Category: Personal Development

Personal growth, personal development, work-life balance for small business owners, freelancers, and entrepreneurs

Quote of the Week: Practice and More Practice Makes Perfect

Practice Makes Perfect

Practice, practice, and more practice…what’s necessary in life and in your business.

What we hope ever to do with ease, we must learn first to do with diligence. – Samuel Johnson

These words of wisdom apply to business, sports, education…nothing is easy on the first attempt – unless you have a natural talent at it – and even then, the more you practice, the better you get .

For the rest of us, we must practice over and over again, until a task or skill can be completed with ease.

This concept is easy to understand when we apply it to sports or education: you don’t wake up one morning and easily run a marathon or attend one foreign language class and then speak it fluently the next day.

Why then, do so many of us expect overnight success after starting a business?

No matter what business you are in, you will need to put in time and practice – to  work diligently, in order to experience success. So keep working and have patience that the “job” of business owner gets easier the more time we spend on it.

Quote of the week 10-29-12 Work At Home Balance

Top photo credit (derived from): *sean via photopin cc

This Week’s Motivation: Balance is Boundary Management

 

Work Life Balance is Better Boundary Management

I love the quote below about balance being better boundary management, not better time management! Setting those boundaries for career, family and personal time makes it easier to make the right choices.

 

 

Do you have a separate space at home designated for work: either a room or a special table/desk in a family area that is only used for business?

Can you set boundaries for yourself? When you get online for business purposes, are you able to focus on using social media for work only or do you get distracted by family posts on Facebook or “wish-list” items on Pinterest?

Today is a perfect example for me of setting boundaries and making choices: my daughter has a day off from school. Do I sleep in since she won’t be getting up at her normal time or do I get up at the usual time to get my work done so I can spend some time with her later?

For me, sticking to a regular routine and schedule is the best way to keep my boundaries balanced between work and family time. Hope this quote inspires you to find more balance by managing boundaries in your home!

Top photo courtesy of MorgueFile.com

Quote of the Week: Time Management and Priorities

2 Time Management Tips for a Busy Time of Year

I love this quote about time management because it makes us take a whole new look at the concept of “managing time”.

“Time management is really  a misnomer – the challenge is not to manage time, but to manage ourselves. The key is not to prioritize what’s on your schedule, but to schedule your priorities.”  Stephen Covey

And it’s always around this time of year when things get a little crazy in my house…between school activities, Halloween, Thanksgiving, and then Christmas, the “lazy days of summer” are long behind us.

So these last 3 months of the year are when I need to put my best time management skills into practice. Which is always easier said than done… But if we follow the suggestion in this quote and look at managing ourselves instead of managing time, then we’ll have a much better chance of getting everything done in our business.

So how do we follow this advice? Here are two quick tips:

#1: Manage Yourself

Recognize your strengths and weaknesses, then apply strategies that work with your personality.

For example, this time of year is probably not the best time to implement a totally new filing system in my office. Since I know things are only going to get busier at home (which usually means I get a little more stressed), I need to keep things in order now and work on new office systems in January.

#2: Schedule your priorities

What are the top priorities in your business? Once you’ve identified them, don’t just put them on your master To-Do List. Assign them a specific time slot on your weekly calendar.

Is work for a client due? Need to write 2 blog posts this week? Working on a long-term project like an eBook? Give each priority an “appointment” time on your weekly schedule, just like you would assign meetings or calls. Giving your priorities designated times on your calendar makes it easier to stick to a schedule and say “no” to things which may come up unexpectedly.

Do you agree with this quote? Have any great time management tips to share? Comment below!

 

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Your Business: Focus On Income Producing Activities

Focus on Income Producing Activities

As a home business owner, you probably wear many “hats”: marketing, sales, customer service, research & development,  bookkeeping…to name a few. With all those day-to-day responsibilities, it can be very easy to get distracted from the kind of work you must do every day to stay in business – Income Producing Activities (IPA).

If you feel like you are crazy busy in your business, but at the end of the day wonder what exactly you accomplished, maybe you are spending too much time on “busy work”, not income producing work.

Start tracking your daily business activity: keep a list of everything you do, no matter what the task. After a few days (or at the end of the week), look over your list. How many of those tasks were directly related to your specialty and produced income for your business?

Stop and think about why you aren’t concentrating on Income Producing Activities:

Is this a new business venture and fear of failure is winning out?

Have you started too many “big projects” at once and can’t seem to finish any of them?

Do you feel that as an Entrepreneur, you should be doing everything by yourself to prove you can be successful?

These are just a few of the questions I’ve struggled with over the years in my business ventures. Without a “boss”, no one is telling us exactly what we must do every day to earn a paycheck…

So we need to keep it simple and stay focused on our IPAs.

  • Make a list of your business’ Income Producing Activities
  • Do at least one IPA every day
  • Don’t waste time on tasks that you are not a specialist in – get help! Or get training in those areas that will increase your ability to create more IPAs

Yes, being a business owner is hard work. But you can help yourself make that hard work more rewarding by focusing on your specialty – the skills that produce income and the reason you wanted to become a business owner in the first place.

Top photo credit: kpi via photopin cc

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Home Business Tip to Focus On Incoming Producing Activities