productivity – Page 11 – Michele Christensen

Easing solopreneur overwhelm

When I talk to solopreneur business owners, one of the themes that emerges is overwhelm. There’s just so much to do and even if you have help there’s a lot to learn and manage. One area where you can ease some of your overwhelm is in how you manage your projects. All too often, we put something like “Re-do website” on our project list, and it never gets started much less done. The problem with that project is that it can’t be “done” because it isn’t clear. Most of us would just look at a project like that and get a sick feeling and skip it today, then tomorrow then the next day. It hangs there and makes us feel bad. To reduce the overwhelm in a project like this, I suggest the following 3 steps:

Start by getting clear on exactly why the project needs to be done and what you hope to accomplish by changing your website. Once you know why you are doing something, much of what else you need to know becomes clear. How much to spend, how high a priority to place, what time frame, etc all become much clearer when you know why you are doing something.
Once you are clear on the why, you can define the scope of what needs to be done. Defining the scope of a project helps you to know when it’s done. It will also help you avoid “feature creep,” or the tendency to add things in along the way.
Once you’ve defined the desired outcomes and scope of the project, make a list of the tasks needed to complete the project. Start with just the first few if that’s as far as you can see. The key here is to keep the steps really small – as small as they need to be to stave off overwhelm. For example, your first step might be to find a web person, but that’s still a big, vague task. I suggest starting with a task such as “Make a list of 5 people I can call for a referral.” Next might be “Spend 1 hour reading up on how to hire a web person” followed by “Call people on list.” In each case, the task is very small and focused and “done” is clearly defined.

When I talk to someone who is feeling overwhelmed, using these three steps can often help. Tell me about how you got out of overwhelm on a recent project in the comments.

Measuring things that actually matter

One of the most important things you can do to continue to build your business is to measure how well your efforts are working. There’s tons of information out there about things you must do, should do, would be foolish not to do, etc. but really the only criteria for deciding whether to do something is if it works for you. I love this analogy: When a plane takes off, it’s almost always pointed in the wrong direction because runways are only built in certain directions. Once the plane is airborne, the pilot looks at his controls and determines how to adjust his direction. At that point, the pilot has just 3 options: continue in the same direction, fire the left thruster to turn right or fire the right thruster to turn left. He or she makes a choice and repeats the process once the new direction is established. The pilot continues to repeat this process until reaching the destination.

It’s much like that in our business. We can take a good guess at what direction in which to start, but we’re unlikely to have the best answer right off the bat. Once we make a business choice, we then have to determine if it’s helping us get to our goals and readjust course if necessary. If you find that you are off-course, don’t give up – instead, make a small adjustment that brings you closer to the right course. This is the basis for building a successful business, not getting everything correct right out of the gate.

However, the critical thing to decide is WHAT to measure. It’s easy to focus on things that can be easily seen in numbers – how many Twitter followers, how many Facebook fans, how many newsletter subscribers, how much website traffic, etc but those figures alone may not give you the information you need to course correct. How will getting that magic number of followers, fans, subscribers or visitors get you where you want to go? What comes after “so that?” For example, “I want 10,000 Facebook fans so that…………….”

If you are looking for single pieces of data that can inform you by themselves, you may want to think about things like:

gross sales
number of customers
number of sales

These are figures that will help you determine if your business is growing. There are also more complex pieces of data that can be helpful such as the percentage of people who buy after visiting a sales page or which products make up your gross sales. I’ll cover these in a later post, but for now I encourage you to not only start doing some measurement but also to make sure you are measuring things that matter.

What do you measure in your business? How is it helpful to you? Leave a comment and tell me about it.

(PS – measurement is one of the skills I cover in my free e-course “5 Essential Skills for Solopreneur Success.” If you’re reading this on my blog, sign up using the box to the right. Otherwise, head to my homepage and sign up there.)

Email isn’t a business activity

Talk to any group of business people and you’re likely to hear people crushed by the burden of email. The stats are just incredible – I spoke to someone who owns a small company who gets a staggering 1,000 emails a day! You can optimize your time spent on email, but that only goes so far. I think one of the key things to remember is that email isn’t really a business activity, it’s a way of communicating. You could handle some of those emails by other means like phone, snail mail, Skype or in person conversations. I’m not saying you should, just pointing out that the defining characteristic of the activity is not that it’s email but what you are accomplishing. When I go to a concert, the defining characteristic of that activity is that it’s a concert not how I got there.

When I work with someone who feels burdened by email, the first step is always to optimize how the email is handled. Once we’ve done that, what’s left is communication about some other critical business issue such as customer service, employee development, sales, personal development or business building. Once we establish that the true nature of the activity, it’s much easier to prioritize it and feel good about it.

