Go to Your Happy Place: 5 Ways to Connect with Your Creativity
Creativity is a funny thing. Sometimes you have it, other times you just don’t, which makes life more than a little difficult when you are in the business of being creative (and arguably all businesses require creativity in some form or another to be successful).
So what do you do when that creativity dries up? When there’s nothing left in the well to draw from? When that spark of inspiration just isn’t there and no amount of staring at a blank screen is going to get you anywhere? Go to your happy place!
5 Ways to Connect with Your Creativity on a Daily Basis
Think of your creativity as a well – one that takes a while to dry up, but also takes a while to fill back up. If you spend all your time and energy draining your creative energy, expect that when you get stuck, you will stay stuck for a while.
That’s why it’s important to maintain your creative energy on a daily basis, adding to your well a few drops at a time (or bucket loads if your business demands a lot of creativity). A few ideas on how to stay connected with your creativity:
#1: Surround Yourself with Inspiration – Indulge your senses – any or all of them – on a daily basis. Treat yourself to a decadent morning latte, decorate your office walls with photos of people and places that inspire you, or dress yourself in your favorite comfy clothes. What you choose doesn’t matter as much as making inspiration a habit.
#2: Quiet the Clutter – That pile of bills that you keep thinking about paying? The flashing light that tells you new messages are waiting? The sticky notes loudly announcing the brilliant ideas you have yet to follow-up on? All of them only serve to distract and drain your creativity. Tell them to be quiet!
#3: Avoid Energy Vampires – Recognize the people, activities or situations that drain you. If it’s a toxic relationship or client, ditch them. If it’s a dreaded administrative task, delegate it or tackle it quickly and reward yourself after. If it’s a situation, like sitting through endless meetings, recreate your work rules to minimize them.
#4: Stay Grounded – Find an object that helps you stay grounded and focused on your values. For me, it’s a Plumeria flower necklace that I use as a reminder that I wish to live my life as a holiday – one filled with happiness, adventure and enjoyment. Just holding it makes me smile.
#5: Take Creative Breaks – Give yourself a break from all the thinking, creative work by including creative breaks in your daily routine. The purpose is to give yourself creative downtime so reading a business book does not count. It should involve a mindless task that you find relaxing and perhaps even a little ordinary or boring, like gardening or cooking.
What do you do to go to your happy place? Share your tips in the comments below!
Brainstorming Addiction: How to Stop Dreaming and Start Doing
Living in the idea space is a fun and happy place to be – everything is all exciting and full of potential. There’s absolutely nothing stopping you from following that thread of an idea wherever it wants to go. After all, in the idea space, you don’t have to think within the boundaries of limitation.
That’s probably why ‘brainstorming’ becomes such an addiction for entrepreneurs. Let’s face it – it’s fun to sit around and talk about what could be, what you can imagine doing in your business, what is possible before considering the reality of what has to be done to get there.
How can we continue to live in the ‘idea space’ without becoming do-nothing daydreamers?
How to Stop Brainstorming and Start Idea Storming
#1: Shorten Your Timelines – Avoid the temptation to think too far ahead. Instead of thinking long-term and abstract, shorten your idea focus to the next 30, 60 or 90 days and focus on concrete actionable steps.
#2: Limit the Scope – Narrow your focus to finding solutions to very specific problems. For example, brainstorming about 5 ways to increase sales in the next 60 days or 3 ways to cut operating costs.
#3: Think Frequent and Small – Get in the habit of making lots of small changes instead of trying to implement big changes and getting stuck on square one. Give yourself focus themes for each month or quarter and brainstorm ways to improve something each week.
#4: Mean It – Don’t start brainstorming ideas for directions or innovations you have no intention (or ability) to pursue. Think of this as the brainstorming reality check. For example, don’t brainstorm solutions that involve time or resources you don’t have the ability to invest. Don’t even pursue information you have no ability to implement!
#5: Translate into Action FAST – Capture the excitement of the brainstorming by turning that into immediate action. That means no secret notebooks that you tuck away afterwards or abstract charts that you pin up on your wall. Brainstorm ideas in your calendar and task list and get them done NOW!
#6: Finish Before Starting the Next – Never start brainstorming new ideas until you have finished the last idea. This is how brainstorming turns into an exercise in entrepreneurial naval gazing.
How do you move from idea to implementation? Share your tips in the comments below!
