As a Fitbit embracer (no paid commercial endorsement here – just my own love of how it’s made me more aware of my lifestyle choices), I’ve become fascinated by the new sleep score provided to me every day when I wake up.

An increasing number of studies are pointing to the importance of sleep as part of our regular routine.

As someone who embraces and requires, early morning time at my desk (I’m usually there by 5 or 5:30 am), I do know that it’s a trade-off-and that my body really does need as close to 7 hours as it can get in order to not only function, but thrive.

Linked to memory, health, immunity, sleep is a key part of high performance. Studies now also show that we can get too much sleep.

What are you doing to incorporate more quality sleep into your regular routine?

Best,
Jennifer

​Week 51 Focus — Momentum
Focus Question: What is the momentum you are creating in your business right now? What’s become easier as you moved throughout the year?

Description
Over the last 51 weeks, we’ve covered a range of topics – from onboarding and team development, to growing your relationships. Each week I have also encouraged you to undertake some consistent action on your work/business. My guess is this has supported you in creating some momentum in areas which were not present before.
Momentum is a scientific term. It has the following definitions in the Oxford Dictionary:

1. the quantity of motion of a moving body, measured as a product of its mass and velocity.
2. the impetus gained by a moving object.

One of the key premises in the Coaching Business Builder and PlanDoTrack is that consistent action, and daily steps will add up and create momentum. These, coupled with the experiments you may undertake, are key to generating its own energy.

Activity
Consider the area(s) you have created momentum in.  What has helped you pick up speed? What do you notice about momentum at different times of the year?

Connection to the Workbook and Planner
Look back at the daily actions you have been taking in key activities? What do you notice?
​
As you think about your key goals for the end of next year, are there some new daily steps or consistent actions you want to commit to?
 
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 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 30 Focus – Marketing Review
Focus Question: What’s working and what’s not?

Description
In this week’s focus, we’re taking stock of different marketing approaches – what is working and what is not. We’ve spent several weeks exploring different promotional strategies, including LinkedIn and Instagram.
 
Building a regular practice of doing a review of what’s working, and what’s not, around marketing in your business, can save a lot of time in the long run.
 
Some of the things you will want to consider as you go to do a marketing review are:

1. Note metrics. What things are getting traction? What’s getting read? What’s not?
2. With certain posts, is there a tweak or adjustment you can make?
3. What posts could be repurposed and republished in other ways?
4. What are the items that you could use for redistribution?

Activity
Note the data you are tracking. From a high-level overview what does it indicate?
Looking to each of the marketing items you track, which one is progressing as you would like it to?
If you have multiple posts, which ones are working best?
Which ones are not getting traction as you would like?
Are you tracking the things that you want?
Where is your energy and enjoyment with this process?
​
Connection to the Coaching Business Builder/PlanDoTrack Workbook and Planner
Review the metrics you have which may be part of:

• The Monthly Daily Tracker
• Taking Stock – Monthly Reflections (refer to Key Metrics)
• Monthly Content Trackers
• Monthly Content Journals – One Line a Day
• Don’t Just Do It Once! Scaling Content

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
Follow the #90DaysPlanDoTrack series on Instagram

​As we move from one season to another, we have the opportunity to undertake a “clean sweep”. Having lived and worked in the tropics for the first 15 years of my career, and now having been back in Canada for 15 years where the seasons are so distinct, I have come to (re) appreciate, how significant seasonal change provides an impetus for change and review. Have you done a clean sweep of your surroundings lately? Is it time to clean up your files? Your desk? Your contacts?

There is a lot written on clearing and creating order – from the work and writing of Marie Kondo to Gretchen Rubin’s new book – Outer Order, Inner Calm.

Last fall, I offered up a weekly planning tool (separate from the Coaching Business Builder and PlanDoTrack) called the Clean Sweep. Structured as a five-day planning tool, it also offers some prompts and reminders for business owners or virtual workers to take action on some of the more overlooked aspects of our work. For example, outreach and building of relationships. Taking these small steps continue to “add up”. Download a copy of the Weekly  Sweep  for your business document here.

Where could you benefit from a "clean sweep"?

