or, perhaps you can’t let March Madness interrupt you. Here are some ways to stay productive during the month of March.
1. DVR your team’s game and watch later
This may or may not work for you depending on how a hardcore fan you are. You might want to know what’s happening when it’s happening if so a DVR of the game won’t work. Also, if you are connected to other people who share your passion for your favorite team on social networks it will be very easy to be spoiled unless you declare a social media blackout till the end of the game.
2. Listen to the game on your smart phone
Use an app like TuneIn Radio Pro to find a radio station that broadcasts the game. The good thing about TuneIn Radio Pro is that you can pause live radio to attend a meeting or take a phone call and pick up the action right where you left off. In effect it’s a DVR for radio. This approach has the added benefit if your team is not local and you your local stations will not carry the games. Plan your “mundane” tasks for the time you’ll be listening to the game to avoid distraction.
3. Use bracket predicting as staff development
Now, if you’re a supervisor reading this consider using the practice of filling out brackets as a staff development tool. People are going to fill out their brackets at work even if frown on it. Instead of being the stuffy place to work why not be the fun place to work? Schedule a time for your staff who are interested to get together and fill out their brackets. Offer fun prizes for the people who were the best and the people who were the worst. Allowing your staff a little time to breathe is a good thing for both office morale and your bottom line.
4. Give yourself mini breaks and check in via social media
Everyone needs a break every once in a while to regroup and recharge the batteries before working again. Consider giving yourself mini breaks to check in on how the game is going via social media. As long as they are not excessive and don’t hinder your work in anyway it should be fine.
5. Go to lunch during the game
Plan your lunch break during the game if the time of the game and or your time zone allow. Everyone should be taking a lunch break anyway so why not use it to watch your team? If it’s feasible go home and watch the game at home for a while to give yourself the break you deserve. If you can’t make it home at least go somewhere other than your work space to watch or listen to the game. If your team is local consider going to a sports bar that might have the game for some like minded human interaction.
March Madness should not be a productivity killer, rather it should boost your energy because you’ll be rooting for your team.
(Photo credit: basketball on the color glow via Shutterstock)
Andy Small has been a geek all his life. He works as a library paraprofessional in Missouri. To learn more about him go to andy-small.com
5 Pro Tips to Help You Ace That Job Interview
Mar 19th
(Editor’s Note: The following is an excerpt from Brian Tracy’s new book, “Earn What You’re Really Worth: Maximize Your Income at Any Time in Any Market”. Brian Tracy’s extensive personal studies in business, sales, management, marketing, and economics enabled him to move up to become the head of a $265 million company before he turned his attention to consulting, training, and personal development. For more information on the author, please visit his website and follow him on Facebook and Twitter.)
There are several things that you can do to make each interview as successful as it can possibly be. Each of these steps has an impact on helping you to get the kind of job you really want:
- Always be punctual. Allow yourself enough time to get there, taking the address and the traffic into consideration. As a general rule, employers are advised never to hire a person who arrives late for a job interview.
- Dress well for the job interview. Your clothes can account for 95 percent of the first impression you make on your prospective employer, because first impressions are almost always visual. Dress the way you would expect to dress for the job for which you are applying. Many people are hired for no other reason than that they were the best-dressed of the candidates interviewed. Many otherwise excellent men and women are disqualified by the employer at the first meeting because they did not dress well for the job interview.
- Before going into the interview, take a few moments to breathe deeply and relax your shoulders. Breathing deeply six or seven times will actually release endorphins in your brain and give you a sense of well-being and calmness. Close your eyes for a few moments and visualize yourself as calm, confident, and relaxed. Create a clear mental picture of yourself as smiling, positive, and completely in control of yourself and your emotions during the interview.
- When you meet the interviewer, smile and shake hands firmly. Look the person directly in the eye and say, “How do you do?” A good handshake is full and firm, where you grasp the entire hand and squeeze in a firm but non-aggressive way. Both men and women should give a full-palm handshake when they meet a person for the first time.
- Interview the interviewer. Most interviewers start off with a series of questions that are aimed at drawing you out and getting a better idea of who you are. You should take control of the interview by asking questions about the company, the industry, and the kind of person that the interviewer is looking for.
