If you haven’t already revisited your work schedule for the new year, it’s time. Particularly for those colleagues and clients of mine who work from home, keeping a realistic schedule is an absolutely essential habit.

One of the big benefits of being your own boss is the ability to set your own calendar. But there is a downside. My friend mentioned the other day, “I’m spending about twice as much time working now as I did when I was working for someone else! I still love what I’m doing, but I have less time to spend with friends or family or work on my non-business, just-for-fun projects”.

Setting a more rational schedule that will allow you to put more balance into your life and work will mean taking advantage of existing habits you have.

For instance, if you are a night owl who does their best work in the evening, then try to schedule at least some of your business efforts for that time, even after others have gone to bed. Obviously, this won’t work for cold-calls and other business functions that often work better early in the morning, but a lot of technical services, planning, communications, accounting or administrative functions can be done at night – just as long as you’ve got the energy then.

Of course, if you’re an early riser, consider getting into your work before everyone else is up. The rule is basically that you want to be arranging your schedule around the times when you are most productive according to your own unique body clock.

For home-based businesses, this will necessitate instituting some hard rules and boundaries around entering your “office”. If this is unrealistic for your living arrangement (eg. your home office is the well-trafficked living room), you might consider investing in some shared office space, or even working from the local coffee shop with your laptop and Blackberry as your means of production.

Linda Chu
CEO – Out of Chaos, Professional Organizing Solutions
www.outofchaos.ca

We don’t always appreciate what we have, whether at home or at work. That angst that fights against complacency is actually a good thing – the sense that the grass is always greener on the other side is what makes us jump into new opportunities. That said, making a team work together with real synergy is not an everyday feat. Learn to spot the successes in your collaborations, so you can replicate that synergy elsewhere.

Does your team actually seem to enjoy working with each other? Happy people are productive people. If you find yourself actually looking forward to seeing the people at your office every day – well, that’s no small thing.

Then there’s the skill set. With an optimal balance where everyone is assigned tasks and workload according to their talents rather than which person has the smallest stack of projects on their desk, you’ll get real productivity.

Next, look at how your group talks to each other. If discussions are fluid, with plenty of back and forth, engaging ideas, and everybody listening to what other team members are saying, you’ve got something special. Far too many groups are dominated by someone with a forceful personality rather than expertise in all areas that the team has to work in. Freedom of speech and thought are not just good for civil society – they make businesses work better.

If you do recognize your team is functioning very well, analyze what it is about this group that works well. Often, it is based on good habits rather than some innate ability to work well with others. Try to transfer these habits to your other collaborative activities and watch your successes add up.

Linda Chu
CEO – Out of Chaos, Professional Organizing Solutions
www.outofchaos.ca

We all have bad habits that hold us back in our business and personal lives. But habits don’t have to be permanent. And if you’re serious about changing your ways, don’t be intimidated by thinking it’s a matter of willpower (in case you don’t think you’ve got it). It’s more about simply replacing your bad habits with new, better habits.

First, choose just one habit you want to change. You don’t want to bite off more than you can chew. The habit can and often will be a habit of omission – for instance, you often lost your access key card, miss appointment or neglect your paperwork.

Next, tell yourself how you’re going to replace your habit. Tell others. The more of your colleagues who know you’re trying to change your habit, the easier it will be. Write it down.

Every day, take a few minutes to think about the habit you are changing, and repeat to yourself (out loud, if you’ve got some privacy) your commitment to change your ways. You can also use this time to actually undertake the replacement habit. For instance, if you’ve resolved to improve your filing of paperwork so it becomes a regular process, doing this on a daily basis at a regularly scheduled time is ideal. If the problem was missed meetings, then taking a few minutes to check your calendar at the beginning of every day just before your prioritized tasks is essential.

Remind your colleagues about your habit change so they can help keep you on the right path.

Consistency is key. In 30 days, you can replace your bad habits with better ones. Remember, it’s not about willpower. It’s about routines.

Linda Chu
CEO – Out of Chaos, Professional Organizing Solutions
www.outofchaos.ca

Productivity and disorganization don’t mix. I’ve been recommending and training clients on the GO System to help their operations remain organized and competitive. In tough times, telling your employees to just “work harder” isn’t an inspiring message – but providing them with simple, specific recommendations to decrease workplace stress and frustration will pay dividends.

