I am back after a couple of weeks off and it was truly amazing (and necessary). I planned to spend time on both strategy and “R&R”, but listened to my body and knew that I needed to spend more time on the rest & relaxation side.
Amidst my doing very little, I actually learned a lot. I wanted to share some of the revelations I learned and lessons that were reinforced while I took the time to recharge my battery:
The Internet is Toxic: It’s amazing how much information that you read online can put you in a bad mood. While I intended to be mostly “unplugged”, I did go online from time to time, and often found what I was reading putting me into a questionable mental state. As my friend Tim Sanders says, be aware of your brain diet. What goes into your head can have a profound effect on your state of mind and your work output. Shut it off if you need to.
Fortunately I have decent self control and am going to be making it a priority to actually shut down my browsers for a good part of my work day, because if they are up, it’s too tempting to “go surfing”. If you can’t trust yourself, Barry Moltz told me about the “Self Control app” that blocks access to emails and selected websites (like Twitter and Facebook) for a pre-determined amount of time.
Email is Evil: I am sure you have heard about how much time is wasted on email ad nauseum, but I really didn’t appreciate it fully until this week. I took the time to unsubscribe from sources that I am not interested in and those I am but never get around to reading. I also was amazed that when I told folks I wasn’t available, my daily email decreased around 75%. That’s powerful.
I use Outlook for my calendar, so I can’t shut it down like I can browser. However, I have changed the frequency of when it checks for messages to just a few times a day.
Some People Don’t Care: No matter what you tell other people (i.e. I am not available), some people are pushy and just don’t care. If you are a people pleaser, you need to recognize that you need to stick to your systems every day and not let others get in the way. If they don’t want to respect your rules, don’t let that knock you off track. They’ll be there when you are ready to get to them or they are not worth it.
Blocking Tasks: When I write, I tend to do it prolifically. The same goes for other tasks. You will get so much more done if you schedule out chunks of time for a specific activity (for example, I tend to write 10 or more blog posts in one sitting). Then, when you are done, you can take a break to go on Twitter, make a phone call or do whatever else it is that you need to do. Try to carve out longer chunks of time to focus- you will be amazed at how much you get done versus moving back and forth quickly between tasks.
Setting Limits: There are a number of activities that I do that are important to my platform and business, but that take up quite a bit of time and are longer-term in nature (code for does not produce immediate revenue). These are things like meeting new people via phone or in person, media interviews, etc. I have decided to set even more strict limits on these activities than before. That means only a couple of each per week, no matter what. Once the quota is filled, it’s filled. This will ensure that I keep a balance between short-term and long-term efforts in my business. If you have tasks that are taking up far too much time, but are still important, try to set some limits.
I hope you can take away some good tips from my experience and stay tuned for a listing from the CarolRoth.com community next week on ways to recharge your own battery.