The Success Trap – Why Being Busy Isn’t Necessarily Good for Business
Are you driving your success or is your success driving you? Meaning are you too busy managing your success and keeping up with day-to-day customer demands that you no longer have the ability to pursue new ideas and opportunities?
That’s how success becomes a trap. It forces the unprepared entrepreneurs to shift their focus from the big picture to the daily minutia. Instead of leveraging operating systems and people, you are dealing with crisis after crisis that require your immediate attention (OR ELSE).
In essence, your success becomes a trap, one that forces you into the day-to-day busy-work and doesn’t allow you to pursue new ideas or even capitalize on potential opportunities because you are too BUSY running your business (or rather running to keep up to your business).
How to Create Space for New Opportunities
Ask yourself: WHEN are you going to do what needs to be done to give your new ideas a chance? The answer is not between 11:47 pm and when you finally crash from sheer exhaustion or when you find a bit of downtime from your busy season (because we both know that isn’t going to happen).
The key to overcoming the success trap is creating space to pursue new directions, find unique ways to innovate or capitalize on potential opportunities:
Compress Time – The first step in creating space for new opportunities and ideas is to compress the amount of time you spend currently working in your business. That means shorter, more productive meetings, shifting away from manual tasks, implementing systems, and delegating the day-to-day operations management to your team.
Dedicate Space in Your Calendar – Remember, creating new time is only the first step. The next step is committing to pursuing new ideas and opportunities by dedicating time in your calendar. The purpose is to prevent your newfound idea time from getting pushed to the bottom of the to-do list when the day-to-day stuff picks up speed.
Drop Bad Clients – Now you need to free up your time from other insidious time vampires: bad clients. Chances are you have a few bad clients who likely cost you more in time and support resources than you make in profit. Dropping your low value, high demand clients not only creates time for new ideas, but allows you to deliver better service to your best clients.
Say “No” to the Extras – The last place to look for idea time is all the extra responsibilities we take on. That means saying no to all those extra requests and responsibilities (even if it’s just for the short term). Remember, it’s not your job to hold down the universe – it’s time to pass the torch to someone else for while.
One Task at a Time: Why Focusing on the Very Next Step is the Key
Ever look up the long winding path in front of you and think to yourself, “I will NEVER in a million years reach the top”? And yet, if you continue to take one step at a time, soon enough you will be looking back at that long winding path and think, “Wow, look at how far I’ve come in what seems like no time at all.”
In business (and in life), typically when you start out on a long and winding path, you can’t see the top or even the entire route ahead of you. Perhaps all you can see if the daunting rock wall straight ahead, the one the guidebooks assure you leads to a false summit. The only thing you can do is set a direction and take one step at a time.
Why Focusing on the Very Next Step is the Key
It’s ridiculous to imagine that you would start off from the trail head and in a single leap, jump to the top of the mountain. Or that you could take all 50,892 steps at once. And yet that’s often how we approach our businesses, expecting to get there in a single leap or by tackling all the steps at once.
Thinking that it’s simply a matter of leaping ahead and skipping all the steps is at best naïve and at worst, a grave shortcut that will cost you more steps than you save. Trying to tackle all the steps at once often leads to overwhelm and leaves you with the same amount of unfinished tasks. Both equal no forward momentum at all.
Taking It One Task at a Time While Focusing on the End Goal
Keep your chin up and focus on where you want to end up, but set your foot down right in front of you. That means tackling the one task that needs to be done to keep things moving along. Sometimes that means halting your forward progress to train an assistant or address technical challenges that are ultimately slowing you down.
Start at the beginning. Entrepreneurs are notorious for racing ahead in steps and trying to tackle the tasks that are fun and exciting and leaving the foundational steps for later. A good start is better than trying to rush ahead only to have to retrace and redo missed steps.
Finish each step before taking the next one! It’s a mistake to think that momentum means jumping quickly from task to task. Firmly plant each footstep before taking another so you don’t backslide on a misplaced footstep. Rushing ahead often costs more time on going back and redoing tasks that weren’t fully completed.
Check your compass! It’s easy to get lost in the woods, especially when you are lowdown in the valleys and can’t see above the trees. Continually check your course against your goals and make sure that each step you make it on track!
Remember, when building a sustainable business, what you do along the way matters. Choose your steps carefully and you will create a foundation that will serve you for years to come! Rush ahead too fast and you will be retracing your steps to find the path you should have taken to begin with.
Momentum Monday: Managing Interruptions – Tech Tools to Help You Regain Control of Your Time
Don’t you just hate it when you start the day with the best intentions only to realize at 5 o’clock that you got nothing on your list done thanks to countless interruptions?