Employees already come with project management skills and some effective organization and time-management habits (otherwise, why did you hire them?). But that doesn’t necessarily provide cohesive organization across a company. Without training in procedures, two employees working right next to each other in the same room, even doing similar kinds of work, may organize files, projects and effort in very different ways, making collaboration challenging.

Throughout your organization, all members of your team stand to benefit from standardized processes that can be adapted to your particular organization. You’ll want to focus on things like processing incoming items, prioritizing, rational time management, understanding personality and psychological issues and more. The GO System is particularly good at covering off these points.

For more information, check out the GO System at www.thegosystem.com/ or get help from a professional organizer.

Linda Chu
CEO – Out of Chaos, Professional Organizing Solutions
www.outofchaos.ca

“I want to do it myself!” is the chant of every four-year old.  You have to admire their enthusiasm, but the end result doesn’t work so well for them a lot of the time.  As a business habit, it’s not so hot, either.

Our clients outsource because they know they can’t do everything themselves, and entrepreneurs need to recognize this about themselves. Particularly for those of us offering business-to-business services, we can have a habit of not taking our own advice.

We can’t wear all the hats and still feel passionate about our businesses. For instance, I outsource bookkeeping and some other administrative functions so that I can focus on the work that I’m passionate about: helping people and organizations by providing the tools and teaching them the strategies to stay de-cluttered, stay organized and manage time effectively.

Remember the 80/20 rule (organizations typically get 80 per cent of their results from 20 per cent of their efforts) and organize your tasks accordingly, ensuring you spend more of your time on the really productive work.

For small businesses in Canada, the future is looking a little brighter these days (CNW Group) and I’m definitely hearing anecdotal evidence about people (some of them recently handed pink slips) starting new businesses. It’s important for those new entrepreneurs and the experienced business owners among us to not attempt to wear too many hats.

Do what you love, spend your time on the high-impact activities and leverage off the activities you don’t like (but have to be done).

Linda Chu
CEO – Out of Chaos, Professional Organizing Solutions
www.outofchaos.ca

Remember what school was like? Things seemed a little simpler then. Tests and exams stressed me out, but the habits I had even before I became a professional organizer helped me get through those times and on to graduate. In school, as in my business today, you have to put in the effort and be disciplined to get the desired results. The parallels come through in several ways:

1. No Cramming before the Exam. In business, you are constantly tested. Whether it’s meeting a client’s custom needs on short notice or getting a new campaign ready to launch, the results matter more than how much effort you put in 12 hours prior to the deadline. Give yourself adequate time to do the job well. And get your rest, because on the day you have to deliver, there will likely be a whole new set of challenges to meet.

2. It’s Not Just About Knowing the Right Answer. Remember those math exam questions where you received most of your marks from showing the work, and only half a point for actually getting the right answer? In business, as well, you’ll be rewarded for taking the time and effort to understand your business processes. Examine your processes, not just your results.

3. Collaborate to Innovate. In school, I loved being able to bounce ideas off of the other students in my study group. That interaction helped me understand what I was learning in new ways and kept me interested in the process of learning. In business, I regularly get together with colleagues and professional contacts to stay on top of industry trends and get new ideas.

As my old teacher said, if something is worth doing, it’s worth doing well. To reap the reward you want, work smarter.

Linda Chu
CEO – Out of Chaos, Professional Organizing Solutions
www.outofchaos.ca

I firmly believe in making your own luck. There are opportunities out there for the taking every day, from discovering new ways to promote your business to meeting that key person who can help you take your organization to the next level.

Finding these opportunities can have a lot to do with changing your habits. After all, if you do things the way you’ve always done them, you’re going to get the same result. Some great tips from Alec Shalman, personal development coach, include:

• Changing your routine. Think about altering the routes you take to work or social engagements. Talk to new people, perhaps using some random identifier such as the color of their shirt, to take your predetermined biases out of the equation.
• Practice going with your gut instincts. (Alternatively, if your luck hasn’t been working too well lately, you could always try the infamous George Kostanza approach of doing the exact opposite of your instinct – not recommended for the long term, but it might be fun for a day).
• Transform bad luck into good luck with a good attitude. For instance, if you lose a client, look at it as an opportunity to re-examine your business offering and how you provide value for your other clients.

