Getting out of a slump

Have you ever found yourself in a bit of a slump? You know, you are taking the actions but getting no result? What was working last month isn’t working this month? And sometimes it just feels like you are going through the motions? You are tired, maybe even a little dis-spirited, and cleaning the floors looks like a really good idea…

I find myself looking out the window a lot on those days, daydreaming, and have to make a conscious effort to pull my mind, body, and spirit back to the task at hand.

Am I the only one? Have you been there, too?

I know that my ‘slump’ is related to bringing something new into existence. It is much harder to get something started than to keep it going once it has gained some momentum. I have heard it said that a plane uses up 60% of its fuel just getting off the ground.

Maybe that’s why it feels like this… So, what to do?

Here are some of techniques I use to get myself back to feeling (and being) productive:

• Take a short break. Use the break to review the overall strategy and plan. What’s the bigger picture? Sometimes just getting a different perspective is all that you need to refill your energy stores.
• Do something else for a while. Set an alarm and tackle a bunch of other tasks on your schedule for a little while. You can often break the mental pattern by motoring through a bunch of small, very achievable tasks. Take on something you KNOW you can get done in the next 30 minutes or so. You will get a burst of energy when it is done.
• Brainstorm with a buddy or mentor. Talking it through with another person is often a great idea! Especially when your mind is going in circles.

I promise you, your energy will return, your enthusiasm for what you are working on will come back, and you will move forward.

As long as you keep going, you will get there!

The only way to lose ultimately, is to quit. And you aren’t a quitter.

Now, go outside and take a little walk. Enjoy the day. Remind yourself that life is really bigger than this little hiccup.

Because, really, It is about having a life, after all!

(c) 2012, Terry Monaghan

Want to use this article in your ezine or website? You can, as long as you include this complete blurb with it:
Consultant, coach, speaker, trainer and entrepreneur, Terry Monaghan, publishes Now What, an ezine for entrepreneurs and professionals who want to double their productivity, improve their performance, and have a life! If you’re ready to jump start your performance and your results, then get your free tips now at www.TimeTriage.com.

The power of focus (part 2)

The Power of Focus

I have no idea how many times I have heard the saying “You get what you inspect, not what you expect.” I even think I understand it. After all, expectations almost always involve assumptions – and we know how grounded and valid our assumptions are. (Not very, but that could just be me.)

Last time, I wrote about the impact of focusing on what you DO want, rather than what you don’t want. Let’s look at focus a little more.

What do we mean by focus anyway? One definition is ‘a concentration of attention or energy on something.’ Other definitions include ‘maximum clarity or distinctness of an idea,’ and ‘special emphasis attached to something.’

I like the combination – clarity of an idea and a concentration of attention.

Sometimes, though, I wonder if that concentration of attention is the right kind of attention. For example – remember the saying ‘a watched pot never boils?’ Well, it does, eventually. And you would not get the result if you put the pot on to boil and walked away, forgetting about it. (Trust me, I’ve done this – all I got was a ruined pot.)

Somewhere in between obsessively watching and totally forgetting lies the path we want.

This is especially important as you delegate activities to your team. You will drive them (and yourself) crazy if you hover over them, micromanaging every detail. And you can’t just give them a task with no guidance and expect them to get it done to your satisfaction.

This is where your planning process becomes valuable. You have clearly defined not only your objectives, but the best way to get there. If you have set milestones in your plan, you have regular times and places to check on progress. And you have specific markers to determine if you and your team are on track.

Are you spending the time to really clarify your ideas and objectives? Are you giving them the right kind of attention to ensure success?

I know we are all busy. And I recommend you set aside at least one hour a week to do this. Aren’t your goals worth one hour a week of your time and attention?

Where are you focusing? It is your choice, after all.

(c) 2011, Terry Monaghan

Want to use this article in your ezine or website? You can, as long as you include this complete blurb with it:
Consultant, coach, speaker, trainer and entrepreneur, Terry Monaghan, publishes Now What, an ezine for entrepreneurs and professionals who want to double their productivity, improve their performance, and have a life! If you’re ready to jump start your performance and your results, then get your free tips now at www.TimeTriage.com.

[Now What] What do you do when you encounter a road-block?

Dealing with Detours

Have you ever had a plan go exactly the way you set it up? Yes, neither have I.

But what do you do when your plan hits a bump? Do you throw up your hands and quit in frustration? Do you back up and try to muscle your way through the obstacle? Do you keep doing the same things you were doing before you hit that pothole?

Or, do you step back, assess the situation, and determine the most appropriate action to take in the circumstances?

Silly questions, probably. Most of us would like to think we would be the clear headed one who steps back and considers the changing options before jumping into action. But do we really do that?