It starts innocently enough – a simple phone call that turns into a half-hour discussion, a brief scan through your inbox that translates into 2 hours of email management or a quick social check-in that turns into a social media marathon.
The technical term is “productivity interruptus”, defined as the constant starting and stopping of tasks to respond to the litany of interruptions. The key to avoiding productivity interruptus and regaining control of your time is using technology to manage unwanted interruptions.
Track Your Time – Even if you don’t charge for your time on an hourly basis, it’s important to build awareness of how you spend your time on a daily basis. It’s the only way to get control of your time. For example, you may discover that those ‘quick’ telephone calls are eating up half your day or that social media represents an irresistible time trap.
Create a time log worksheet and record how you spend your time on an hour-by-hour basis or use an app, like Hours Tracker, to clock in and out of activities. Both will show you exactly how you are using your time, allowing you avoid potential time suckers and focus on increasing your productive work time.
Avoid Unwanted Interruptions – The temptation to answer the telephone is powerful. The thinking is that if you don’t answer this call RIGHT NOW, the potential opportunity that could be on the other end will be missed. It rarely ever happens this way.
Consider putting your office telephone on silent or use the Do Not Disturb function, if it’s available. VOIP systems offer a lot of unique features that allow you to manage your calls. For example, Google Voice lets you screen calls by listening in to the voicemail message as it’s being recorded, allowing you to jump in if it’s important.
Centralize Communication – Sometimes what takes us off task is those quick conversations with team members that turn into lengthy discussions when all you really needed was a status update.
That’s where using technology to communicate can save you a lot of time. Instead of calling in for updates or cluttering up your inbox with extended email threads, you can centralize project reporting using Wrike.com.
Schedule Social – Social media is another potential time void. It’s easy to get caught up in the conversation and before you know it, an hour or two has gone by. The best way to get your social media under control is to schedule content in advance.
Tools like Hootsuite make scheduling your social media extremely easy. All you need to do is click SCHEDULE to set the date and time or upload a CSV file. Don’t use it as a substitute for engaging, but as a way to schedule your basic activity. That way you can focus on interacting during your 15-minute power sessions.
Momentum Monday: Why Is Commonsense So Uncommon? Uncommon Commonsense Advice
Whatever happened to good old-fashioned common sense? It seems that commonsense advice less and less common these days – what with all the technology and tools available to distract and misdirect.
Where businesses are failing isn’t with mastering the extraordinarily complex aspects of business, but with the boring, every day simple stuff. That’s why this post is dedicated to the less common commonsense advice every business needs to master.
5 Pieces of Uncommon Commonsense Advice
#1: Create Space – Idea and implementation are perhaps the two farthest points in the continuum of success. In order to move from idea to implementation, you need to create the space to do that – whether that be in the form of financing or simply making the time in your calendar to manage an influx of business.
Simple yes. But do entrepreneurs forget to do it and plow ahead without first figuring out HOW they are going to implement their ideas? Where this new project is going to live in their already full lives? Yes absolutely. Start by creating space.
#2: Know Your Margins – Everything has a cost – from printing out copies of handouts for your presentation to the time you spend managing the IT. Before you can be profitable, you need to know your margins!
A very big mistake made by very successful (on the surface) companies is not knowing how profitable a particular project is (or isn’t). Imagine that mistake propagated across an entire organization and you can see how even big companies with full client rosters end up losing money.
#3: Learn How to Sell – One skill every business leader must master is the ability to sell. Perhaps once the company has grown big enough, as the CEO, you won’t be on the frontlines selling the product or service, but you will be required to sell people on your vision.
Learn how to sell because every single day you will be selling someone on something – whether it’s selling your shareholders on the new direction for the company or your employees on a new compensation package, you will be selling.
#4: Master Distribution – A common stumbling block for many companies is getting the word out about their latest widget. Focus on how you are going to get your widget out there!
For service companies, mastering distribution means developing reliable lead generation mechanisms that bring in a steady flow of new prospects. For product companies, it likely means a more complex arrangement of channel partners and salespeople.
#5: Grow Your Capacity – The other side of distribution is capacity. Before growing your business, you need to grow your capacity to be able to handle an increase in volume.
What that means depends again on the type of business. If you are a service-based business, that may mean training additional team members. For a product business, it may mean rethinking your entire production model.
Momentum Monday: Asking is Free – So Why Not Do More of It?
