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:
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
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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! 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 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:
Enjoy the exploration! 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 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 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 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 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:
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:
Best, Jennifer Jennifer Britton - Potentials Realized
Check out the Weekly Planning Hack Facebook Live each Wednesday or Thursday here. Be sure to like our page to be updated each week! Author of PlanDoTrack (2019), Effective Virtual Conversations (2017) and From One to Many: Best Practices for Team and Group Coaching (2013) 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:
Wishing you the best, Jennifer Jennifer Britton - Potentials Realized
Check out the Weekly Planning Hack Facebook Live each Wednesday or Thursday here. Be sure to like our page to be updated each week! Author of PlanDoTrack (2019), Effective Virtual Conversations (2017) and From One to Many: Best Practices for Team and Group Coaching (2013) 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:
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 Jennifer Britton - Potentials Realized
Check out the Weekly Planning Hack Facebook Live each Wednesday or Thursday here. Be sure to like our page to be updated each week! Author of PlanDoTrack (2019), Effective Virtual Conversations (2017) and From One to Many: Best Practices for Team and Group Coaching (2013) Week 33 Focus – People Management 101 Focus Question: What makes your people exceptional? Description People are at the heart of any great business, or team. People management is a critical element for success. If you are a first-time team developer there’s lots to learn. It is often said that the move to first time supervisor or manager of people is the largest step you’ll ever undertake during your career. In PlanDoTrack, I explore core skills needed by both team leaders and team members. Given the autonomous nature of virtual and remote work, it can be beneficial and valuable to build these skills across an entire team – not just with the leader. As a leader of people, there are a variety of different conversations you will engage in. Here are several of them:
Activity Consider your skill base right now. What is one skill area you could become more effective in to boost your impact as a people leader? Connection to the Workbook and Planner Complete the Wheel of Virtual and Remote Work in PlanDoTrack and review the skills listed in Section 1 of PlanDoTrack. What do you notice? Where can you improve? 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 Scattered throughout some of the 28 different planning tools of PlanDoTrack and the Coaching Business builder is the question “what will wild success look like?”. I love asking this question to people I am coaching as it gets us to think about WHAT IS POSSIBLE, often without a lot of censure. There are several ways to reword this question:
The benefit of these questions is that it:
As you go about your planning for the next month or quarter, what can wild success look like for you around your most important goals? Best wishes, Jennifer Jennifer Britton - Potentials Realized
Check out the Weekly Planning Hack Facebook Live each Wednesday or Thursday here. Be sure to like our page to be updated each week! Author of PlanDoTrack (2019), Effective Virtual Conversations (2017) and From One to Many: Best Practices for Team and Group Coaching (2013) |
AuthorJennifer Britton is the blogger behind the popular Teams365 blog, a daily,blog for team leaders and members since 2014. Her latest publication is the PlanDoTrack Workbook and Planner. Pick up a copy at Amazon. Pick Up a CopyUpcoming Programs
Join us for the 21 For 21 Virtual Co-working Sprints - $21 US. Want to access the recordings and bonus worksheets? Join us at the Booster Pack $79 US early bird rate. Sign up at 21for21 Virtual Co-working - STAND OUT VIRTUALLY! Stand Out Virtually - Incubator - Running an online, virtual or digital business and want to get the word out to organizations? Join us for the 8 week Stand Out Virtually Incubator. Next group starts April 2021. Build out your brand, offers and proposals. Virtual Facilitation Essentials (8.5 CCEs)- Expand your toolkit for better remote and virtual conversations. This is a virtual train-the-trainer - 5 weeks: Fall 2021 programming starts in October $495 US Learn more and register. Coaches! Register for the 60 Day Coaching Business Builder Accelerator. Join us for 60 Days support and ACTION for coaches wanting to grow their businesses. On-Demand Course. PlanDoTrack Facilitator Training Program (24 CCEs) - Starts again in October. Contact Jennifer to discuss. Month-End/Quarterly Planning Session: Thursday September 30th - 8 -9 am ET Archives
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