Season's Greetings

Hopefully you'll all taking some well earned time out to relax, enjoy yourself and spend time with family and friends over the holiday period.

I'm not going M.A.D. this week but following on from last week's post, I've put together an Annual Review, which I'd like to share with you. You can download it from my website by clicking here.

Wishing you all a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year.

Clare

If Only ...

If only … I had more time. If only … I had more money. How often do you hear people say that or find yourself thinking or saying it?

Exercise often features up in the top three as one of those things that people would do more of, if only they had the time but often it drops to the bottom of the list. Spending time with partner, family or friends is often up there too.

At this time of the year it’s worth taking a look back at what you’ve achieved this year and what you would like to have done more or less of. Take a look at your Life Balance Wheel and see if there’s an area that you’d like to focus on in the coming year. Write down just three things you want to achieve next year.

Whether you want to get healthy, grow your business, learn a new skill, have more free time or something else, make a commitment to do these three things. Write it down. Tell someone about it. Create key milestones and accountability to keep you focused throughout the year.

What’s going to stop you or get in the way? Stay focused and turn your 'if only ...' into 'I have ...'

Set A Time Limit

This is something that can be applied to various every day activities and can speed up your productivity and limit your distractions.

It’s all too easy to let time slip away or get side-tracked or distracted when working on a particular task – for instance when checking emails. While it might be important to get your emails responded to, do you often find you’ve just spent an hour going through your emails when you had something more important you needed to do.

Get yourself a simple kitchen timer and set a time limit for certain tasks. For instance - set a limit of 30 minutes to read and respond to emails, 15 minutes to start work on a report or just 10 minutes to get you going on something that you've been putting off or an hour for longer tasks. When the timer goes off switch to the next task. It makes a big difference when you know the clock is literally ticking, as you’ll get on with things and not get distracted.

It can also be useful to set an hourly alarm to remind you to get up, take a break, have a drink of water etc. or just to refocus.

As it's the season of good will, if you want to help a worthy cause, I just found that you can donate a digital timer through the Cancer Research website, so you get to improve someone else’s productivity and help a good cause at the time.

Don't Just Sit There!

I was helping out at a local event yesterday. It was a Christmas event with a mix of arts and crafts, beauty products and several small businesses and a couple of charity groups. There weren’t that many people coming through the doors but I probably managed to speak to most of them and came away with a large number of contacts to follow-up. A successful event as far as I was concerned.

However, many of the other exhibitors were just sitting behind their stalls, waiting for someone to come and buy whatever it was they were selling. Mostly looking miserable and complaining about the poor response. Now, not everyone is looking for what they’ve got but it might have helped if people had at least stood up and attempted to engage with the people passing by. It’s the same in business – if you’ve got something to offer, then don’t just sit there waiting for the phone to ring – get out there and start connecting, whether in person or virtually. Even if you have the most fantastic product – unless you tell people about it, how will they know what you’re offering and how to find you?

So many people yesterday were missing an opportunity to get contact details from the people that were there. They wasting even more of the time and energy they’d invested in getting there by not making the most of the opportunity, even if the turnout was low. While people may not want to buy straight away, get their contact details so you can stay in touch. A regular newsletter is a great way of doing this, especially if you’ve got a special offer or prize draw.

What tips and ideas have worked for you at an event or exhibition?