Sometimes you would think asking costs millions of dollars the way people avoid it, doing everything BUT asking for what they need to grow their business – be it support, referrals or even the sale!
Timid entrepreneurs do almost anything EXCEPT ask. You overspend on marketing that distances yourselves from the results. You hire a sales team to do the asking for you. You hope and pray that customers will magically find you and tell their friends.
Asking doesn’t cost a million dollars. It doesn’t even cost a cent. Asking is absolutely free (it’s sometimes just all the other stuff that leads up to the asking that costs money, but that’s a different story altogether).
So why don’t we do more of it? Why don’t we turn to the people around us who already know, like and trust us and want to see us succeed? Why don’t we get over our egos and simply ask for what we need to get to the next level?
It has nothing to do with the person you are asking and everything to do with you. It has to do with the fear of rejection, judgment, or awkwardness. It has to do with the inner critic who tells you that you aren’t worth it.
Tell your inner critic to Shut Up Already and start asking!
5 Ways to Start Asking for What You Need
#1: Help Others FIRST – Asking is a lot easier when you help others. Call it the Karmic balance or self-confidence, but it feels better asking for help when you know you have freely helped those around you.
#2: Offer Reciprocal Support – Nothing wrong with the good old fashioned “I’ll scratch your back if you scratch mine”. Surround yourself with likeminded people and establish a reciprocal support network where you each help each other out. Referral networks and master minds are two examples of this type of arrangement, but it can apply to anything.
#3: Share Your BIG Vision – One of the reasons non-profits are truly gifted at asking (besides a serious lack of funding) is that they truly believe in what they do. They are able to share their vision of how what they are doing will make our world a better place. Share your big vision with the people around you and enlist their support in achieving it.
#4: Shift Your Thinking – Stop thinking about what you are doing as asking and start thinking of it as sharing your gift with the world. This especially applies to asking for referrals or asking a potential customer to choose you. It’s amazing how zealously we will promote for others and not for ourselves!
#5: Simply Ask – Take a deep breath and ask. Your job isn’t to determine the outcomes – it’s just to ask the question. Ask for exactly what you need because if you do, you may get a yes, but if you don’t, you are guaranteed to get a no!
Momentum Monday: A Little Every Day Adds Up to A LOT – Achieving Success in Teeny Tiny Steps
What you do everyday matters. Perhaps more than you think.
It matters because every day you are taking (or not taking) teeny tiny steps toward your goal, your ultimate success. It may not feel like you are making much progress some days, but trust me, you are.
The reason comes down to simple math. Little steps taken everyday propel you farther than one giant step because your teeny tiny steps are multiplied by every day you are consistently taking them.
Giant steps, while useful for catching up, rarely spring you farther forward than the momentum that gets build up by taking consistent steps. It’s the reason most big efforts get broken down into smaller steps.
Imagine trying to catch up on saving for your retirement in one giant effort. It’s almost impossible! There’s a reason financial planners recommend starting early and consistently putting money away until you reach your goal.
How to Achieve Success in Teeny Tiny Steps
#1: Clearly Map the Path to Your End-Goal – The trouble with breaking projects down into very small steps is that it’s easy to lose sight of the end goal or get distracted and go off on a tangent that moves you further from your goal. The key is to clearly map out your strategy for how you will step yourself to your end goal one tiny step at a time.
#2: Think Small Steps, Not Giant Leaps – It’s tempting to try to make up for missing steps by taking giant leaps. The exact opposite is true: the giant leaps forward will come from consistent efforts and not from monumental efforts.
#3: Never (EVER) Skip Days – The trick is to continually take steps forward and that means doing something every day that steps you toward your goal, even if that step is very small (the exception being the weekends when you should be enjoying a bit of creative downtime).
#4: Start and Finish in One Step – Just because the steps are small doesn’t mean they aren’t full steps. Half steps don’t count! Get in the habit of starting and finishing in one step – that’s the reason for making them small. Otherwise you are wasting effort by only getting to 80 percent before moving onto to something else.
#5: Whenever Possible, Take Extra Steps – The nice thing about taking teeny tiny steps is it isn’t that much of a stretch to take an extra step or two on a daily basis. Get in the habit of pushing yourself to take that one extra teeny tiny step every day and you’ll reach your goal that much faster.
The added bonus of thinking about your goals in teeny tiny steps is it brings even the loftiest of ambitions down to size. As soon as something feels doable, the chances are even greater than you will actually do them.
