Category: Business

Are You Experiencing Overwhelm In Your Life Or Business Right Now?

Overwhelm doesn’t usually happen overnight. It can creep up on you over days, weeks, months or even years. It comes in tiny layers of stress, building in your mind and showing itself sometimes in physical form. That stiff neck and shoulders you’ve had all week. A recurring headache. General lethargy and loss of interest in your favourite hobbies.

Left untreated, overwhelm can lead to more serious physical and mental conditions. So, if you see signs of overwhelm in yourself or in your family, friends, colleagues or customers, then you may have an opportunity to act, intervene, assist or remove the cause of the stress and overwhelm.

It's easy to stop overwhelm
It’s easy to stop overwhelm

Remember, it’s ok not to be ok.

Everyone has different tolerance levels. What seems easy to you may be difficult for someone else. While you learn how to do something new quickly, it might take someone else lots of practice. This can vary from social skills to practical tasks. It might be daunting attending a networking meeting, or filing your tax return, or driving on a motorway.

Everyone is different and we are all good at different tasks too. Overwhelm can cause us to doubt ourselves. A task you could do with your eyes closed suddenly seems complicated, you’ve forgotten the steps, or the directions, or the system or process. This can cause anxiety, stress, and panic.

Symptoms of overwhelm can include an increased temperature, sweating, quicker heartrate, shaking, irritability and insomnia. One of the key symptoms is our susceptibility to distractions (otherwise known as “Squirrels”). You might call it procrastinating, deferring, postponing, or messing around, but these are all side-effects of overwhelm.

Ban the Squirrels, take back control
Ban the Squirrels, take back control

There’s often a logical reason behind why you haven’t jumped at sending that email, or made that phone call, completed that purchase or done the next task on your achievement list.

I recognise my overwhelm when I am scrolling aimlessly through Facebook or find myself watching daytime TV. If I was mentally ready to do the tasks on my achievement list I wouldn’t stop for half an hour to scroll through what my friends had for dinner or where they’re going on holiday after lockdown. Online quizzes and polls wouldn’t catch my eye and I wouldn’t look at the clock and wonder where the last hour had gone.

Make time for yourself.

If you need to watch an hour of TV to unwind and relax, that’s ok. If you want to have a blitz of news from Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, TikTok and Instagram, that’s ok too. It’s when your list of important tasks gets set aside that you might feel overwhelm creeping up on you.

Perhaps you had a deadline to meet and now there isn’t time to get that report in for your boss. They won’t be happy and you can imagine their reaction when you have to tell them. This adds a layer of stress. Or maybe you had a client appointment to prepare for and now you’re winging it. You may be thinking you could have done better or worrying about what the client thinks of you and this could cause a layer of stress.

Tips to avoid overwhelm.

  1. Allow plenty of time to achieve tasks on your list. Can you ask for more time if needed? The idea is to remove the layer of stress brought on by unreasonable deadlines and unexpected delays.
  1. Keep an eye out for symptoms. Are you feeling rushed? Any physical signs? Do you need more skills or training? Could this task be delegated to someone else? Is there anyone you know who seems stressed, angry, tired, or tearful? These are common signs of overwhelm.
  1. Look after your body as well as your mind. Simple suggestions include homecooked meals, drinking more water, having a good night of sleep. Making the time for seeing friends, exercising, and learning new skills is as important as meeting that deadline.

I know how overwhelm can cause short term and long term problems and I work with people from all over the country to help them recognise their symptoms of overwhelm. I can help put steps into place to reduce overwhelm in your business and personal life. If you’re juggling too much something will give.

Don’t let overwhelm run your life. If you find you’re bouncing from one task to another with no time to rest or relax please get in touch with me. I will help identify where you can carry on with what you’re doing and where it makes sense to outsource or delegate tasks. No task is too big or too small and if you feel overwhelmed, please give me a call.

Rachael Chiverton, Focus Guru – Giving You Your Time, Your Way

www.getfocus.guru | 07756 772950

Why Your To Do List Isn’t Getting Done

For many of us, having a To Do List is our way of remembering what we need to do and crossing items off the list once they have been achieved. Your list might be the top three things you want to achieve this morning, or it might be a list of everything you want to do today.

Achievement list is more productive
Achievement list is more productive

When working with clients, I’ve seen To Do Lists which include items that can’t possibly be achieved in a day. Sometimes people show me their To Do Lists spanning weeks or months with a bottomless pit of items.

There comes a point where a To Do List becomes more of an Ideas List, a brainstorm of items you’d like to get done, maybe, sometime, one day. You might have a list like this that never seems to get done.

