Building and maintaining a business takes a lot of time, effort and commitment. That almost goes without saying, but as always – I’ll say it anyways.
The more you grow, the more your presence becomes required – and the more you feel the need to escape. Ha!
This is where a reframe becomes required. You see, unless we really understand what’s going on here – you know, when you have piles of work to do but you just want to get away from it – you need to reframe what this means.
Really, as a self-employed person, we’ve built a new job for ourselves. And we love this job, it’s custom to our personality and life style – and it’s absolutely perfect. However, everyone needs a change of pace, new environments - the ability to change it up.
So, this is what I recommend: learn to know the difference between working in your business and working on your business. This and this alone will enable you to practice healthy time management.
Working in your business is just doing the work itself. It’s lead generation, sales calls, invoicing and follow ups. Working in your business is dealing with employee mistakes and answering emails. It’s growing the business directly and doing the work that your business does.
Now – that sounds awfully daunting, doesn’t it? Well, yes. You know it sounds daunting, because it is daunting. It’s what you do every day.
So might I suggest something that I’m constantly needing to remind myself to do, and I’ll take advantage of the reminder as well. Take some time to work on your business.
You see, by stepping away and reading a book, taking your significant other on a date, socializing or taking the dog for a walk – we’re actually working on our business. Think about the word. Business. Busi-ness. Busy – ness.
Your business keeps you busy, and when you’re busy, you’re less likely to notice everything that requires your attention.
Have you ever tried to remember someone’s name, and no matter how long you wrestled with it you just couldn’t bring it to the front of your mind? And then hours later while you’re feeding the cat it just slaps you in the face?
Or even better yet, you’ve been throwing a problem around in your head – and you just can’t come up with the solution? Then days later THERE IT IS!
When we step away from the day to day grind, we’re able to really see things clearly, from a distance. It helps to bring the reality of our situation into focus, and we’re able to make informed decisions.
What’s even more, we are our business and our business is us. By working on ourselves, we’re effectively working on the business. This means learning jujitsu like you said you were going to months ago.
It means playing guitar for an hour or so every once in a while. It means reading for pleasure and having deep, meaningful conversations. The truth is, the better and more healthy you are, the more your business will thrive.
You’ll be able to take the energy you gain from working on yourself and inject it directly back into the business.
So, instead of banging your head against the wall, just praying that something works out – start with yourself. Make the effort to step away and work on something, that has nothing at all the do with the business itself. You may be surprised how much it actually improves the business for you.
To Your Success,
Jay Ashcroft
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