How busy is too busy?

We are all busy it seems. 

It's a bit like a badge of honour where we try to outdo each other with how hectic and out of control our lives are. 'It's been mental. I'm so busy. There's work, the kids, the elderly parents, we're having the kitchen done, Christmas is coming etc.' The busier we are, the greater the kudos.

Does it have to be this way? I'm reading, 'Tribe of mentors' by Timothy Ferriss. It's basically a book of life and business tips from a 100 or so successful people - 'Short life advice, from the best in the world', as the strapline goes. One of the contributors, designer Debbie Milan, comes out with a great quote, 'Busy is a decision'. She argues that broadly we do the things we want to do. If being busy is an excuse for not doing something, what we are really saying is it's not important enough.

I struggle a bit with how busy to be in my own small business. My ideal is that I'm the sales, client care and business development guy and everything else gets covered by the team. At times (not often) I have short windows of feeling on top of things and going into the office in the morning without a long to do list. It feels good while it lasts (which is usually not long) but it is always  accompanied by a slight feeling of guilt that I'm not busy enough.

I used to work with a business coach who was obsessive about helping his clients grow their businesses. One of his sayings was, 'Business owners don't realise how hard they need to work to be successful'. He felt it was human nature for an entrepreneur to take their foot off the gas and coast for a while when they reached a milestone and things became a little more comfortable. He believed it was his job to stop that happening and keep the owner's nose to the grindstone.

It's tax season so I'm in a busy phase now until February. No coasting or taking my foot off the pedal. That's fine and I have my browny points in the 'How busy are you?' chat with people I bump into in Sainsbury's.

But getting back to the phrase, 'Busy is a decision', I really need to sort this out. It's up to me what I do and how busy I choose to be. I will be putting my mind to that...as soon as I get the time

www.base52.co.uk

Ugh! Post holiday email - my low tech tips for getting it done

Holidays are great. Time to unwind, relax, spend time with loved ones and forget about work for a while. Getting back to work is often a challenge with the build up of email being one of the issues to cope with.

I've developed a bit of a system for dealing with the email build up which kind of works for me and I thought it might be useful to share. It's fairly low tech and I'm sure that there are more sophisticated ways of doing a similar thing.

For what it's worth here are my 5 D's for clearing the backlog:

Diary time

Allow some time on your first day back to start to clear the backlog. If you can book this in your diary before you go away, that's ideal. You can then spend some uninterrupted time working through your emails. The sooner it's done, the sooner you will feel 'caught up' and be able to get back into your stride

Delete

Getting rid of any SPAM, things that don't require action etc is a positive first step. It's a good idea to unsubscribe from mailing lists you are not interested in and mark unwelcome email to go straight to junk in future.

Delegate

If you are lucky enough to have people working for you, maybe there are things which can be delegated. You can either forward the email with a note for action or print/save in a folder for next time you have an opportunity to discuss it with the person you are delegating to. Even if you don't have people working for you there may be emails you need to pass on for someone else to deal with or perhaps refer upwards to your boss

Deal with now

If you can respond to an email easily, straight away, it's best to get it done. Maybe set a reminder to follow up if a response is required from the recipient. It's off your list for now

Deal with later

For chunkier jobs you can't respond to straight away add these to your work list or direct to your calendar to deal with later. You might print or save the email as a reference for when you start the work. You might also send a holding email to say you have noted the contents and will respond in due course. You can then tackle this at a later date with a clear head.

That's it! I did say it was low tech

With focussed effort I find I can usually clear the mountain a lot faster than seemed possible at first glance. I've then got the larger tasks scheduled and can work through these over the next few days.

It's still not easy leaving the holiday mood behind but this simple system works for me and after a week or two I'm usually back in the normal routine and hopefully not feeling swamped.

Almost time to start thinking about the next holiday...

www.base52.co.uk

What do you do when the phone stops ringing?

Business owners like being busy. Too busy to get through the urgent task list, speak to that important customer, deal with a tricky problem raised by a member of the team.  They like the buzz, the adrenaline rush, up and out of the door early, in the office before everyone else and work, work, work. Doing stuff until it's time to go home.

But suddenly it seems, something strange happens. The customers who used to contact you directly are dealing with members of your team. The volume of emails and phone calls you have to deal with has slowed down to a trickle. Business is still coming in and work is getting done but it's happening without you. 

It's a strange and unnerving feeling.

So what do you do? Well for some the need to be busy takes over. They will pile in and take on some work from the team to fill up the time. Before long they have their head stuck in a tricky customer project and they don't have time to sort out their important jobs again. They are needed and fixing problems. Job done? Well maybe not. They are busy but busy in their own comfort zone and the cycle starts again.

So if you are a business owner and this happens to you, my advice is pause and take some time before doing anything. Embrace not being busy for a while and use this time to think. What should your role be? How can you really move your business forward?

Steve Jobs at Apple went through a period of restructuring and consolidation and building up reserves in his business. Someone asked him what his plans were and why he wasn't moving forward with new initiatives. His reply was, 'I'm waiting for the next big thing'. That big thing was the change to downloading music and out of that came iTunes and the iPod and the resurgence of Apple.

As small business owners we maybe aren't setting our sights as high as Steve Jobs but we all have 'things' happening in our industries which will affect how we do business in the years to come. Maybe we should get busy seeing how we can exploit this rather get busy doing what makes us feel comfortable? 

www.base52.co.uk