I would almost make the argument that email hasn’t added any new activities to the work of having a business. People have communicated with customers, co-workers and suppliers since there was a such thing as business. What has changed is the number of communications we are part of. Email is “cheap” in terms of cost, time and effort so we do more of it than we would if we were communicating the same thing by other means.

Today, when you are “doing” your email I invite you to look at what you are really doing via those emails and put a name to it. Then, consider where in your priorities it should be. Leave a comment and tell me about your experience with doing this today.

How long should a voicemail be?

I tend to leave longer voicemails than most, but let me explain before you hate my habit!

One of my favorite business topics to study and coach on is productivity. I try to always make sure I’m getting the most I can out of every effort I make. For both myself and the person I’m calling, this means that whenever it’s possible I leave a voicemail with all the information in it someone needs to answer my question and call me back. If I’m calling about a bill, I leave my account number, invoice number, my identifying information and exactly what my question is. That way, the other person can research the answer and probably leave me a voicemail with all the information I need. Two calls, problem solved. The alternative is leaving just a name and phone number and playing phone tag for days on end, which I dislike.

I got to thinking about this when I heard an “expert” say that he deplores my type of voicemail and that nobody should ever leave more than a name, number and possibly a subject. What an utter waste of time! People are busier than ever, it’s almost impossible to catch people by phone without an appointment and nobody likes phone tag – how many more reasons are there for leaving enough information to get what you need? Yes, sometimes my messages can go on for over a minute, but it’s voicemail – save it and play it whenever it suits you. I don’t understand the logic that days of phone tag taking much more than 2 minutes is preferable to a 1-2 minute voicemail.

To each, their own I suppose…. but you won’t catch me leaving a vague voicemail unless I’ve been specifically told to.

What kind of voicemails do you prefer? What kind do you leave? Post a comment and tell me about it.

Every day, do something to build your business

As a solopreneur, it’s so easy to sucked into working on what’s in front right now rather than what will help you build the business you want to have later. Always “firestomping” may keep the business from burning down but probably won’t help you get ahead. A certain amount of time to crank out some tasks is really important, but make sure to spend time every day doing something to create, grow and build the business you dream of.

What are these activities? They vary from business to business, but here’s some ideas to get you thinking:

Building your community of people interested in what you offer. This includes social media, real life and your newsletter.
Planning your next projects and long-term projects
Brainstorming
Educating yourself
Creating new products or services to sell

That’s just a few of the things you could be doing to build your business. What else do you do to build your business? How often? Leave a comment and let me know.

Solopreneurs must create work/personal separation

Solopreneurs must create work and personal separation

When I worked at a job outside the house, it was easy to separate my work and personal life. I got up, got dressed in work clothes (which weren’t the clothes I wore outside of work), went to my job, and came home. As soon as I left, there was no connection to work. I never had a remote login or 24-hour on-call status, so it was easy to say “I’m done.”

Now that I work from home, it’s much harder. It’s tempting to just check in when I’m enjoying a quiet Saturday morning or to go down the rabbit hole of checking email. One way I manage this is by having separate work and personal email addresses. I was surprised to learn at a recent Hubspot webinar on email marketing that 88% of survey respondents did not have separate work and personal email addresses!

This is something I’ve had as long as I’ve been self-employed. When I’m out having fun, the last thing I want is work intruding on my time. Don’t get me wrong, I LOVE my business and tend to work too much already but I don’t want to think about work when I’m doing something else. If I’m out hiking or visiting family on a weekend, I don’t even want to know about loose ends that need to be taken care of. If I read an email and need to do something about it, I don’t want that hovering in my thoughts while I’m having fun.

As solopreneurs, we ARE the business and it becomes much harder to separate and take a break than for people who have a job with someone else. But you absolutely have to carve out some time to disconnect or you’ll lose a lot of the biggest benefit of being self-employed – freedom. I strongly recommend separate work and personal email addresses for solopreneurs. Try this tiny step and see if you feel more at ease when you’re “off.”

Do you have separate business and personal email addresses? Why or why not?

What to do about spam email

On the heels of my recent post How not to build a mailing list and my recent newsletter article on clearing your email inbox, I thought I’d give you some information on what to do about those pesky spammers.

First, use the “Mark as Spam” button on your email service provider (Gmail, Hotmail, Yahoo, or through your hosting account). Every provider I’ve ever seen offers a way to mark messages as spam so you never have to see a message from that sender. It’s also an important public service because your provider will use that information to improve spam filters. I wanted to include this tip because so many people struggle with getting too much email and with this one step you can help reduce your email volume permanently.

Second, if you feel it’s warranted, report the spammer to the FTC. This is done by forwarding the entire email to spam@uce.gov (link to FTC information HERE). I have done this on occasion, when I’ve felt the the sender was particularly egregious in their violation of the spam laws or they continued to send to me after I requested to be removed. The FTC accumulates this information to build possible cases against spammers, so your forwarded email contributes to their efforts to reduce the spam in the world.