The more questions you ask and the more you help to uncover the real needs of the prospective employer, the more likely it is that the prospective employer will see you as being the kind of person who can fulfill those needs.
(Photo credit: Person Sitting Impatiently via Shutterstock)
Mike Vardy is a writer, speaker, and "productivityist". You can read more of his writing and learn more about him at Vardy.me, and he can be found on Twitter as @mikevardy.
Ask The Entrepreneurs: 16 Ways to Master Your Work-Life Balance as an Entrepreneur
Mar 4th
Ask The Entrepreneurs is a regular series where members of those involved in the Young Entrepreneur Council are asked a single question that aims to help Lifehack readers level up their own lives, whether in a area of management, communication, business or life in general.
Here’s the question posed in this edition of Ask The Entrepreneurs:
How do you maintain a healthy work-life balance as an entrepreneur?
1. Let Go of Fear
“Many entrepreneurs struggle with fear that if they’re not working every minute that they could possibly be working, their business will fail and they will regret not having put in more time. However, in my own experience and in observing other successful entrepreneurs, letting go of this fear not only leads to work-life balance but also more meaningful productivity and accomplishment.”
-Elizabeth Saunders, Real Life E®
2. Build Lifestyle into Your Brand
“These days so many people are focused on getting funding, explosive growth and spending 80 hours a week on their business. While that’s all great stuff, it can lead to burn out and unhappiness really quickly. Make lifestyle the most important factor in business from the beginning, and then grow with that principle in mind—less stress, more happiness.”
3. Schedule Your Life, Not Just Work
“Reserve set times in your schedule for activities that allow you to recharge and that add value to your life, such as daily exercise, a weekly date or social night, reserved time for family activities, and a yearly vacation. You not only will have something to look forward to, but also extra motivation to manage your other time well so you do not have to cancel on others—and yourself!”
-Doug Bend, The Law Office of Doug Bend
4. Set Some Boundaries
“Calm down. It’s 11 p.m. You’re not going to lose that client if you wait until tomorrow to respond to his request for a project estimate. Set work hours for yourself and stick to them. If you make yourself available at all hours—while out to dinner, while on vacation, during “sexy time”—you set a dangerous precedent!”
5. Turn It Off!
“Our smartphones are a part of our everyday lives, but as an entrepreneur, we literally sleep with it tucked under our pillow. Simply turn off the phone and be amazed at how much you can get done—you can even fit in a work out. You have to know when to separate work and life, which starts with shutting off from everything to take time for yourself. That’s why there’s a thing called voicemail!”
6. Learn Something New
“I started taking beginner piano lessons at age 26 so I could schedule time away from my computer. Now I know that my Tuesday and Thursday evenings are piano nights. I’m paying money to be there, so you better believe I’ll be shutting off my work to get there.”
7. Work It All Out
“Being an entrepreneur often uses up all of your time but it’s important to remember to stay healthy and work out. Try and add a calendar invite reminding you to go to the gym, run or do whatever fits you. If not, you’ll most likely regret it when you start seeing negative results.”
8. Figure Your Fuel
“Too often, the work-life balance discussion revolves around sleeping and exercising schedules; but for nonstop entrepreneurs, the conversation needs to begin with what we’re using for fuel. It’s important to stock up on healthy snacks that will reduce your cravings (for less healthy foods) and keep you going 24/7. Stash them in your desk, computer bag, and car for emergency use.”
-Benjamin Leis, Sweat EquiTees
9. Remember Your Friends?
“Many entrepreneurs I talk to often think about how much time off that their peers have because of their cushy corporate jobs. Entrepreneurs should try creating similar schedules as well so that they can have proper work-life balance. If corporations can make it happen, entrepreneurs can too!”
-Danny Wong, Blank Label Group, Inc.
10. Delegate Your Life!
“It’s great to delegate bookkeeping, marketing, and admin work, but for many who are just starting off your budget won’t necessarily allow for it. Get creative and delegate more of your “life” duties like childcare, cleaning house, and grocery shopping to a spouse. Having my husband help me out by doing some grocery shopping means I have more time to spend with him when we’re at home.”
-Jennifer Donogh, Young Female Entrepreneurs
11. Try Time Boxing
“If you can offload common tasks, such as scheduling and other appointment setting, you’ll free up your time to focus on the most important tasks. Time boxing will allow you to apply laser focus to one project at a time.”
