Category: Work Life

I sat in the meeting and felt small. I noticed everyone around me laughing and I felt sick to my stomach. Should I pretend?

You see, I felt like my business dilemmas much be so much bigger and more critical that anyone else’s. And I had travelled so far. I had spent so much money to be there. And I was exhausted. I just wanted to cry.

I stood up and stretched, grabbed a cup of coffee and sat down again, trying to focus on what was actually happening in the room, rather than just in my head.

Later it was my turn to speak. It’s always been really hard for me to ask for help, but I took a depth breathe and finally let it out. I don’t know how to do this, I said. And I’m scared it might fail.

Everyone around the table started nodding in agreement, not that they thought my idea would fail, but that they recognized the fear and the discomfort.

Relieved, I continued to speak about this decision I needed to make and began to unravel all my confusion. There were some good suggestions, there were some horrible suggestions but everyone listened and I could hear myself finally.

You see for weeks the ideas had been just in my head. And it had been really noisy in there. Now I could talk it out, get some feedback and see it so much more clearly.

It was so helpful. But here are the 5 invaluable lessons I learned:

1. When you share your story, you share your humanity – there is always someone who can relate.
2. Telling your story out loud, the act itself, makes for more clarity and sense.
3. There are people around you who can and want to help.
4. Often they have experience and expertise that you don’t even know about.
5. You are not alone and it’s okay to ask for help.

This last one is tough for me. You see, I’ve spent years being super strong. It’s always been easier for me to help others than to acknowledge I might need help myself.

I left with so much more clarity, humility and optimism. I can ask for help. I will ask for help. I’m not alone.

Working from home is a dream that many people have had for decades. That dream has come true for many in today’s modern world. There are quite a few jobs out there that you can do from home now, from being a freelance writer to starting your own photography business. Once you have that business, however, you often find that organization and time management becomes a problem, as working from home is quite a bit different from working outside of the home. Here are a few tips for organizing and managing your time when working from home.

Leave the House 

While you will want to do most of your work from your home office, sometimes it can help to get out of the house for a while. Take your laptop to the local coffee shop and work there for the day. If you are in the video business and have your own crew and equipment, you should check into a video studio rental for a day. Leaving the house for an hour or two, or even the whole day to work can help you to separate your work and personal space.

Always get Dressed

The saying, “you need to dress for success,” you heard growing it is never truer than when running a business from the comfort of your own home. Taking a shower and getting dressed in normal clothes just like you would do when you were heading outside of the home to go to work is important. There have been experiments done that prove that clothes make you feel better about yourself and that the more time you take on your appearance, the more of the get it done attitude you will have.

Invest in a Home Office

While it may be tempting to pile up in blankets on the bed with the laptop or curl up on the couch and watch Netflix while you work, it’s not a good idea. You need to invest in your future by purchasing the stuff needed to make yourself a comfortable home office. It’s best to go with an ergonomic chair and other types of furniture for your office. It’s important for your workspace to promote your health and spur you to action.

Know When to Stop Working 

While you may hear success stories from others about working 80 to 90 hours a week nonstop so that their businesses could soar. However, what you usually don’t hear is that these same people do take time off. To be productive in what you do, you have to get some rest and downtime. There is nothing wrong with stopping working for a few hours to take a walk or binge watch Netflix. Just remember you do have work to do and do the majority of it before you take that break.

These are just a few tips out there for helping you get organized and develop good time management skills when you are working from home. From working outside of the home, a couple of days a week to knowing when it’s time to call it quits, these tips will help your work at home business be the success you have always dreamed it would be.

There is nothing more satisfying and rewarding as running your own business, especially one which is successful and thriving.

While your partner was initially supportive and as excited as you were about the promise of financial freedom and building an empire, things are gradually starting to decline. As the majority of your thoughts (at the office or in a social setting) are focused on the business, your relationship with your spouse appears to be suffering as a result. It may not be obvious to you why there is a growing distance between you both, and the lack of quality time together can, unfortunately, leave little chance to figure that out.

While your credit score range is very good, your relationship is on a downward trajectory. So what can you do to ensure that your personal relationships can also prosper alongside with your business?

