Let's keep the momentum going of the new year! As the tagline for PlanDoTrack goes - Daily Steps + Consistent Action = Momentum. What are you keeping a FOcus on this year?

I've just sent out the January PlanDoTrack newsletter which included a number of key goodies you will likely be interested in. You can read it here.

If you are looking to set some focus and get momentum going I hope you'll Save the date - Monday January 6th from 11 - 11:30 am Eastern -  and oin me in zoom room 270-302-0415 for the 1st PlanDoTrack Community call of the year. The topic is Kicking off 2020 - Focus, Productivity and Creating Your Annual Plan. It will be part tips and part working session so bring your planner and a pen!

If you are a business owner, check out the 1BizStepADay series of daily prompts for January 2020 which I posted over at the Coaching Business Builder blog earlier this week. Be sure to download these daily prompts which are geared to support you into 15 minutes of focused action.
Looking for more support than that and you are a coach? Consider joining me for the 60 Day Coaching Business Builder Accelerator. Registration is open to January 15th. We'll be taking daily action on our business to March 15th. The program includes on-demand content, two weekly group calls, and 9 individual 15 minute calls with me each week for the program. It's geared to get you into action!

The PlanDoTrack 52 Weeks series wrapped up last week - be sure to get your downloads before they disappear. 

I'll be back next week with a new 52 weeks series for remote workers over at the Remote Pathways blog. Hope you'll join us there for this new series.

As a final reminder, Winter 2020 programming begins next week. Programs include:
Coaching Biz Growth Lab - An annual group for coaches wanting support around their coaching business development. Meeting Friday January 10th from 3- 4 pm ET. Our first of 24 bi-weekly calls this year.

Group Coaching Essentials - 8.75 CCEs for coaches wanting to develop and lead their own group coaching programs. Starts Friday JAn 10th at 1015 am ET (3 spots open)

Virtual Facilitation Essentials - for professionals wanting to jazz up their virtual calls and meetings. Join us for learning and practice in the virtual space! Monday January 13th from 1:30 -245 pm ET for  5 weeks. 8.5 CCEs

Mentor Coaching Groups - for coaches working towards their ACC or PCC, or renewing for ACC. 3 months from January 10 - April 18 (calls usually 2nd and 4th Friday from 9 - 10 am ET)

That's it for today - Enjoy your first weekend of 2020!

Jennifer

Jennifer Britton - Potentials Realized
Author of PlanDoTrack (2019),  Coaching Business Builder (2018), Effective Virtual Conversations (2017) and From One to Many: Best Practices for Team and Group Coaching (2013). Pick up a copy of any of her books at Amazon
Book Jennifer for a coaching session to explore productivity, teamwork and business issues.
Contact her by phone at (416)996-8326
Follow the #90DaysPlanDoTrack series on Instagram

This week’s Weekly Planning Hack is all about taking consistent action, starting out in 15-minute bursts. The tagline for my Workbook Planners, PlanDoTrack and the Coaching Business Builder, is that business success in today’s disruptive environment is about taking consistent action on a daily basis, in order to generate the momentum needed around projects.

A key challenge of today’s VUCA and ever-changing context is that things are occurring so fast many times we are abandoning long term projects in trade-off of short-term creation.

We still need to get our big projects done. For leaders, these are the strategic issues that are going to move the business forward. For business owners, these are the big projects - like writing a book or creating something else – that is going to keep the business moving.

The challenge is finding the space to work on projects. As Thoreau wrote “I love a broad margin to my life”. I have been enamored of his writing on Walden Pond since my early 20s when I was a grad student in Environmental Studies. As many of you know, each summer I retreat and work remote out of my cottage in the solitude of nature. Even with that, the margins of my life are compressed most of the time – as a business owner, author, mom and primary support to my aging parents. Finding huge swaths of time for creative projects is always a challenge. Two years ago, after my return to the city, I didn’t return to watching TV or Netflix. I still have ample screen time in my line of work, but it created a bit more margin for creative and strategic thinking.

Even with this, I started finding that some projects really could only have 15-30 minutes dedicated to it at any given time. Great examples of this are this series – the Weekly Journaling Prompts which have been created in 15 – 30-minute windows of writing, posting and recording throughout the year, as well as a lot of my writing on the Teams365 blog.

You might not think 15 minutes a day adds up, but it does. Take a look at the volume of content generated over at the Teams365 blog which has now shaped not only one, but three of my books.

What are the key strategic and long-term goals you want to work towards? How might 15 minutes a day of focused effort, and consistent action on a daily (or regular) basis help you?

Experiment with it. See what happens. AND – Let us know!

Best, 
​Jennifer

​Week 48 Focus — Boundaries
Focus Question: What are the boundaries which help you do your best work?

Description
As a solopreneur, time is one of your greatest resources. As a business owner, especially if you run a remote business, there may be demands on your time and attention throughout the day. For some, we continue to say “yes” even when our plate overflows.
 
