Self Employed Success

As I sit here writing my “to do” list for the upcoming months, I can feel that weird little tingle in the pit of my stomach: Overwhelm. There’s so much to do! How will I get it all done?

Then I remember all the tricks and tips I’ve learned over the years of how to manage entrepreneurial overwhelm:

1. Breathe. Stop whatever you’re doing, and take several deep breaths. Close your eyes and take a visual and emotional break from the craziness.

2. Get Organized. Write down your “to do” list all in one place (instead of having all those little Post-It notes all over your desk). Next, write a priority next to each item on your list. Is it urgent (“U”)? Is it Important But Not Urgent (“I”)? Is it something that has to be done this month, or can it wait until next month?

3. Get Help. Look at your list and determine if everything on it must be done by you. Don’t fall into the trap of “Oh, it will take me longer to explain it to someone than to just do it myself.” Instead, think of the “explaining time” as an investment: once you explain it one time, the other person can document the procedure and repeat it over and over again.

4. Action Alleviates Anxiety. Pick one high-priority task on your “to do” list and do it. Nothing relieves stress better than getting off your butt and taking action. Don’t fall in the trap of picking a low-priority task just because it’s easy. Do the things that matter.

5. Just Say No. Look at your “to do” list and ask yourself if you can simply say No to any of these tasks? Remember, you are in control of your task list and your calendar. Only you can overbook yourself, so only you can say No to requests for your time.

6. Focus. Avoid the temptation to multi-task and choose instead to focus solely on the task in front of you. If you have to, set a kitchen timer and tell yourself you’ll work on the task for 15 or 30 minutes without taking a break or doing other work.

I think I’ll start by taking a nice long breath…

A woman in one of my mastermind groups posed a question today: why did she spend all her time doing research and never actually go on with “doing” the thing she was researching? She loved looking up information, finding resources, interviewing people, gathering facts. But taking these facts and applying them to her business seemed to always be put on the back burner.

It’s called “analysis paralysis.” The idea is this: if I could just gather this information, if I could just find this fact, if I could make this list a bit longer — you get the drift. As a small business coach, I see this my clients get caught in this trap all the time.

The cause is simple: it’s easier for many people to research than to “do” because gathering research is often a successful task, while acting on the research is fraught with the possibility of failure, stress, or pressure. So we stay in the research mode because it’s safe and we get a lot of positive feelings about having uncovered the information we need.

Don’t get me wrong: research is vital. I’ve seen many businesses fail to thrive because they haven’t done the marketing research necessary to see if people WANT TO BUY the service or product theywant to sell. The key, as always, is balance. When you find yourself doing more and more research, then you can bet you’re procrastinating on the “doing” side of things. You have two choices:

1. Try to figure out why you’re not doing the work, or
2. Just do the work.

Either choice is valid, but guess what? Choice 1 is still “research!”

I have ebooks and audios sitting on my hard drive that I’ve never consumed. I bet you do, too.

Free information is everywhere, and even if it’s excellent, it’s not always easy to digest it and create a strategy around it.

I think the next place of growth for service professionals and information marketers is to take all the free information you research and produce for your clients, synthesize it, and give it back to people in a practical, DO-able format.

Want to be unique? If you can get people to consume your information products, TEACH people how to consume it and use it, it will set you apart from the crowd.  The reason people spend money on my teleclasses and live training classes is that:

1.  They get to ask questions
2.  They’re given bite-sized homework assignments
3.  They can submit the homework to me for review/comments
4. They walk away with a do-able action plan

Even offering a free teleclass sets you apart from the crowd in your industry, because it allows people to receive a chunk of information, learn how to apply it, and ask questions to clarify points. If you’re not offering free teleclasses, now is a good time to start.

Information is everywhere. But smart people are now saying, “Make it work for me in the real world of busy schedules and conflicting priorities. Help me focus.”

If you want to be unique and stand out from the crowd, start helping your customers consume, digest and USE the information you’re giving them.

If you can simplify a complicated topic, if you can save your customers the time of having to do the research and analysis themselves, if you can cut through the noise and help your customers know what’s relevant and important, then you’ll always be valuable to them.

Mary came to me to create big, new changes for her business. How exciting, having a big dream! She had a million ideas and a solid, well thought-out task lists to back up the big plan. Except there was one small problem – Mary’s dream was dying on the vine. By thinking big she was overwhelming herself. She was paralyzed.

Mary asked me, “How do you accomplish all the things you do? Do you have some mysterious time management system that I need to know about?”

Nope. No time management system. No crystal ball. No magic wand. Just one mantra: Think Big and Think Small.

Thinking Big is about dreaming and strategic design; it answers the questions, “What do I want?” and “Why do I want it now?”

Thinking Small is about tactical planning; it answers the question, “How do I accomplish it?”

Great things are accomplished through thinking in small steps. Anyone who has tried to stop smoking or lose weight knows you do it one day (one hour, one moment) at a time. Anyone who has attempted to do a 30-mile hike knows it’s simply a case of one foot in front of the other.

People with big business dreams often forget these well-known truths about how to tackle big things. Mary became frustrated because things weren’t moving fast enough. She was ready to give up her dream because there was too much to do and she didn’t know which task to do first. When she did start a task, she abandoned it if it took longer — or was more complicated — than she thought it should be.

We live in a world of instant gratification. It numbs us to what’s really important: to live the big, juicy, vibrant life you desire. We’re afraid that thinking small and taking small steps forward because we equate it with being small and having a small life. Nothing could be further from the truth.

No matter how much you try, you can only really do one thing at a time. You may think that multi-tasking makes you more productive, but studies show that multi-tasking actually reduces your ability to accomplish tasks. So instead of trying to do five tasks simultaneously I’m advocating this approach: put exquisite, conscious effort into one task at a time, complete it, and move on to the next.

How do you know what small step to take first? You have been gifted with four pillars of life the day you were born: your intellect, your emotions, your intuition, and other human beings. Start by asking yourself, “What one small thing can I do, right now, that will move me towards my big goal?” Don’t give up if the answer doesn’t come to you immediately; have patience and allow the answer to bubble up to the surface.

If the answer still doesn’t come to you, ask other people for help. Talk to supportive people who fully understand your big dream and can help you to look at the small tasks you must do to accomplish the goal. Write down the tasks or draw them on a piece of paper and ask yourself, “Does this feel right?” Write in pencil so that you can re-arrange it until it truly feels right to you. Then do one small task at a time.

I’m encouraging you to do both: Dream Big, Think Small, and you will succeed.

Recently, Susan Klein gave a teleclass to Passion For Business subscribers entitled, “Stress Makes Us Stupid.” Wow! What a great class!

Not only did she tell us why stress makes us stupid (biologically-speaking), but she tells us what to do about it. Great advice, good tips and wonderful stories…listen for free here:

http://www.passionforbusiness.com/teleclass/susan-klein.htm