Richard Maun

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  • Time Management Tip: Stop!

    You can put yourself first and do things differently.
    You can put yourself first and do things differently.

    Sometimes it’s hard to stop, but stopping is what’s needed.

    I was in a TA supervision session recently and realised that I needed to stop some things that have been causing time management stress. By the way, supervision is a great way to learn new things and improve your performance. If you’re working as a coach, you’ll probably already be having some. If not; call me.

    So what have I stopped? Here are three of the key ones:

    1) I’ve stopped cutting my day into tiny chunks of time. I found that trying to work on all of my big projects at once was distracting. Instead, I now have my diary organised so that I have a case study writing day, a book writing day, a client and sales day and so on. I focus on one key theme per day and that makes me more productive.

    2) I’ve stopped being an active member of a TA sub-committee. I’ve had to acknowledge that, for now at least, I need to focus my time on my work and cut out some of the time-consuming ‘nice to haves’. Putting myself first here was hard, as I like the people and the subject matter, but I have deadlines to meet and need to be practical.

    3) I’ve stopped trying to do it all myself. It’s easy to become self reliant and assume that only I can do the work, whilst fretting that I don’t have the time to fit in everything. Does that sound familiar to you? I’ve started to actively involve Sara, my ILM Centre Manager, with more projects. She’s great, knows her stuff and brings energy and ideas to the party. We have the wonderfully useful LaunchPad profile for leadership and team development, which we’re now promoting, so it makes sense to share the load and increase the capacity for action.

    If your diary is full and you’re fretting about things, if you’re anxious that work or life is spinning out of control, if you’re surrounded by half-finished projects and piles of paper, which seem to be taking over; then the message here is a clear and friendly one:

    Stop.

    Take a step back. Munch a biscuit. Talk to a friend, or get some supervision….

    ….And decide what you need to stop doing, in order to start making headway again.

    Oh, and if you want to stop guessing about how to make progress with your team, or your personal development, then have a go at LaunchPad. Airbus, the NHS and countless Cranfield post-grads have all used it to stop floundering in the dark and start to make progress.

    Have fun with your stopping!

  • You Can Use Technology

    Technology and cans (and coffee)
    Technology and cans (and coffee)

    My glasses have been misbehaving. Not playing violent 18-rated games on XBox (which they’re too young for) or staying out late without telling me when they’d be home. No. Something much worse.

    They’ve been slipping down my nose.

    I know. Scandalous isn’t it.

    When they gently descend and force me to peer out over the top of the rims I look like a patronising professor. I then have to push them back up, knowing they will soon defeat me once more. And you thought you had a tough life!

    So to tell them who’s boss I popped into my local optician and had them sorted. They were given a stern talking to, made to sit in the naughty-glasses-case for five minutes and finally heated up and had their arms gently adjusted. They’re now a reformed character and back to doing their job properly.

    During the course of their rehabilitation I learned that the optician’s daughter was currently writing a dissertation about Twitter. Amazing! Something that hardly existed two years ago is now a serious topic for academic research. She was writing about it’s usefulness as a marketing tool for publishing and ebook sales. Twitter has certainly helped me to sell books and it reminded me that if we want to be successful at selling products and services we need to attack all the routes to market.

    It costs nothing to explore Twitter, other than some time and maybe a bit of nervous energy, as we wonder if people will want to follow us. Follow me at @RichardMaun and I’ll follow you back, all for free.

    In my world of books it’s important to use tools like Twitter and YouTube to find customers and make them aware of my products. Thanks to the work of the actor known as Brian we’ve managed to generate more interest and more sales with the two short films he’s already starred in.

    Continuing the theme from last week’s post, about what I did well in 2011, the discussion with the optician reminded me that new technology is here to stay and that I continued to do a good job of using it this year. Looking back over 2010 I gained over 1,000 newfollowers on Twitter, posted 2 videos on YouTube, set up a FaceBook fanpage for Job Hunting 3.0, developed the blogsite and posted each week and, perhaps the smartest thing; integrated it all with my much loved Blackberry. (Apologies to iPhones everywhere).

    So when you look back on your success in 2011, which bits of technology did you use really well? Instead of dismissing it as ‘not for my business’ how did you make it work for you?

    Remember; if we think we can’t…then we can’t. If we think we can…then we can.

    Using technology for the good of our business, or our life, is about simply changing the can’t in our head to a can and then having a go. Technology is there to be used, whatever products or services your business provides. And I’m calling it technology because that is what it is; social media is just a current buzz-word for some of the content, but you still need a computer, smart phone, broadband connection and html coded website to link it all up and make it work.

    And if my glasses misbehave again, technology will provide a solution. I’m going to have bionic eyes installed.