Terry, Author at Terry League

Resolutions: Three Words for the New Year

New Year’s resolutions are not something I normally do each year – instead, I work on yearly business and personal goals each January. I’ve read a few posts lately though, where people are choosing three words for 2012, as an alternative to resolutions.

This sounds like a unique way to create a plan that centers on the most important things in your business (or life), so I’m posting my three words as my business resolutions to hold myself accountable and to share with you:

Focus – Share – Grow

Focus: to focus on the most important things in my business; the items on my To-Do List that move my business forward (not necessarily the things that I like to do or I find easy to do). To focus on 3 top priorities every day that will make my business stand out.

Share: to share the knowledge that I’ve gathered over the years about running a home business and being a WAHM with even more people who can benefit from it; to help other business owners and mompreneurs learn from my mistakes and successes so they can move forward quickly.

Grow: to grow in my business and in my personal development, with goals twice as big as last year’s, as I step out of my comfort zones; to learn something new everyday; to set aside weekly time for my own training and education in my business; to read at least one new personal growth book each month.

Next I plan on posting my three words on my desk so I can look at them everyday (sounds like a good reason to clean up my desk and re-organize my work space for the new year).

Do you have three words chosen for 2012? Share them here or on my Facebook Page – I’d love to hear them!

What a Nasty Virus Taught Me About Prioritizing

My Christmas and New Year’s holidays didn’t go exactly as planned: I came down with a nasty virus Christmas evening (luckily after all the celebrations). So I basically “lost” a week’s worth of office time that I had originally set aside for catching up, planning and organizing for the New Year. Now that I’m finally on the mend, I’ve realized there was a lesson to be learned from my unexpected illness.

Being sick for the last week has shown me that I need to be much better at prioritizing. When you feel so bad that you can only manage to do the “most” important tasks, you get a very clear picture of what is truly vital to your business and what non-essential things take up too much of your time.

No one wants to start out the New Year sick, but I’m choosing to be thankful for an eye-opening experience that is helping me make goals and plans that focus on the necessities, not the “fun” or more “comfortable” stuff.

Look at your own To-Do list: if you write down the 3-5 most important things to do for your business today, how much time does it really take to accomplish those tasks? If you don’t get those 3-5 things done in a day, what have you spent your time on instead? If you only had time (or the energy) to accomplish just 3 things today that would keep your business afloat, why not keep that same focus every day?

Most of us who start and own a business spend so much time researching, reading, organizing, planning, strategizing, worrying…that we get stuck spending time on things that aren’t always necessary – maybe just comfortable.

So my advice is to make your daily To-Do List based on the 3-5 most essential tasks – what you MUST get done that day to keep your business alive. The other items on your list should take a back seat – these items may still be important to your business, but if you got an unexpected virus and lost a week’s time in your office, no long-term harm would come (except for the delay in your own goals or schedule) if they didn’t get done until next week.

I usually don’t make New Year’s Resolutions, but thanks to a nasty virus, I am making my first (and only?) one for 2012: To work with concentrated focus every day on the 3-5 essential tasks that keep my business alive and moving forward. All other items on my lengthy To-Do List are non-essential and most likely the “comfortable” tasks that will be waiting for me when I have finished the more important things.

Focus on the Clients (Not Yourself)

Focus on the Clients

Have you ever had a week where your To-Do list just seems to keep growing on its own? As soon as you get 2 things done, the phone rings and suddenly you’ve added 3 more things to the list?

Or maybe it’s not a phone call that brings up new items for the list; maybe as you are thinking about some part of your business, you are the one who comes up with 3 great new ideas that are added to your To-Do list…

As our business grows and expands in several new directions this year, I am finding myself a little overwhelmed at my ever growing To-Do list. I find myself working on one task while ideas for new projects pop into my head. So I’ll add a few things to my To-Do list for later and try to finish the task at hand.

While it’s somewhat stressful to have a To-Do list that seems to be a mile long, it’s also exciting to think about new projects:

What can I do for project A today?

Do I have enough time to work on project B today?

Where can I find the resources to finish the outline for project C?

…and so on…

But after reading an insightful article “It’s Not About You in FourSquare and Other Social Channels” by Shel Holtz, I’ve come to realize that a lot of what fills up my days lately seems to focus on what I want to do for my projects. When really the focus should be on the clients:

What do my clients (or potential clients) need?
What service/product will best help my clients?

When I focus on the clients, look at my To-Do list, and ask myself “what items on this list do the clients need the most?” it becomes much easier to prioritize and get things done.

Suddenly, my mile-long list becomes much shorter: I now can focus on the 2-3 most important items that benefit my clients today.

How many times do we start a new project (or even a new business) because it’s something we think is fun or something that excites us?

Maybe our focus should remain on the clients – the reason we stay in business – and plan our projects or new ventures around what the client really wants; on what excites the client.

So as I’m putting a focus on the clients and what they need, I’m working on a much shorter, more meaningful To-Do list today – how about you?

Image courtesy of (and derived from) Pixabay

Find Time to Learn a New Skill (With a Busy Schedule)

Make time for learning new skills

You may have the desire to learn something new and know it will make a difference in your business (or life), but with your busy schedule, how do you find time to learn a new skill?

If you start a new job or work at a larger company with established training programs, then a system is already in place for you and time is built into your workday for training. That training program ensures the time, focus and action necessary to master a new skill.

So as a business owner or entrepreneur, develop your own training program! It doesn’t have to be anything complicated; just a simple system that you follow when you learn a new skill. Your time is valuable! By setting up an organized system that you put into place when you learn a new skill, you won’t feel like you’ve wasted time (or money) trying to learn something that you never use again.

So what would a simple training program look like? Follow these steps each time you want to learn a new skill in your business:

(1) Schedule “training” time into your weekly schedule. Don’t think you can just squeeze in the time to learn something – by putting your training time on your weekly schedule, you are making it a priority. It might mean you get up an hour earlier each day or stay up an hour later each night – but we can all find an extra hour here and there in our regular schedule.

(2) Take immediate action with each new skill. The best way to retain something you’ve just been taught is to take action. If you are attending a teleseminar on how to upload a YouTube video, practice that skill as soon as the event has ended. We see this with our kids all the time – you show your child how to tie her shoe and immediately ask her to try it – if she watches you but never participates, trying it on her own later is going to be more difficult.

(3) Teach someone else how to do it. Do you find that one of the best ways to learn (and retain) information about a subject is to teach that subject to someone else? If I have attended an event or watched a video on how to deal with new Facebook changes (creating Custom Lists for example); then showing one of my clients how to do it is going to guarantee that knowledge sticks with me.

(4) Give yourself credit. If you are in the process of learning a new skill and it’s slow-going or a bit frustrating, keep yourself motivated. Acknowledge the progress you make each step of the way. Have you written down the steps necessary to learn the new skill? Then also keep track of what steps you have completed along the way. Do you use goal posters? Make a “What I Have Learned Today” poster as well.

As business owners or entrepreneurs, we may already have so much on our plates that the thought of learning a new skill sounds too stressful. But with a system in place, we can find time to learn new skills, put them into practice and see the positive results in our business (and ourselves).

“Develop a passion for learning.
If you do, you will never cease to grow.”
Anthony J. D’Angelo

This article was originally published League Computer Solutions, Inc.

photo credit (derived from): Oleh Slobodeniuk via photopin cc