Momentum Monday: Give Yourself the Gift of a Holiday – Why Your Creativity Needs Downtime
There’s nothing like the blissful quiet of the holidays – no telephone ringing to interrupt you, no unread email demanding your attention, no one expecting brilliant ideas for your next meeting. Just peace and quiet…
It’s tempting to think of the holiday quiet as the perfect time to catch-up and maybe even get ahead. How else are you going to find uninterrupted time when no one is demanding your time and attention?
Do NOT give in!
Yes, you probably could get more done without all the distractions of the regular 9 to 5, but that probably means how you are currently managing your time isn’t working. It means you need to carve out more quiet, distraction-free time in your everyday routine.
It’s tempting when the kids are outside playing in the snow and your husband is assembling the latest holiday gadget to quickly rid your inbox of that extra email, clean up your desk, go through that backlog of paperwork, get a head start on the stuff that fell behind before the holidays.
Don’t. Not even for 5 minutes.
Besides the obvious work-life boundary problems and the fact that your family wants and deserves your time and attention during the holidays, you need downtime. The creative energy you pour into growing your business needs downtime.
How to Use the Holidays to Restore Your Creativity
#1: Do Nothing – Not the doing nothing that involves reading business books or magazines, but the special kind of doing nothing that only happens when you are truly on holidays. If you must entertain yourself with consuming media, make it frivolous and in no way related to work or of any intellectual value whatsoever.
#2: Enjoy Life – Cookies are especially suited to this job so give yourself permission to indulge. If sweets aren’t your thing, treat yourself to a long bubble bath, a relaxing stroll in the snow or an hour sitting in front of the fire.
#3: Simplify Your Routine – Get back to the basics of living and enjoying and ditch all the fussy routines and daily household to-do’s. For example, save on laundry hassle by declaring family pajama day and spend the entire day working on the giant puzzle dominating the dining room table.
#4: Disconnect – Give yourself the benefit of a media blackout period to clear your mind of all the noise and clutter that goes with modern communication. That means no email, no checking voicemail and no social media (yes, I said no social media).
#5: Be Lazy – If you insist on catching up on something, catch up on sleep. Chances are you were burning both ends to get ready for the holidays so pay back the debt by sleeping in or taking afternoon naps.
Now do what needs to be done to give yourself a much-needed and well-earned break. Your success in 2012 will thank you for it!
Momentum Monday: So Tired You Can Hardly See Straight? Put Yourself on Autopilot
In a perfect world, we would never get so exhausted that we can barely muster enough brain power to decide what to have for breakfast, much less put in a productive day at the office.
But working from home while raising a family isn’t a perfect world and we do have those days when a teething child keeps you up all night or idea overload has you stirring every hour that you may as well have not been sleeping.
It happens and when it does, that’s when you need to put yourself on autopilot (or back to bed depending on how flexible your deadlines are). That means taking as much of the ‘deciding’ out of your workday as possible.
How to Create an Autopilot Routine to Get Through Overwhelm
#1: Make Your Calendar the Boss – Let’s face it – if left to your own tired devices, you would likely stare blankly at the screen trying to figure out what to do. Make your calendar the boss of you and just follow its directions. That means you need to be on top of planning your activities in your calendar. Include as many details as possible: meetings (with telephone numbers and discussion topic outline), project work blocks, deadlines, etc.
#2: Simplify Down to the Bare Essentials – Don’t try to put in an epic productive day at the office. The purpose is to survive the day getting enough done that you won’t wake up tomorrow with a thousand new fires to fight because of what you missed today. Take a critical look at your to-do list (the one you made the night before) and cross off whatever can wait.
#3: Tackle the Tough Stuff First – Chances are you are running on borrowed time and unless a serious amount of caffeine is involved, you are going to crash by the afternoon. Tackle the tough must-do tasks first and get them over with so if you run out of steam by lunch, you can pack it in early and start fresh tomorrow.
#4: Keep a Laundry List of Easy Stuff – If you make it beyond lunch, you need to give yourself a break and tackle easy stuff. That’s where your laundry list of to-do’s comes in. Keep a running list of things on your “Tackle Whenever” list for when you finish all your tasks for the day (or in this case, when you have no energy to do anything complicated).
#5: Always Be Prepared – How you prepare for those times when you hit the wall or an overwhelming workload pushes you into overload depends entirely on your business. It may mean having an archive of pre-written blog posts or a series of checklists to step you through your tasks when your brain goes on vacation without you. Whatever it is, it’s worth the time to prepare in advance!