Or, do we have a reaction – and jump right into something based on that reaction?

The main issue with reacting is we are NEVER reacting to what just happened. (Even when it looks like that is what we are doing.) We are reacting to whatever got triggered in us in the circumstances ~ usually something from our past. Think about that for a moment.

Something happens to slow you down or otherwise impede your progress. Rather than determining what you should do next, you react. And your reaction is based on something that happened before (not on what just happened). So you take action to deal with the current situation using this past based reaction.

So, you are not really dealing with NOW, you are dealing with THEN.

How is that going to help you move your current goal forward?

Somehow, I doubt the action is going to have a positive effect!

So ~ take a breath, assess the current situation, let the reaction subside and think! What should you do now? Once you have allowed yourself to get past the initial reaction, you will discover a whole flood of ideas you would have never had if you had just allowed yourself to act from the past.

What have you go to lose? Other than your reaction, I mean…

(c) 2011, Terry Monaghan

Want to use this article in your ezine or website? You can, as long as you include this complete blurb with it:
Consultant, coach, speaker, trainer and entrepreneur, Terry Monaghan, publishes Now What, an ezine for entrepreneurs and professionals who want to double their productivity, improve their performance, and have a life! If you’re ready to jump start your performance and your results, then get your free tips now at www.TimeTriage.com.

6 reasons your email is driving you crazy…

Why is email so crazy? And what can we do?
Have you ever wondered why it feels like email is running your life, interrupting everything you do, and ruining your day?

Well, here are six reasons your email is driving you crazy:

• You deal with people who think email is the same as instant messaging. You know the type – they send an email, and then send four additional emails in a hour wondering why you haven’t responded to the first one.
• You deal with people who don’t know the difference between hitting reply and hitting reply all. So you get everyone’s responses to someone else’s question.
• You have your computer or phone set to allow email to push through to you on a regular basis. So you are interrupted by every popup, beep, buzz signaling an incoming message.
• You have 15,000 emails in your inbox and 5000 are marked unread. And you really think you are going to do something with them!
• You subscribe to various newsletters or industry reports, which you really want to read, but you don’t have a sorting rule to divert them into their own folder. So, they are cluttering up your inbox, mixed in with action items and all the other messages.
• You are unwilling to delete messages once you are done with them, because you might need to refer back to them later.

All of this adds up to an overwhelming amount of email – 80% of which is not important to your daily work (really). I read recently that the average business person is receiving the equivalent of a 250 page book in email every single day. Yikes!

But it is not hopeless. This is something you actually can control!

All you need is a simple process for your email, and then, of course – you need to follow it…

(c) 2011, Terry Monaghan

Want to use this article in your ezine or website? You can, as long as you include this complete blurb with it:
Consultant, coach, speaker, trainer and entrepreneur, Terry Monaghan, publishes Now What, an ezine for entrepreneurs and professionals who want to double their productivity, improve their performance, and have a life! If you’re ready to jump start your performance and your results, then get your free tips now at www.TimeTriage.com.

Getting (and staying) motivated…

Staying Motivated

A while ago, I was on the phone with a client. Now, here’s what her life was like right then: It was school vacation, so kids were home and running wild (not really, but it felt that way occasionally). Business was slow because everyone was on holiday. Then there was a trip to the emergency room (not her), a hospital stay, a bunch of tests, followed by emergency surgery.

Can you imagine – she was ready to throw in the towel and ask for a do-over.

We’ve all been there, haven’t we?

As we were talking, she asked me “how do you stay motivated?”

Isn’t that a great question! How DO you stay motivated? Especially when you are in the middle of the cyclone of life?

I told her my secrets to staying motivated (and they aren’t really secrets):

Remember why you are doing what you are doing. When you lose sight of the purpose of your activity it becomes just one more thing on the never ending list of things you have to do.

Take a break. Walk away from what you are doing for a little while. Get some tea, listen to some music, make a call to a friend, find something to make you laugh. The little break will give you more energy to return to your task.

Sometimes you just have to eat the frog. Sometimes you just cannot get motivated at all – in fact you might even be actively avoiding the tasks. The best thing then is to just grit your teeth, and tackle the largest or scariest task facing you. Getting it done will usually restore your motivation.

These are just some of the methods I use (sometimes on a daily or hourly basis) to keep myself moving forward.

What’s your favorite one? Use it!

(c) 2011, Terry Monaghan

Want to use this article in your ezine or website? You can, as long as you include this complete blurb with it:
Consultant, coach, speaker, trainer and entrepreneur, Terry Monaghan, publishes Now What, an ezine for entrepreneurs and professionals who want to double their productivity, improve their performance, and have a life! If you’re ready to jump start your performance and your results, then get your free tips now at www.TimeTriage.com.