-Jeff Slobotski, Silicon Prairie News
12. Put Yourself First
“If you’re an entrepreneur, your business relies heavily on your sleep and sanity. Make sure that you are putting yourself first by eating right, sleeping well and exercising (at a minimum). Remind yourself that those things are critical to thinking, creating and performing at your best, and make sure you stand firm to your commitments to all three.”
-Jenny Blake, Life After College
13. Balance Is Not “Equal”
“Personally, I’m not happy if I’m evenly dividing my time between work and other things. I really enjoy what I do, to the point that I get bored with a lot of hobbies. I focus on making sure that I’m doing well on a personal level: if I’m feeling stressed out, I’ll take a step back; if I feel like I’m not getting enough work done, I’m cool with investing more time.”
-Thursday Bram, Hyper Modern Consulting
14. You Deserve a Reward!
“It’s easy to forget about the “life” part. Unfortunately, this ends up making you burn out, while never giving yourself “me” time and enjoying the fruits of your labor. Reward yourself, whether it’s by taking a vacation, treating yourself to a day at the spa, or turning off your devices and reading a book. It will make you a better worker in the long run.”
15. What’s Your Work-Life Story?
“Whether I spend 80 hours a week working on business or I’m on vacation and give 100 percent of myself to my reflection and refueling, my experience of both are pretty much the same. I make it my priority to narrate the story of what I’m doing, how I’m feeling, and how I’m spending my time in a way that makes me feel good and balanced. The story I tell myself is what keeps me thriving.”
-Alexia Vernon, Catalyst for Action
16. Schedule It Like You Would An Important Meeting
“If you want time for yourself, you need to schedule it into your day. 4 days a week I make 2 hours for myself through Crossfit. There is nothing more important to me than my health. To ensure I never miss a class, it is scheduled into my calendar weeks in advance and my day is planned around it just like an important meeting with a client. If it’s scheduled, you will do it. If it’s not, you won’t.”
-Greg Rollett, The ProductPros
(Photo credit: Work Life Balance Writing on Businessman’s Hands via Shutterstock)
The Young Entrepreneur Council (YEC) is an invite-only nonprofit organization comprised of the world's most promising young entrepreneurs. The YEC promotes entrepreneurship as a solution to unemployment and underemployment and provides entrepreneurs with access to tools, mentorship, and resources that support each stage of their business’s development and growth.
Want Life to Be Easy? Get a System!
Mar 1st
Constantly planning and analyzing and evaluating is hand work. Having to figure it all out on the fly takes a lot of effort, and it chews up our precious supply of persistence and focus. Earlier articles have discussed the benefits of having a routine, and that’s good. I want to build on that and suggest having a system, especially one that is automated or outsourced…and can function without you.
A system is particularly important when you have lots of details to keep track of that are necessary to have and to eventually act on, but aren’t immediately necessary to do your work. In fact, they are usually in the way.
When you have to plan a marketing campaign and create a PowerPoint for a client, you want to be able to focus and not worry about follow-up emails to prospects. Yet you also want to know that all that will be handled when the time is right.
Enter: The System.
Let’s take the example of following up with prospective clients. Obviously, this is important, otherwise you never get new clients and you end up losing your business, taking a day job, and subsisting on rice and Ramen. Yuck.
But what do you do when you get a new lead? If you’re like many people (including yours truly up until a few months ago), you jotted it down in to-do lists or on an Excel spreadsheet or sticky notes and kicked it around until you closed the deal — if you ever did. Sadly, lots of leads got dropped due to poor tracking and follow through. In the same vein, each lead was treated as a special case, which required lots of thought and made it hard to compare the process and results across leads.
(Now I know why my hair is falling out.)
That’s insanely stressful, having to make up a new process all the time. At the very least, you should have a simple, reliable System, so that when you get a lead you can put the information into The System (even if it’s simply a well-maintained collection of manila folders). That way you have a plan so that, for example, on day 10 you send an email and day 20 you call and day 30 you send them a brochure. Now you can just DO, you don’t have to think (which takes work — and expends will and focus). Also, every so often you can review and analyze your System and the metrics it generates to look for opportunities for improvement.