What do you do when you get spam? Have you ever reported it? Leave a comment and let me know.

How relevant are GTD contexts to the Solopreneur?

Sometimes the context for an activity is critical

(If you’re not familiar with GTD, it’s the productivity and time management system outlined in the book “Getting Things Done” by David Allen.)

When I first read “Getting Things Done,” (“GTD“) I loved it. There were a handful of points that changed my life and the way I manage my time and one of them was contexts. The idea that our tasks occur in a physical setting or context, and that by segregating your to-do list into GTD contexts, you’ll have a ready-made list of tasks that are relevant to the context you are in. This idea helped me tremendously – when I was planning to go out and do errands, I had an errand list. If I was doing messy home repair, I had a home improvement list. If I was at my desk, I had an admin list.

It worked great for a while, but as is almost inevitable my life changed over time. My system no longer worked and I felt more scattered and stressed than I needed to be. When I looked at the problem, I realized that as someone who is self-employed and works from home, contexts aren’t all that important. Most of what I do both personally and professionally occurs at home in casual clothes. I do tag a few to-do items that I need to go out for or have some other noteworthy characteristic in their context, but for the most part, context is not very relevant to me. What is more relevant is blocking my time out for work and personal time, so that’s what I now do.

So the question is, how much do solopreneurs who work from home need GTD contexts? Do you use them or something similar? Is it a useful concept for you life right now? Why or why not?

Product review: Google tasks

It’s no secret that I’m a huge fan of Google products. I use gmail even though my email appears to come from my domain. I use Picasa for photos, Google Calendar, Google keyword tool, Google analytics, Google docs and Google contacts. I love that almost everything they do, aside from being free, works great.

When I switched to an Android phone, I was stymied by what to do with my tasks and projects. I had been using a Blackberry before that, and while the task function wasn’t overly impressive I was able to make it work. If I wanted to stay with Google and make full use of the seamless sync between my desktop and phone it seemed that Google tasks was my only option. The problem was that Google tasks is such a low-feature system that I had to really do some serious work-arounds to get it to even come close to my needs. A lot of people were complaining about it, and it seemed really out of sync with the high level of quality of their other services. I decided to gamble and set myself up on Google tasks with the hope that soon they would upgrade the functionality and it would be as good as all the other products I use and love.

Almost a year later, I decided to switch again because it was just too hard to stay on top of everything I had to do with the system I was using at the time. There hadn’t been any pending upgrades to the task manager announced, and a year was the longest I was willing to wait. Things that are weak on Google tasks include:

There’s no way to put a recurring task in, so you can create a task that occurs every Monday, every 3 days, or 5 days after the last time you did it.
You can create several different lists of tasks, but only one can be viewed at a time, and if you want to view them on your calendar along with your appointments, only the list currently open in the tasks pane shows up. If you don’t think to check all of your task lists, you could be missing things you need to do today.
There is no way to add a tag or a priority to a task. This are pretty basic functions of most task managers, so it seemed like a big sacrifice to not have these functions.
There was no home-screen icon on the Android for tasks from Google like there was out-of-the-box for contacts, Gmail and calendar. It seems to me that a task function is an equally important sibling of these 3 and for some reason Google treats tasks differently.

After nearly a year of making due with a task manager that just wasn’t up to the job of managing my life, both personal and business, I finally gave in and decided to look for another option. This process will be the topic of a series of posts for which this post is first. I just love peeking into other people’s time management systems, so if you want a peek into mine, look out for the next post.

What task management system do you use and why? Do you sync it with your smartphone?

Are you an introvert?

If so, come out of hiding and treat yourself right!

I read this article this morning on how to care for an introvert, and in addition to giving tips on how to care for an introvert, there’s great information introverts can use to care for themselves. Have a read and come back to the rest of the post.

http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2003/03/caring-for-your-introvert/2696/

First of all, let me say that I am an introvert. If you know me in real life, that may be shocking because I’m social, have friends, love to talk and even love public speaking. But as pointed out in the article, there’s a lot of incorrect ideas about what an introvert is. I’m not shy, housebound or miserable. I am exactly like the introvert described in the article. When I do social things, I need lots of time by myself to recover. There’s a limit to how many social events I can do in a day or a weekend.

You can tie this into your business by making sure your business aligns with your natural, comfortable personality type. I love working one-on-one with people, but only have so much energy for that. I realized late last year that I was spending too much time working one-on-one with people, and now I’m leading group programs and working on information products as well as working with just a few one-on-one clients.

Does your current business work for your personality? If you are an introvert, are you draining yourself by spending too much time with people? If you are an extrovert, are you feeling like you’re missing out because you spend too much time working alone at home? Have you adjusted your business to a better mix for you? If so, tell me about it in the comments.

If you recognize yourself here and want to adjust your business accordingly, let’s talk! Click here to schedule a free strategy session.