The first in a summer of short blog posts that explore ways to change small things that can have a positive effect on each of the Big Orange Heart hubs – Business, Physical, Skills, and Mental health.
Let’s start with our business health; what small thing can we change to improve this? Working on our business is vital, we know this, so is there something, one thing, that we can improve this summer that will positively affect something that most likely needs to be done anyway?
- A regular, scheduled review, or even audit, of our processes? Schedule specific time however often you think useful and review how you do things – your accounting, marketing, sales, invoicing, admin.
- How often do those of us self-employed or small business owners leave our accounts until the last minute? Could this summer be the time to start a new habit of weekly, monthly or quarterly updating the bookkeeping, or even trialing a service that can simplify this?
- Or allocating, and sticking to, time for marketing – many of us are supporting our clients’ marketing but have little time for our own. What if we start a habit to change that?
All of these tasks (and many more), working on our business, are important yet can overwhelm when we look at the whole. So what if we look at one small thing and shift that to be more efficient, somehow?
As an example, for me it’s blogging for my own websites, which is not in any way, shape or form a small thing, however, could I become more efficient and get the words out there by making a small change? Within my head I’m prolific, but getting the “reams” of writing into actual blogs is another matter. And much as I look forward to the day when we can mind-meld with our device of choice, for the foreseeable future I need to make a small change that shifts me from thinking to publishing.
Now obviously something else has to give, so before I can actually make that small change, another needs to be made – reviewing how I’m using my time, maybe, so that I can set half an hour daily purely for blogging. My business health will improve if I do this so it is important.
And even considering what could ease the activity of downloading from brain to keyboard, enabling me to be more nimble of process? I find it very hard to look past the wider issue and the impact of setting time, being disciplined about doing what I’m scheduled to do and not be distracted by however important something else (that always arises) may be that is thrust upon us.
As someone who works from home that may be closing the email tab on my browser and wearing headphones so those around me know not to disturb unless it’s essential. Could it be that simple? I’ll not know unless I try it!
Another factor for some with similar struggles to get the blog posts done can be the platform we use. Of course we want to publish on WordPress but while chatting with Dan, he found that creating posts within something like Simple Note makes the process easier to focus upon (and this copy/pastes nicely into Gutenberg, so that’s a win). Downloading as I type this…
So, this is my small change from today – into the schedule goes half an hour daily for blog post writing and/or editing on my own websites. And during that time I wear headphones and close the Gmail tab.
My own small thing aside, is there something you can pin down that might make a difference if you considered it? Even allowing ourselves to think about this can be useful – it is allowed and it is important, so turn everything else off and focus on your business – what do you suspect could make a difference that is within your control?
Gratuitous cute “small thing” photo by Andrii Podilnyk on Unsplash
Big Orange Heart