Now Add a Zero…
A reliable manual system is a good thing to have. A person you can ask to do stuff for you is great as well, but when you introduce automation life gets fast and easy…and we like fast and easy, right?
I just got a shiny new CRM (Customer Relationship Management) service a little while ago. Now I have a single place to store prospect info. It calculates the value of my pipeline and projects cash flow, it reminds me to follow up on regular intervals, and it files correspondence according to the prospect’s email address. With a modest investment in set-up time, the thing now runs itself. Better yet, it tells me what to do so I can just do more with less work and pain…and that’s also what we all want, right?
And each time you systematize a business process, the effect is more than just cumulative — it’s multiplicative. If the systems actually integrate seamlessly (when your CRM, autoresponder, and billing system play nice with each other), then we’re talking exponential results for your efforts.
Okay, What Now?
So, look at your life and your work. Where is there lots of tasks (especially routine and mundane ones), data to be stored for later use, and steps to complete in a long drawn-out process? That’s where you can create a system.
You know, there’s probably an app for that…
(Photo credit: Close Up of Line of Dominoes via Shutterstock)
The Need for Work/Life Balance
Feb 27th
Do you work over 40 hours a week and still feel like you can’t get everything done? We have all been there. You are sitting at your desk saying…
“If I just could work 3 more hours today, or 10 more hours this week I could get all this work done.”
Then you sit there hour after hour, day after day and the work is still there, but you are more stressed out because your productivity has gotten even worse. Why, you wonder, is this happening?
We all think the solution is to just work more hours. While this sometimes works in the short term, it can have dire consequences in the long run. The problem with such long hours of focused concentration is the burnout that we have all experienced at one time or another. Especially if you are a freelancer, you have to be extra conscious of how you spend your time and you can’t afford to make these mistakes. You don’t have the security of a regular job – if you are not putting in the time, you are not getting paid. However, at the same time you don’t want overwork yourself up to the point where you are burned out.
Balance of uptime and downtime
We all need to strike a balance between our work lives and our personal lives. It is far better to have eight hours of productive, focused work than 16 hours of unfocused staring at the screen. As much as we would like to think that we can work 24/7 if we just put our minds to it – we can’t. Balance in your life means you are well rested, you don’t feel the need for coffee or stimulants to keep you going and you are able to focus on your own. You will generally feel everything is doable and you don’t have any excessive stress.
When we talk about balance in our lives we are talking about the proportions of uptime and downtime in our daily routine. Uptime is anything that requires you to think. This is what we all do when we are “working.” These are traditionally “left brain” activities such as processing emails, taking notes and analyzing information.
Downtime is anything you consider “fun” and does not require a lot of conscious thought. However, this need for balance can be a subjective idea. One person’s downtime could be another’s work drudgery and vice versa.
Switch it up
It is important to actively schedule breaks into our work day. Make sure they are short periods of true mental disengagement. Professional athletes call this performing “dissociative activities.” They know they need to balance periods of extreme concentration with a completely different activity. If you could see the locker rooms of many pro athletes during breaks on practice days, you would see them playing video games or watching movies. Even though their bodies are still clad in their uniforms their brains are completely removed from the previous tasks and are completely focused on something else.
These activities may seem to us to be mindless and without real purpose. You may think playing a short computer game on your computer during work hours when you have a 10 minute break is not a good use of your time, but it is the changing of thought patterns that is exactly what your neural pathways need.
When we are trying to insert these types of activities into our daily personal lives we can do things in our off hours such as getting a massage, catching up with friends, shopping or learning a new skill. Using the right side of the brain in creative pursuits such as art can be tremendously relaxing for this very reason.
The need for balance varies from person to person and depends on your attention span. Find out how much balance you need. During the work day, experiment on small breaks at different times and find what works best for you. Most people need 15 minutes of rest every 90 minutes of work in a day, and at least one day a week, and one week a quarter off. When you discover the pattern of breaks and rest that allows you to remain focused and productive you will have reduced your stress level and you will have more consistency in your daily routines. This self-management tip is key for your personal success and I hope that you will incorporate this into your life.
(Photo credit: Scales with Work and Life via Shutterstock)
+Thanh Pham is an obsessed productivity geek, systems thinker, blogger, avid reader and a world traveler. He specializes in time management for organizations and personal productivity for executives. Read more about him over at Asian Efficiency.