The dance of the entrepreneur – 3 steps forward 2 steps back

Focus

How often have you found yourself in this place: You have created your goals. You have created your plan to get to the goals. You have begun taking the actions outlined in your plans.

And then, you run into a road block or a detour. Things are not going exactly as planned. That contract you just knew you were going to get falls through. The meetings you had scheduled weeks ago get canceled for one reason or another. Cash flow isn’t quite where you really want it to be. Etc.

What do you do then?

Do you let yourself fall into that downward spiral of doubt? Do you question whether you should even be doing what you are doing? Do you listen to the endless parade of thoughts as if they are true?

Or, do you keep yourself focused on the goal? Do you look at what is the next appropriate action to take to get to the goal, and take that action? Do you talk with an accountability partner about where you are and what you are up against? Do you work with your coach?

Many sources point out that you attract to you what you focus on the most (especially when you add emotion to it). We have all seen how when we have a pity party, we get far more evidence for why we should be pitied. What we don’t pay so much attention to is that the reverse is also true. The more we focus on what we want, the more of what we want we will actually have.

Really, which would you rather have? More of what you want? Or, more of what you don’t want? Duh!

Where are you focusing? It is your choice, after all.

(c) 2011, Terry Monaghan

Want to use this article in your ezine or website? You can, as long as you include this complete blurb with it:
Consultant, coach, speaker, trainer and entrepreneur, Terry Monaghan, publishes Now What, an ezine for entrepreneurs and professionals who want to double their productivity, improve their performance, and have a life! If you’re ready to jump start your performance and your results, then get your free tips now at www.TimeTriage.com.

10 reasons we don’t get anything done…

Why don’t we get anything done?

Have you ever wondered why it feels like you are running through your day as fast as you possibly can, yet at the end of the day you can’t say what (if anything) actually got done?

Yes, me too. I know I was busy, but what was taking up all my time?

Here are 10 reasons why we don’t get anything done:

We are addicted to our email. We let our incoming email interrupt whatever we are doing, as if what is coming is in more important than what we are working on right now.

We can’t turn off our phone (land line or cell). We will answer every single incoming call (or at least look to see who is calling) as if we have nothing else to do.

We can’t find what we are looking for. Our desk/briefcase/car is awash with papers, files, supplies, and other stuff, and we spend way too much time shifting, sifting and shuffling.

We have an open door policy – and people take advantage of it. Colleagues and co-workers stop by the door and interrupt us with ‘just one quick question’ or some non work related gossip.

The next thing we need to do on this project can’t be done because we don’t have that piece we need from the other department because the person who was supposed to work on it was on vacation/out sick/busy and we didn’t know that.

We aren’t sure what we are supposed to do next, and instead of asking anyone, we dive into some piece of the project, and only discover later that that part was already completed by someone else.

We go online to research a topic and get distracted by chasing various links down many different rabbit holes. Three hours later we still don’t have what we went to find in the first place.

We are working without deadlines, so either everything has a deadline of NOW or nothing is urgent until we have heard from 3 people looking for our input.

We spend our time in meeting after meeting after meeting, all designed to provide status updates, but no one has any time to do any of the work because they are spending all their time updating the status.

And then we wonder why we are so busy but don’t get anything done!

When will we stop? Just wondering…

(c) 2011, Terry Monaghan

Want to use this article in your ezine or website? You can, as long as you include this complete blurb with it:
Consultant, coach, speaker, trainer and entrepreneur, Terry Monaghan, publishes Now What, a weekly ezine for entrepreneurs and professionals who want to double their productivity, improve their performance, and have a life! If you’re ready to jump start your performance and your results, then get your free tips now at www.TimeTriage.com.

Where will you carve out time?

It stands to reason that if you want different results, you may have to do some things differently. Many of us find that to be an intimidating idea – because we think we may have to change everything – and that is just an overwhelming thought.

But, what if you only changed one thing? What if the one thing you added was one block of time each week devoted to one of your goals? Notice – I did not say one block of time each day – I really mean one block of time each week! And it doesn’t have to be a large block of time.

What if you set aside one hour each week to work specifically on one of your goals. Yes, only one hour! Do you have any idea what you could accomplish if you devoted one hour to it each and every week? Well – if you devoted one hour each week to reading for example, you would have read more than 10 books by the end of the year. Which, by the way, is way more than most people will do!

What if you set aside that one hour each week to make calls to your clients, prospects and contacts? I am not talking about having long conversations – just a quick touching base type of call. You could easily reach 30 people during that one hour (and leaving a message counts as reaching them). What do you think you might be able to create if you knew that you would reach out to 1500 people over the course of the year?

Not bad for one hour!

Where will you carve out the time?