Scrap Your To Do List

My advice is to bin your To Do List, that’s right, to scrap it completely, and start again. But, this time, I’d like you to create an Achievement List with all the things you’d like to get done. The simple act of changing the name of your list from “To Do” to “Achievements” mentally reinforces the good feeling you get when a task is done.

Then I’d like you to look at all the items on your Achievement List and group activities where possible. You may need to rewrite your Achievement List a few times to put things in groups to start with, but this becomes easier over time.

For example, I like to make phone calls on my walks with Missy. We have about an hours walk twice a day and this enables me to use my time twice. I still take in the scenery and fresh air and get to play with Missy, but I’m also crossing off items on my Achievement List at the same time.

Another example would be to post letters on the way to the supermarket. Both tasks need doing and if I combine them into one journey it becomes an efficient use of my time and my petrol.

Order Your Achievements

I also try to prioritise items on my Achievement List. To do this, I use a Time Intensity Grid and allocate a value to each task, whether it is a high or low intensity task using lots of energy, strength or brain power, or a high or low time task using minutes, hours or days of my time. It can help to annotate each task with HIHT, HILT, LIHT or LILT so you can prepare yourself for how long or how intense each task will be.

For example, my trip to the supermarket and posting my letters would count as a LIHT task, because although it’s easy, it takes time, especially at the moment where there are sometimes long queues to go into the supermarket.

Add Times For Your Achievements

If you have a lot of tasks on your Achievement List it can be helpful to divide your day into blocks of 15 minutes and allocate blocks of time to each task. For example, my walk with Missy takes about an hour, so that’s 4 x 15 minutes blocks of time.

I can add to this by allocating a time of day to this task, for example Missy likes a morning walk, so I can allocate 9am to 10am for our first walk. To use my time twice, I will often pre-prepare some phone calls to make during this hour as well.

Our second walk usually takes place just before an evening meal and we often meet friends on this walk to share our day and catch up on news, socially distancing of course.

Try This For Yourself

At the beginning, I encouraged you to bin your To Do List and change it into an Achievement List. I’m pleased to say my advice and tips have worked for many friends and clients over the years. I recently gave a 4Sight at a 4Networking business networking meeting talking about Achievement Lists and Using Your Time Twice.

The 4Sight was very well received and I had a 121 with one of the attendees who commented, “If nothing else, that bit (about Achievement Lists) has made this 121 worthwhile”. So, I encourage you to try this for yourself and turn your To Do tasks into Achievements.

Rachael Chiverton, Focus Guru – Giving You Your Time, Your Way

www.getfocus.guru

Summer Holiday Advice – Using Your Time Twice

Running a business in the summer holidays can be quite daunting for many of us. With the sun shining outside and temperatures rising, it can be hard to get motivated to get the work done. Sometimes we even drag out the tasks in an act of self-sabotage. We dawdle and faff about when we could be focussed and efficient.

Summer Holiday Advice - Using Your Time Twice
Summer Holiday Advice – Using Your Time Twice

The summer heat seems to have an effect on us, both physically and mentally. The warm air seems to slow things down. It can make life sluggish and lull us into feeling that time is going slower. Perhaps that’s why things seem to take longer than they should.

However, whether we like it or not, clients still need work finished and bills still need to be paid. Given the choice of staying inside working, or spending the day at the beach, I guarantee most of us would prefer the latter.

So, how do we fix this? We all have the same 24 hours in the day.

The answer is simple.

We must use our time twice.

We can’t magic 48 hours in a day, so therefore we must make the hours that we have count and take positive actions to be as productive as possible.

One of the key examples of using your time twice came up in a recent conversation with a client. They mentioned their frustration at losing time travelling to and from appointments. Sometimes this added up to hours at a time. Over the course of a month, it turned out that a whole day had been consumed by travelling hours.

We came back to this later in the conversation and I asked what they did while travelling, was it listening to music, or a podcast, or the radio?

I suggested using this time to connect with clients, to phone them informally and see how they are getting on. The phone call could just be to check in and see if they need anything, but also extending this to a genuine interest in them individually and personally. How is life going for them? Are they ok? Then listening with full attention and responding appropriately.

This is a great example of using the same time twice.

By making a point of scheduling these phone calls into driving time and calling existing clients on a regular basis often proves to have many far-reaching benefits.

  • You’ll find chatting makes the journey seem to go faster.
  • It gives a client the opportunity to compliment you on your products or services.
  • Equally, it gives a client the opportunity to complain or raise their concerns.
  • Chatting regularly enables you to reinforce your position as a key supplier they can trust.
  • It offers a forum to discuss new projects and come up with new ways of working together.
  • If they’re busy, phone calls can lead to face-to-face meetings and “coffee catch-ups”.
  • If you have similar interests, it can lead to social opportunities as well.