Linda Chu
CEO – Out of Chaos, Professional Organizing Solutions
www.outofchaos.ca

We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit – Aristotle

Human beings in and of themselves operate on autopilot for much of their day. We complete daily activities like, showering, brushing our teeth, drinking coffee, reading the paper, with little or almost no thought about what it is that we are actually doing. These habitual behaviours add up throughout the day and by the time we go to bed, somewhere between 75-80% of our activities were exactly the same as yesterday and will be exactly the same as tomorrow. This can’t be possible you think – take stock – I guarantee you’ll find what I’m saying to be true.

This month we’ve been writing on ways you can automate your business so that you don’t have to be the one doing all the work in order to be successful. Today, I want to draw your attention to your own personal autopilot mechanism, known as your ‘habits’, because, as positive as all the tools are that we’ve been sharing with you all month, your own personal habits can be equally as detrimental to your success.

For example…

Almost every person that I know, with the exception of a few, and especially entrepreneurs, complain that they don’t have enough time. It’s become somewhat of an epidemic. Stock answer to the question ‘how are you doing’ has become ‘busy!’. People are running around like mad men, always in a hurry and rushing. Not to mention what these raised levels of cortizol and adrenalin are doing to your body, how is this ‘habitual way of operating’ affecting the success of your business?

Being in a habitual state of ‘busyness’ is doing nothing for your health personally or professionally and if this describes you in any way, it’s time to take a step back and reevaluate. There is no way, at least that I’m aware of, to add hours to the day, so the 24 that you’re working with, is all you have. How you spend those 24 hours, however, is directly reflected in the results you are achieving in your life.

Go back to you goals for 2009 and read them over. Are you getting closer to accomplishing? If not, it’s time for you to take a look at your habits. What are you doing everyday and how is that contributing to the achievement of your goals? If you’re doing things that are not contributing, time to ditch those activities. Getting what YOU want in business and in life is 100% up to you, if you’re willing to take responsibility for your own success. The actions you take in your life are producing your current results. If you don’t like what you see, time to change your actions.

All the best,

Heather White, CEO 2020 Communications Inc.

On the West Coast, in Vancouver BC, summer is well upon us and even though the sun has been shining 5 days out of 7 for the past 2 months, there is still a looming knowledge of what is coming…rain, maybe snow, grey, cold damp…yuck! We live here for the summer: sun, blue sky, outdoor activities galore, beautiful beaches, scenic mountains for hiking and biking, golf, water sports. And yet, entrepreneurs everywhere are glued to their laptops and pda’s unable to peel themselves away from their business. The very reason they left the corporate world is holding them hostage to the same habits. Working 8, 10, sometimes 12 or 14 hours a day. A slave to their business. And worse yet, the summer is passing quickly by. How can we change this? And quick?

Cease all multitasking immediately. Instead, do 1 thing at a time, focus your attention on the task at hand until it’s complete.

Start this week by shaving 2 hours a day off of your work schedule. If you normally work from 9 – 5, for the rest of this week, leave at 3pm. 

Starting next week, take one whole day a week off to enjoy the summer weather and accompanying activities.

Tasks will expand to the amount of time we give them. If you give yourself 6 hours to get done what you normally would in 8, trust me, you can get it all done. If you give yourself 4 days to get what you’d normally complete in 5, this too can be done. Think back to the last time you went on holidays. Did you accomplish an insane amount of work in your last week, especially on your last day? Take this ’sense of urgency’ approach to your work this summer and enjoy more days by the beach, on the water, on the golf course, or wherever it is that you’d rather be then in front of your computer.

Enjoy some fun in the sun!

All the best,

Heather White, CEO 2020 Communications Inc.

Winning is not a sometime thing; it’s an all time thing. You don’t win once in a while, you don’t do things right once in a while, you do them right all the time. Winning is habit. Unfortunately, so is losing.” Vince Lombardi

I don’t know about you, but it’s hard to be too concerned about the recession on a sunny day. I was sitting out on the deck this morning reading the New York Times magazine and it was talking about all these places in the US where housing projects and developments just stalled. It was the wierdest thing (said in a mocking tone). These developers thought that if they built these massive complexes without pre-selling them, that people would line up to buy. Nobody lined up and now the developers are bankrupt. Even more shocking, people bought homes they knew they couldn’t afford and those houses got taken away when they lost their jobs. On top of that, they were leveraged out to the max and so no savings in place = hard times. These people are losers my friends. People who were trying to be something they aren’t and now are suffering public humiliation. The worst part, in all sincerity, is that their families suffer along side them.