Because, really, without a life, what’s the point?

(c) 2010, Terry Monaghan

Want to use this article in your ezine or website?
You can, as long as you include this complete blurb with it:
Consultant, coach, speaker, trainer and entrepreneur, Terry Monaghan, publishes Now What, a free weekly ezine for entrepreneurs and professionals who want to double their productivity, improve their performance, and have a life! If you’re ready to jump start your performance and your results, then get your free tips now at www.TimeTriage.com.

What are you dealing with?

Have you ever found yourself forced to spend time with people you just don’t like? Or people who don’t like you? How do you handle it?

I am privileged to come from a family (a large one) where we genuinely like each other, and enjoy spending time together. Do we occasionally squabble? Yes, but it ends up being more like puppy fights than wars. And at the end, we still like and respect each other.

And, in my business life I have made a conscious effort to surround myself with people I know, like and trust. I think both of these things give me a real boost and even an added edge on occasion.

It hasn’t always been that way. I have had my share of nightmare situations – from the team member who does no work (but talks a good game and takes all the credit) to the department head at a client engagement who said “I am not going to implement a single thing you suggest.” And everything in between.

What do you do in that situation?

Well, I can tell you from personal experience what doesn’t work. When dealing with a team member who is doing no work – doing their job on top of your own and seething about it isn’t a great approach. Yes, the project does get done. But not holding the team member accountable for doing their own job does no good. And quietly seething about it is only harmful to you.

And, again from personal experience – what does work is establishing boundaries and sticking by them. Being accountable to the client or the team works. In the case of the department head, my approach was to let my client know that I wasn’t going to waste their money by spending any more time in that department. The client appreciated that, and since I had already done what they wanted me to do in that department, nothing more was said.

However, as we all know, we don’t always have total control over who we are working with and having to deal with people who you don’t like or trust can take a real toll on your energy, your self confidence, your self esteem, and your productivity. So what can you do?

Set your boundaries, pick your battles, and don’t engage in the tug of war. Be accountable for yourself and your results. Hold others to account for themselves and their results.

And sometimes you just have to leave a toxic environment. For many, the relief of being out of that environment is enormous. It’s only then that you realize how much of your energy was going towards coping.

Look around. Are you accountable? Are you pulling your weight? Or are you carrying the weight of others? Or maybe someone is picking up the slack you are leaving?

What is in your control is your own behavior. Remember, being accountable works, setting boundaries works, respecting yourself and others works.

(c) 2010, Terry Monaghan

Want to use this article in your ezine or website?
You can, as long as you include this complete blurb with it:
Consultant, coach, speaker, trainer and entrepreneur, Terry Monaghan, publishes Now What, a free weekly ezine for entrepreneurs and professionals who want to double their productivity, improve their performance, and have a life! If you’re ready to jump start your performance and your results, then get your free tips now at www.TimeTriage.com.

Do you ever get stuck?

Getting Unstuck

Have you ever found yourself in the middle of a whirlwind? What about finding yourself in the middle of a long dry spell where nothing seems to be happening?

I think it is two sides of the same coin.

Recently I was feeling a little stuck in my own business. I have this great plan, and can see it all mapped out. And yet, I wasn’t taking some of the action that was there to take, and in other areas I didn’t even know what actions to take.

We have all heard the quote about the definition of insanity: doing the same things over and over and expecting a different result. Well, that’s where I was.

Here’s just one example: I have been told to send out press releases about different things in my business and I haven’t done any of that. As a child I was told that I shouldn’t brag.

What do they have to do with each other? Well, if you have grown up believing that bragging isn’t good, then sending out press releases becomes impossible.

Have to send out press releases – that’s good for business. But the 5 year old thinks it is bragging – and that’s bad.

Such a trap! There is no way out of that one. Until…

Until I can recognize that I am not the 5 year old, and I am not bragging. The context is decisive! Once I saw that, really saw that, I was freed up to take the actions on my plan. Not only that, but there is a flood of new actions that weren’t there before.

Where are you being stopped by your 5 year old self?

Shameless plug: I am re-running my Productivity Basics teleclasses in August. There will be two session on developing a schedule that works, one session on planning, and one session on taking control of your email. Details are available at www.timetriage.com/events.asp.

In the meantime, have a great summer – but remember – you are calling the shots – not the 5 year old!

(c) 2010, Terry Monaghan

Want to use this article in your ezine or website?
You can, as long as you include this complete blurb with it:
Consultant, coach, speaker, trainer and entrepreneur, Terry Monaghan, publishes Now What, a free weekly ezine for entrepreneurs and professionals who want to double their productivity, improve their performance, and have a life! If you’re ready to jump start your performance and your results, then get your free tips now at www.TimeTriage.com.