Activity
Reflect on the following questions:

• What are the boundaries you need to put into place so you can focus?
• What are the boundaries you need to put into place so you can do your best work?
• What are the boundaries you need to put into place so you can be at your best?

 
Connection to the Workbook and Planner
Our time is precious and cannot be recreated once it is gone.
Take a look at your daily planning, or weekly planning. What time blocks are you earmarking for your most important tasks?

What boundaries do you want to put around when you start, and stop, work?

Download a one-page copy of this week's 52 Weeks of Plan, Do and Track here.

Best wishes, 
Jennifer

Read and download the initial weeks of the 52 weeks of Plan, Do and Track

Jennifer Britton - Potentials Realized
Author of PlanDoTrack (2019),  Coaching Business Builder (2018), Effective Virtual Conversations (2017) and From One to Many: Best Practices for Team and Group Coaching (2013). Pick up a copy of any of her books at Amazon
Book Jennifer for a coaching session to explore productivity, teamwork and business issues.
Contact her by phone at (416)996-8326
Check out the new 19 Productivity Tips on-demand program. Explore this video based program at  your own pace, and join Jennifer for bi-weekly calls as part of your course.
Follow the #90DaysPlanDoTrack series on Instagram
​

This week’s Weekly Planning Hack gets you to consider the question “What’s the season?”.

Just like weather seasons, there may be different seasons for us throughout the year, and throughout our life span. As I share in this week's Facebook Live, every November I enjoy carving some time out for writing. My November focus has led to the creation of new bodies of work including my 2017 book, Effective Virtual Conversations, and this year, it's supported me in creating time for the Remote Pathways 90 Day Guide for New Remote Professionals. I plan to make this available in 2020. With the support of the virtual community, it's an added push I need to get creative work out.
As you think about your annual rhythms:

What season are you in right now?

What season are you yearning for?

Like the weather seasons there may be different rhythms you may want to follow. For example, longer work days, and shorter work days.

What is the pace of work you are looking forward to?

Enjoy your reflection!
Jennifer

PS - As I mention in this week's Facebook Live the Remote Pathways Podcast is now live. I'd love for you to subscribe and follow. It's a bi-weekly podcast around the people, places and pathways for remote work, which I co-host with Michelle Mullins. Join us on our remote adventures! 
​

This week’s Weekly Planning Hack gets you thinking about batching your tasks. Perhaps you are a business owner. If writing is a key activity for you, could you earmark one day a week to tackle your writing tasks, or if getting organized is key in the financial area, could you block off a chunk of time (i.e. 90 minutes or more) on one day to tackle to receipts? You might also earmark part of a day (or an entire day) to meetings and calls, and one to work. Consider this and what impact that would have in terms of your levels of satisfaction and FOCUS.
​
When we have to switch tasks that use different parts of our brain – for example, moving from writing which may require synthesis and creativity, to mathematics – numbers and details – there is a certain energy, called “cognitive load” when we switch between tasks. When our brains are taxed or in overwhelm, this cognitive load of switching can be more significant.

This week consider:

• What are the key tasks you want to get done more easily and effortlessly?
• What tasks can you batch to certain days?
• What focus would this create?
• What needs to get deferred?
• What else is important to note?

Enjoy the exploration!
Jennifer

Looking to the long haul, long term or big picture can really support us when we go to plan, schedule and execute. Looking to the long haul, can be applied at all three stages of PlanDoTrack.

Consider these:
Planning –
How often are you taking time to review or reconnect with your annual vision? Do you have an annual vision? If you haven’t created your vision for this year, check out the questions on page 101 of PlanDoTrack or 99 of Coaching Business Builder. Do you have strategic goals in your work or business for the next 3 – 5 years? As you look at your vision and/or strategic issues, what do you notice? Along another vein, as you consider your longer-term planning, consider jumping up to the 30,000-foot view, as if you were in an airplane. As you look out at the landscape below (and far ahead on the horizon) what do you notice?

Take time to review your long-term plans and visions this week, make additions to your weekly and monthly plans accordingly.

Doing –
Consider the tasks you are working on right now. How are they supporting long term action and impact? How are current actions supporting your longer-term vision? If current actions are not supporting long-term vision steps, what do you want to build into your schedule? Keeping in mind Consistent Action + Daily Steps = Momentum, what 15 minutes could you earmark for longer term DAILY Action? Does anything (i.e. TV Time) need to go or be condensed so you have time to do this? What else will support you in action around your long-term goals? Schedule this in now.
​
Tracking –
As you review your metrics (financials, monthly trackers etc.), what do you notice about trends? How do these metrics connect with your bigger vision and longer term goals?

What changes you do you want to make based on what you see?