What is the matter with people today? Have we, as a collective group, lost all forms of common sense? A friend of mine says, “I wish common sense was more common”, and she’s right.

I watch crowds flock to Suzy Orman shows to hear her say, “sorry girlfriend, you can’t afford that.” Really Suzy? I make 20K a year, spend 75% of it on housing and food, and I shouldn’t buy those $500 Jimmy Choo shoes on my Visa? Awwwww, come on Suzy, Just one pair?

Some of the stupider things I’ve heard people say on television about the recession in the last week:

• I knew I couldn’t afford the house payments, but I thought the bank would help me out.
• I knew that my whole division at work was being laid of three months ago, but I thought they would spare me.
• I can’t believe that working at Bear Sterns isn’t getting me a job.
• I can barely stand having to put up with my parents while I live with them. I know they are helping me get back on my feet, but I have the smallest bedroom in the house.
• I refuse to work for less that $75,000 a year. I’d rather be on unemployment.
• I know there are jobs, but I refuse to move.
  
• They will have to kick me out of my house. I’m not leaving until they put my stuff out on the street.
• I can’t believe how much my business is down. I’m going to start marketing when things get better.

Business is not immune to natural selection. The weakest and dumbest to get the biggest hits when things go south. I had a woman come to one of my events in Detroit three years ago. She came up to me after the show and said, “We can’t keep building cars they way we have been. It just doesn’t make sense. I think I need to plan my exit strategy.” She was a manager of a plant for one of the big 3 automakers in the US. She spent the next six months making her shift and has transfered her management skills from automotive to retirment homes. I got a note from her a few months ago saying that she was now getting heavily invested in Real Estate and couldn’t believe the deals she was getting. This is a smart woman. She saw the writing on the wall and left when it suited her. She didn’t wait to see herself and her cowokers get locked out of their jobs and put on the unemployment line.

What’s this whole rant about? Life is good. Life is short.  Don’t wait for tomorrow to do what you NEED to do today. If you think you might lose a big client, don’t close your eyes and brace for it. GO GET A NEW CLIENT! It’s not rocket science, or maybe it is. Maybe the reason why so many people are suffering right now is that they didn’t see it coming? Does anyone really believe this?Natural selection is at work eating up the people with the greatest concentration of ‘dumb ass’ in them. It started back in the cave man days. One cave man says, “I think I’m going to stay away from that tiger that wants me for dinner.” The other one said, “Pretty kitty and walked out and got eaten.”

A sunny day is a good day to do some planning. Plan for yourself, plan for your future. Plan to enjoy sunny days because you know you have control over how things turn out. You can take action before, during, or after you get hit with something and learn from it. The woman in Detroit didn’t have to get hit in order to learn about the importance of planning. Now she really gets it and is getting rich in the process. Don’t buy fire insurance when you smell smoke. Buy it when you learn what a fire is. Here are the questions to get your primed to protect your back, stay on course, and enjoy many sunny days to come:

1. What is the greatest threat to my way of life at this moment?
2. If this threat became a reality, what would my course of action be?
3. What can I do today to minimize the risk of the threat happening or mitigate its effects if it does happen?
4. Who do I know who has gone through this and come out the other side? What can I learn from them?
5. Are any of my actions contributing to a big fall for me personally? (i.e. Living outside your means/buying things you can’t afford)
6. Do I have resources at my disposal that I can access in a time of need? If not, how can I get started?
7. What am I doing that I know is wrong or conflicts with common sense? How can I get back on track.

These might be really tough questions for you to go through, but they will be tougher if you are under the gun to find solutions. Forewarned is forearmed. If you don’t like where you are, shift. If you like where you are, set up systems to keep yourself there. Your business life will model your personal life and vice versa. Be wise, look ahead, and plan for the worst, while hoping for the best. Many a visionary has been struck down because they spent too much time looking out and not enough time looking in. Much of business development and life development is to seize opportunities and mitigate risks. Today is your day to do just that.

Enjoy the sun.

C/

www.GhostCEO.com