Designate time for your spouse and family

Most working professionals will tell you that quality time is getting harder and harder to come by. This is tenfold for many self-employed entrepreneurs or those tasked with pushing a start-up business. Aside from day to day necessities at the office, the work is usually taken home. Throw in meetings with creditors, networking, and functions, and it can feel like a very lonely time for your partner.

By assigning times such as date nights or family activities, you can follow a schedule and ensure that your loved ones get to see you and spend time with you. Being flexible is important to those around you, and can go a long way towards a happier life. You want the support of your partner and loved ones, so try to make them feel as important as possible, as sometimes a busy work life can feel threatening to those that don’t understand how things work.

Communicate with your partner

Communication is the fulcrum of any successful relationship, and is crucial to any supportive partnership. Without communicating with your significant other, the information which can explain why you are stressed, overworked or simply disappointed is not available to back up what they simply see as a bad mood or lack of interest.

Encourage your partner to speak to you, voice their concerns and work together to promote a sense of trust and understanding. By opening up about any problems you have with work, this will also give your partner a sense of involvement and make them feel as though their opinion counts. By asking how their day went, you are also providing your partner with the opportunity to tell you how they are feeling and how their career or own business endeavour is running.

Business and family can work together

While it may sometimes feel that you are married to your business and your wife or husband, it is not necessary to put your affairs ahead of those you love in order to succeed. With the support of your loved ones, your business can thrive as a result. Just as a happy bus driver makes a long ride seem easier, a happy businessman will approach any tasks with a good sense of optimism.

Article Contributed by Andy Heikkila

The rise of technology has revolutionized the way that we work. Smartphones mean that we never have to worry about missing a message or email again, and laptops and tablets allow us to get into spreadsheets and other nitty gritty work apps when and wherever we want to. The cloud allows us to upload documents and files in one location and access them anywhere else there’s an internet connection. It’s a truly amazing time that we live in.

On the other hand, it’d be irresponsible to say that our ability to connect and work anywhere has yielded solely positive results. The “always-on” attitude toward our jobs means that our work-life balance has suffered. PCMA reports that 57 percent of workers think technology has ruined the definition of a family dinner. Even worse than that, they report that 38 percent of workers have missed life events because of bad work-life balance.

Poor work-life balance is not only bad for the personal lives of entrepreneurs and employees, but it’s also bad for business itself. Work that does get completed isn’t always optimal because due to exhaustion and distraction, and overwork can cause burnout. As former CCO and Co-Founder of Artifact Uprising, Katie Thurmes, once said: “You can’t do a good job if your job is all you do.”

Separating “Work” From “Life” 

For entrepreneurs, this You’d think that being your own boss means that you automatically have a better work-life balance. However, anybody who’s ever worked for themselves knows that being successful means making sacrifices, struggling to satisfy customers, and meeting tough deadlines. If fact, entrepreneurs may feel they have more at stake than the average company’s employee, because they sometimes see their work as an extension of themselves, further blurring the line between “work” and “life”.

Before entrepreneurs can find work-life balance, they need to understand the separation between the two. Taking time to appreciate and reflect on things outside of your job is essential to the human experience as well as to mental health. Don’t neglect things that “don’t contribute to the bottom line,” because return on investment isn’t always immediately quantifiable. Neglecting sleep today could affect your performance tomorrow. Consistently missing dinner with your family might be alright with you — but what about them? Consider these things before you end up drowning in your work.

Tips for Achieving Balance

Work-life balance isn’t something that just automatically happens — it’s something you have to actively pursue every day. Tammatha Denyes offers five quick tips in her blogpost, “How to Build Work-Life Balance Into the Life of an Entrepreneur”:

1. It’s okay to say “no”. We’ve conditioned ourselves to believe that turning down work is something akin to failure, for some reason. However, we often forget how easy it is to over-extend ourselves and create stressful environments for ourselves, all because we said yes to one-too-many (or maybe five-too-many) projects. Learning to say “no” can help out with work-life balance a lot, and will help you to set definitive boundaries beyond which you will no longer take on new projects.
2. Work out, take breaks, and meditate. The law requires we give employees and professionals time to take breaks during the day; why wouldn’t you give yourself the same time? Working out, taking breaks, and meditation all help to lower stress levels, and re-energizes us so that we’re fresh for the rest of the day.
3. Streamline your workflow with technology and apps. Whatever your profession, there are most certainly apps and tech that can help you streamline your day, be they apps dedicated to time management, or apps that sync your notes so that you can access them on multiple pieces of hardware. Work smarter, not harder.
4. Take time to pursue achievements unrelated to work. Being a well-rounded person means that you have facets, and you simply can’t have facets if all you do is work. Pushing yourself outside of work helps you prove to yourself that you’re adaptable, and prepares you for anything that comes up in your day-to-day that’s abnormal. Stretch your brain, pursue challenges outside of work, and enjoy the benefits of personal growth that follow.
5. Build a trustworthy team. There’s only so much time in a day, and there’s only so much of you to go around. If you’re planning on expanding, you’ll need a team anyway — but even if you’re planning on keeping your operations low-key, find out what small tasks you can delegate to family members or  friends of family. With all the help you can get, you’ll be able to get a couple of hours back to yourself, bettering your work-life balance.

Finding work-life balance is imperative to doing the best work you can possibly do. Make sure that you’re not overworking yourself, and that you’re finding yourself constantly growing inside and out. The fact that the times have changed to reflect a world where you can work almost anywhere and everywhere doesn’t necessarily mean you have to — take a minute for you, and see what that turns into.

 

 

Business travel doesn’t always have mean to work.  In fact, if you plan ahead and schedule your stay for the weekend: It can be a vacation.  If you’re not lent the time it takes to really relax, at least plan to make your business travel impactful.  Here are 6 ways you take the time to relax on your next business trip:

Make it affordable

Have a conference in Hawaii? Hawaiian flights are way more affordable with ticket deal sites like Expedia or Travelocity. They make sourcing the best budget reflecting tickets quite the simple task. Save on the cost of tickets and rooms to increase the available time you have in the island. That is, if you were coming of  your own needful will. If you were summoned by an employer and they don’t pay the cost, it’s better to have doable last minute costs than not be able to attend.

Take your meeting to the beach

Don’t hold up in a frumpy office on a business trip. Take your meeting to an outdoor beachside cafe that has wifi connection. That way you will have the ocean as the backdrop of this meeting. The peace of this most natural of white noise sources will make your meeting minutiae pass with natural fluidity. Then, when all the work is done, you are already at your beach destination. Bring your swimsuit along in your work bag. You can go straight to the water and waste no time on cashing in your downtime.

Local networking is good for business

Your team should agree to do some local networking. Have another meeting you need to do at night or early in the morning? Consider doing it at a local business oriented restaurant or in the lobby of the hotel one or more of you are staying at. Your presence should be non-invasive, but the scene you construct will be enough to showcase your brand to the locals. Consider asking the hotel staff if they would like to keep some of your information.

In other words, a good productivity comes from a good stage to conduct your performance in.

Everyone loves coffee

There is a common correlation between business personnel and coffee drinkers. If this fits your team, you might like to conduct some of your meetings in local coffee shops.  Not only does it help everyone break out of routine, it’s a great way to take in the local scene on a time constraint.

For that business conference in Hawaii? Lion Coffee in Honolulu. For a brief stop-in, Lion Coffee has some menu lattes and cold brews for the price of McDonald’s regular coffee. This would be a perfect place for you to relax and prepare your presentation before meeting up with the rest of your team at your respective conference or other event.

Treat yourself

There is nothing more important than eating your way around a new place.  Even if you’re on a tight timeline, you’ve got to make the time to eat.  The fact that Julia Childs wrote an entire book around eating and travel should be proof enough.

Lunch outside the commercial scene

You may be tempted to keep everything convenient and eat only chain food while on this trip. That’s fine if you like that best. For those who are always interested in getting a taste of what the local land has to offer, do a Google search to find the unique cuisine around you.

Not convinced?  Check out this video from squareship.com to get a taste of what it’s like to eat your way around the world.   Chances are, you’ll quickly get a craving for one of those local specialties.

Conclusion

No matter where you travel, go with the mindset that all the means will lead to a productive end. Make your experience of the island reflect upon your work to instill passion in both. You will come away with a new aesthetic. It will show in your progress reports.