Although the phone calls can still be carried out when travelling by bus, taxi or train, the background noise and/or client confidentiality may prevent some topics being discussed. However, this leads to a great opportunity for you to make a quick call to arrange a face-to-face meeting.

This is just one example of how doubling up your activities and using your time twice can increase your efficiency and your effectiveness. On a regular basis, using your time twice can save many hours in the long run. It can free up your day so you can spend more time with your friends and family as well.

If you’d like to find out how you could use your time twice, the answer is simple. Book a 15-minute exploration call with me and I’ll help find those extra hours to help you achieve more.

Long lazy Summer Holidays, can these actually happen when your in business?

It’s that time of year again. Schools are have broken up for the long summer holiday and it can be easy to lose control of your time with the overnight changes to your daily routine.

I remember, as a child, this was the best time of the year. Days of unbroken sunshine. No lessons. No homework. Just days and days of playing outside. Exploring. Making friends. Learning skills. Watching hours of TV and playing games for weeks on end.

Long lazy Summer Holidays, can these actually happen when your in business?
Long lazy Summer Holidays, can these actually happen when your in business?

But for working parents, especially those with toddlers and young children, the summer holiday can have a significant impact at home and at work. That “quiet time” after the school run has gone. The “quiet time” while homework is being done has gone. Even the “quiet time” doesn’t feel like “quiet time” as you’re on alert for the next argument, breakage, injury, or other incident.

Even with independent activities such as TV, films, online games and instant messaging, to occupy and entertain young minds, there’s still the feeling of guilt and peer pressure that you’re not spending enough quality time with your children or that your business will suffer if you do.

This is where positive time management skills help you to control your time.

  • If you can control your time, it can feel like you’ve made more time in the day.
  • If you can control your time, you will use your time better and achieve more.

I can help you take back control of your time.

There’s no need to re-invent the wheel. I can’t stop time or magic more hours in the day. But I can work with you to create a positive time management strategy so you can fit your work goals and your personal goals into the time you have available.

Time waits for no one, so it makes sense to make the best use of your time every day. I can help you make taking control of your time a habit and a lifestyle choice.

They say there’s no time like the present, so these are some of my top tips for controlling your time in the summer holidays.

  • Activities

Create a list of indoor and outdoor activities which can be enjoyed with or without you. This can include sports, clubs, TV, films, online games and messaging.

  • Work Hours

Discuss your work hours with your family. Make sure they know when it is ok to interrupt and when you need to concentrate. A key example of this is when you’re on the phone.

  • Liaise With Others

Can you ask your partner to look after the children for a few hours? Or a grandparent, or other friend or relative? Liaising with other parents can give you hours of uninterrupted work time and your children can enjoy hours of play time with their friends.

There’s no reason why you can’t be Super-Mum or Super-Dad this summer. You can keep on top of your workload. You don’t need to lose any clients or put anyone off working with you. You can be chief organiser and chief entertainer, planning exciting activities and outings.

It doesn’t have to cost a fortune to have fun during the summer. It certainly doesn’t have to impact on your business. You can make time for everyone and everything you want.

If you’re struggling to control your time this summer, let’s have a chat.

I can show you how positive time management can help you take control and make the best use of your time. The clock is always ticking, but time doesn’t have to run away with you. Please phone me on 07756 772950 and let’s get started on your summer time strategy.

“Perfection has to do with the end product, but excellence has to do with the process.”

“Perfection has to do with the end product, but excellence has to do with the process.”

(Jerry Moran, American politician, 1954 – )

“Perfection has to do with the end product, but excellence has to do with the process.”
“Perfection has to do with the end product, but excellence has to do with the process.”

Is your process delivering excellence?

Does your end product deliver perfection?

I specialise in processes and procedures. I learn about your business then research the most appropriate systems and help you implement them so you achieve excellence in what you deliver.

Book your call with me today.

“Either you run the day or the day runs you.”

“Either you run the day or the day runs you.”

(Jim Rohn, American business philosopher 1930 – 2009)

Do you run your day, or does it run you?
What can you do to take back control of your day?

Do you run your day, or does it run away with you?

Do you understand where your time is going?

Do you know which tasks are draining you?

Do you know which clients are taking up too much of your time?

Do you have too many hours work for the hours you want to spend working?

I specialise in processes and procedures. I learn about your business then research the most appropriate systems and help you implement them so you run your day, it doesn’t run you.

Book your call with me today.