Author: admin

Easter is upon us, so a very happy Easter to you! Great to see the days stretching out a bit and the dark winter evenings scuttling away back into Mother Nature’s cupboard.

People at this time of year buy chocolate eggs and cards and small gifts for friends and loved ones, and it is always lovely to remember other people and put good wishes into the world.

And where does that leave us? We work hard, run our business, manage the family finances, keep the children fed and watered, smile at our distant boss, pay the bills and battle the whims and demands of modern society.

So, which chocolate egg did you buy for yourself this year? Or, if not an egg, what other treat did you indulge yourself with? A small sherry perhaps? An afternoon curled up with a favourite book? A cake-up? (Tweeters who meet call time spent with real people in the real world a tweet-up, so being a cake fiend I have single-handedly invented the cake-up. It is both social and delicious).

The point here, from a business angle, is that we all need energy for work and that if we continue to work on and on without a break then our performance starts to dip. We think we are being productive, when in fact we are only thinking that we are productive, without actually being productive. Taking a break for a treat gives us time to recharge our batteries and allows our subconscious mind valuable off-line processing space to sort information and create new patterns of thinking.

Happy people make for successful businesses, so this week take time for treats and make sure you get your fair share of chocolate!

Next week: You, Me & CPD

In a world of rush-rush and hurry-scurry we can think that we are being super productive, when in fact we are gripped by fatigue, or out of sync with our daily rhythms. We tend to have a stress load on us from the moment we wake to the moment we sleep, which can mean that although we think we are thinking we are in fact simply deploying archaic get-us-through-the-day behaviours and are not really taking time to consider what is the most effective way for us to work.

The office world likes us to be at our desk for 9.00am take a decent lunch hour at 1.00pm and then toddle off home at 5.30pm. Of course we all do this each day …and we never skip lunch, work late or check emails before our morning ablutions. However, this is artificial time and pays no attention to when we like to work. For example, my own pattern is to mooch about post-school run and then settle down about 10.30 stopping only for something to eat at 12.00 for half an hour and then mooching again until 3.00 when I settle down to my keyboard and work diligently to 8.00pm.

My actual hours will vary from day to day, but the essence is still the same….I hate early starts and am more productive when I work late.

Instead of wasting time with this pseudo-work I am increasingly noticing my own bad habits and replacing them with the following options:

1. Bass guitar practice. Great fun and a good for stress relief!
2. Café lunch. Taking Mrs M out for brunch is a great way to replace wasted work time with fresh air and meaty snacks in our favourite local café.
3. Book reading. I like books and have decided that rather than waste time at my desk I will instead ‘waste’ the same amount of time reading my current bedside book. Winnie the Pooh has never been so much fun!
4. Sales meetings. Nobody builds a business my sitting in front of a screen all day, so I tend to book meetings for the morning, post school run, when I know I would just be at my desk and faffing.

We all kid ourselves that we are being productive, when in fact we secretly know we are just watching one more cat in a hat on YouTube, or re-typing the same report three times because we can’t think clearly how it should go. This week I invite you to be honest and to make different use of your time and perhaps re-contract with your line manager to make sure your hours at work are more closely tailored for your own styles and rhythms.

And if you want to meet for breakfast or brunch do let me know! I’m happy to swap faffing for friendship….and bacon and eggs! Yum!

Next week: Time For Treats!