productivity – Page 2 – Business Plus Baby

January 29, 2013January 29, 2013

What to do when ‘flexible working’ means you have no time to work

Last Monday, over 4000 schools in the UK were closed because of safety concerns after a heavy snowfall. That will have been a major headache for working parents across the country.

As work-at-home-mums we’re lucky in that we can work more flexibly than most. But it’s easy for virtually all your work time to be swallowed up by family commitments, and that’s a big is a problem. Here are a few tips from me about surviving those times when family life gets in the way of your business:

Note: No small furry animals were harmed in the making of my hat 🙂

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August 8, 2012August 7, 2012

Top time management tips from real business women

Ready for some tried-and-tested time management tips from real women in business?

Last week at The Likeminded Network, we had a ‘Your Business Dilemmas Solved’ session where we all sat around a big table and had our pressing business questions answered by the rest of the group. This was a simple but brilliant idea, not just because we were pooling the combined experience of around twenty women in business, but because it was a great way to get to know one another.

As most of us are on our second or third career, there was a heck of a lot of expertise in the room.

My question was on time management – what tips did people have for getting everything done? Here’s what they said:

Work in fifteen minute blocks. – Claire Land, Save Our Sanity
Accept that you’ll never get to the end of your to do list! – Emma Perry of Shabby Rock Chic
Put down how long you spend on everything in an Excel spreadsheet, then at the end of the month create a graph so you can see exactly where you are spending your time. – Penny Norton of PNPR
Turn off Facebook, Twitter and close your email while you’re working. Then check them once or twice a day at set times, otherwise it’s too distracting. Anna Brim of Aloha Photography and others!
If you’ve got a task that you don’t want to do, spend just ten minutes on it then give yourself ten minutes of something more fun or creative as a reward. Mary Mansfield, Cambridge Interiors
Do similar tasks together. For example, do all your invoices once a month in a block so you’ve got all the right paperwork and files open at the same time. Anna Brim of Aloha Photography
Set up email folders according to priority, then put your emails in the appropriate folder as they arrive. Then you can deal with all the urgent ones first, the less urgent ones later and so on. Otherwise you end up dealing with them in the order that they arrive, which isn’t the best use of time. – Chrissy Brown of Crafty Monkey Pottery Painting Studio
Don’t read your emails or make phone calls in the first hour of the day as this puts you in a reactive frame of mind for the rest of the day. Get into a proactive mindset by focusing your first hour on the task that’s going to bring in the money. Use that hour to work on your business rather than in it. – I’m not sure of this person’s name, please leave a comment if it was you and I’ll add you!

Hope those are helpful!

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Image: FreeDigitalPhotos.net

May 7, 2012

How to stay balanced as a home-based small business owner

When you first started your home-based small business, you probably imagined how great it was going to be to be your own boss, how much freedom you were going to have, and how comfortable it was going to be to work from home. After a few months, you probably came to the realization that it takes a whole lot of work to run a successful, home-based small business, and the stress probably set in. If you’re committed to the success of your business, you’re not only going to have to work hard. You’re also going to have to take care of yourself properly because your business is only going to be healthy if you stay healthy, both mentally and physically. Here are some of the things you can do to stay balanced as a home-based small business owner:

1. Only work in one section of your home.

Ideally, you should be working in some kind of home office, a room with a desk, chair, and a desktop computer. All you should do in that room is work, and you shouldn’t work in any of the other rooms of your house. Why? It’s difficult to separate your home life from your work life if you work in all areas of your house. At the end of the day, you should shut off your computer, and go spend some time with your family. If your laptop’s open on the couch, you’re more likely to get distracted by all the things you need to do for your business. It’s easier to maintain a healthy work/life balance if you don’t associate all areas of your home with work.

2. Stick to a schedule

As previously mentioned, at the end of the day, you should shut your computer off and spend the evening with your loved ones. It’s difficult to do this if you don’t have a set schedule. For instance, you might want to dedicate the hours of 7 a.m. to 6 p.m. to working each day. As a small business owner, you may not be able to just work 8 hours a day, but you do have the power to make room in your schedule in the evening for yourself and your loved ones.

3. Set realistic goals

When you own your own business, you don’t have a boss setting goals for you. You set your own goals. And, if you’re self-motivated, you probably set a lot of goals for yourself. It’s important to step back sometimes when you feel overwhelmed and reassess your goals. You can’t do a million things every day, and you can’t make a million dollars every day. Be realistic about the amount of work you’re able to put in and what type of results you’ll see.

Running your small business from home isn’t always everything you dreamed of, but it can be quite rewarding as long as you take care of yourself and keep your cool!

Author’s Bio: Carolyn is a guest blogger on the subjects of small business management, small business tools, and order management in the ecommerce industry that involves Shopify, 3dcart, and BigCommerce.

Image: zirconicusso / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

April 4, 2012April 4, 2012

No motivation? Here are some tips to get yourself moving again…

However passionate we are about our businesses, however motivated we are to build a better working life for our own sake and for our families, we all have dips in motivation now and then.

When you think about it, that’s not very surprising.

People who work from home tend to be really hard on themselves. Working alone means that you can lose perspective and set standards for yourself that are hard to live up to.

Mums and women in general tend to be tough on themselves too. As most of us fall into all three categories, we’re bound to be giving ourselves a hard time!

If you’re self-employed, you don’t have a boss expecting you to get down to work at 9am every morning, you’re responsible for doing that yourself. If you’re like me, your day in the office begins at 8pm after a full working day of being a mum. Plus you have to resist the temptations of an evening in front of the TV.

So can we just agree one thing? To have got this far, you must be fantastic at motivating yourself.

Struggling with motivation every now and then is just part of life. You can’t be ‘full-on’ all the time. (Click here to tweet this)

So what can you do?

– Write a (short) list of what you absolutely have to do and just do those tasks. Remember the 80:20 rule? 80% of your results come from 20% of your actions, so now is the time to put this theory to the test!

– Put anything creative or new on the back-burner. Just focus on the stuff that has to be done. Sometimes trundling through some non-demanding tasks can give you a sense of achievement that helps get your get-up-and-go back.

– Is your drop in motivation trying to tell you something? Life moves fast when you have kids, maybe your business is a couple of years old and you’re ready to take it to the next level? Or perhaps sell up and try something new? Now is probably not the time to do anything hasty, just watch out for the signs and mull over what your next step might be.

– Do you need to reconnect with why you started this business in the first place? What was the spark that fired you up? How can you get back in touch with it?

– Try the simple stuff. Take a little time out and chat to a friend or read a good book. Sometimes we get so engrossed in our work we end up living in our own little bubble and eventually we get sick of it all. Step outside your bubble.

– Go cold turkey. Yes, social media is wonderful, but if you’re feeling low don’t you just feel overwhelmed by it all? Switch it off for a couple of days. Focus on your own stuff and don’t try to compare it to what other people are doing.

Give yourself a break for just a while and your motivation will soon return.

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Photo credit: kirainet