What do you want to keep doing, and/or magnify?
​
Enjoy the exploration!
Jennifer

​Week 41 Focus – Chunk It Down to Gain Momentum
​Focus Question: As you consider your big tasks right now, what are the chunks, or discrete packets, at the core?

Description
There are many different models of time management and one of them is about chunking. Chunking invites us to break tasks down. In chunking we may put tasks of a similar nature together. Chunking can create momentum so we may be able to quickly get those items off our list.
 
One of the other areas that I've touched on in this book already is the notion of finding the times of day that work best for you. What does momentum mean for you? What are the top 6 you can get off your list quickly? What are the things that will help you gain some momentum and get things done on a consistent basis?
 
Businesses are often built in spurts.
 
Parkinson’s Rule asserts that tasks expand to the amount of time we give them. Sometimes it can be useful to “corral” a task, giving it a very fixed timeline in order to ensure that it gets one. Here are some examples of what you might do in spurts or by chunking:

• Accounting – rather than doing this daily, you could schedule time every month for data entry, invoicing, review etc.
• Writing – while writing daily can be a great practice, you could do this for multiple projects. Think – blog, book, articles, podcasts, scripts for courses. One of the most useful spurt processes I have engaged in for several years now is the writing support I receive from NANOWRIMO – November’s month of daily writing. This process helped to birth several of my books Effective Virtual Conversations (my 2017 book), the Coaching Business Builder. It also laid the seeds for future publications by getting me into the habit of regular writing spurts.

Activity
What are the elements you need to break down?

Connection to the Workbook and Planner
In your monthly planning process, break down your activities and projects into smaller chunks – tasks, activities. Use the To-Do pages to start drilling into the core packets of work.

Download a one-page copy of this week's 52 Weeks of Plan, Do and Track here.

Best wishes, 
Jennifer

Read and download the initial weeks of the 52 weeks of Plan, Do and Track

​Jennifer Britton - Potentials Realized
Author of PlanDoTrack (2019),  Coaching Business Builder (2018), Effective Virtual Conversations (2017) and From One to Many: Best Practices for Team and Group Coaching (2013). Pick up a copy of any of her books at Amazon
Book Jennifer for a coaching session to explore productivity, teamwork and business issues.
Contact her by phone at (416)996-8326
Check out the new 19 Productivity Tips on-demand program. Explore this video based program at  your own pace, and join Jennifer for bi-weekly calls as part of your course.
Follow the #90DaysPlanDoTrack series on Instagram

​Being able to create a micro-pause within your working context can help support focus, clarity and momentum. In our work as coaches, we often create a “micro-pause” with the organizations we work with. In my research around the value of group and team coaching, I continued to hear about the value of the “pause”, the fact that a coaching conversation would provide a pause for people to stop and think and look around.

This is something we all can be doing in our work – stopping to see what is working well, and what’s not. What needs to be tweaked, and what needs to be overhauled.
We often need to “Slow down, in order to speed up”.
 
Here’s a great article for entrepreneurs who feel like they may need to always be “on” by Jules Schroeder entitled “The Slow Hustle: Why Every Entrepreneur Needs to Slow down In Order to Speed Up”.

Questions to consider this week:

• What value would there be in having more pauses in your schedule or work day?
• What are the micro-pauses you want to create?

Best,
​Jennifer

​As I often write “we live in an era of digital distraction”. From bings and pings, quirks and quarks, digital distractions are everywhere.

Digital distractions can include:

• The pings and bings of email. Dr. Gloria Mark’s research found that it can take us upwards of 22 minutes to focus again after a disruption
• Social Media
• Instant Messaging
• Other messaging such like Messenger, What’s App and others that may not get turned off when others do
• The impact of too many emails coming in all at one time

Questions to consider:

• What is the cost of digital distractions for you?
• What do you have control over?
• What can you turn off at certain points of the day? (Note we can disconnect from the internet, turn off phones, and select what email we get. This may be a discussion point for the team, particularly as people may not be able to work as efficiently with all the distractions. What is possible in your work and the work you undertake?)
• What are the things you can do to focus more?

Wishing you the best,
Jennifer

​Last week’s posts explored four general meeting tips. Once you realize that meetings are the best way to go, here are 8 Essential questions to be asking at every meeting:

1. What’s the purpose?
2. What takeaways do we want?
3. Who needs to be on the call?
4. What preparation is needed for us to be most effective in the meeting?
5. What pace to do we want in order to keep it engaging?
6. What will help keep the focus?
7. What’s absolutely essential? (versus what will be nice to cover or where can people go for more information around topics?)
8. What follow up might be required?

(Excerpt: Effective Virtual Conversations, Britton, 2017)

​You can also take a look at these questions in this short video (link to 8 Essential Meeting Questions)

For those that want to read more on this, check out:
Chapter 9 – Effective Virtual Conversations
OR
Check out this LinkedIn post – 8 Questions to Ask Before Any Virtual Meeting.

Best wishes,
Jennifer