Best wishes,
​Jennifer 

Week 21 Focus – Challenges with Marketing
Focus Question: What’s the challenge for you around marketing right now?

Story
There are many challenges with marketing including:

• Not enough time dedicated
• Not being consistent enough with your efforts
• Not following through
• Not thinking about what your client/customer wants (think messaging, approaches…)
• Changing the topic too many times
• Not having a message on the channel your people are looking at (i.e. focusing on Facebook when people are looking to LinkedIn)
• Not using language that is meaningful to the group

Creating a marketing plan and strategy is important in terms of creating a focus for continued effort and actions. Writing things down so that you can see what you are doing, and track your efforts, can move you to a more strategic allocation of your time and resources.

Experimentation and trying things out in small cycles helps us get important data on what people like and don’t like, value and don’t value.  Things in the marketing space change quickly so not relying on just one channel can be of use.
Being able to repurpose material is key for ongoing marketing efforts. To create new content each day can be exhausting, and repurposing allows us to leverage what we have already created.

Activity
While there are many challenges we face in marketing, there is always an opportunity to repurpose the material we have already created.

This week identify key pieces of content you have created.  Think about how it could be repurposed.

For example, the next time to you create a blog post, consider what it could look like if you were to repurpose it three times, not just once.  So, consider this…
Original Version: A blog post on five things to do before the end of the year with your team.
#1 - Repurposing – Create it as a video – 5 Things to Do Before Year End with Your Team
#2 – Repurpose - Create an audio post/podcast around it
#3 – Combination: Combine this with other posts to make a larger article or download from your website.
#4 – Magnify:  Share the link with other content providers, so they can share it with their readers/followers.

Connection to the Workbook and Planner
Refer to the tools in the Content Planner Section. Take particular note of:
1. Tool – Content Tracker – For each piece of content, use the tracker to note how many views and reads it has gotten in each of the different locations.
2. Tool – Don’t Just Do it Once! Scaling Content (page 275 of PlanDoTrack and page 271 of the Coaching Business Builder)

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

Week 11 Focus – Enabler: Habits
Focus Question: What are the habits shaping your work?

Description
Habits are things that we undertake, almost subconsciously, to the point of sometimes not even being aware of them. As repetitive actions, habits are a powerful force, in shaping our work and business.

Story
At the beginning of each year, I find that conversation starts to flow towards dialogue around habits with my coaching clients. Perhaps this is because it’s time for a new year, or maybe because it’s a clean slate.

Here’s what I wrote about habits at the Teams365 blog,

“Habits and practices are things we do automatically, sometimes unconsciously, because they have come so ingrained. There are many schools of thought that create a link between habits and success. That habits lead to success.”
As the tagline in the Coaching Business Builder and PlanDoTrack asserts:

Daily Steps + Consistent Action = Momentum

Habits play a key role in shaping our regular actions. Habits are things we do automatically, and if we are able to instill regular go-to activities that can help us move forward, it can support automation of tasks and activities.
​
As you consider your current goals and priorities:
1. What will help you be successful this year?
2. What are the consistent behaviors and actions you want to or need to undertake to move you towards your goals?
3. What could amplify, or magnify, those goals?
4. What's missing that could make a difference?
5. What small shifts would make a new ripple?
6. What does consistency mean for you around habits?
7. What could get in the way?
8. What is going to remind you about your commitment to your goals?
9. What do you notice about how your mindset is influencing your habits?
10. What is becoming automatic for you OR what needs to become automatic for you in your successful pursuit towards your goal.”
(Source: https://www.potentialsrealized.com/teams-365-blog/teams365-1466-2018-kickstart-day-5-of-8-habits-and-practices-to-move-you-towards-your-goals)

Activity
Make a list of the top 5-10 habits that shape your work as a business owner, solopreneur or remote worker. What are the things you consistently do, no matter what?

As part of the iceberg in Section 1 of the Coaching Business Builder and PlanDoTrack, you are invited to review pages 25 and 27 to identify your habits in work. Consider how they are helping and how they are hindering you.
​
What are the changes you want to make in service to your goals?

Connection to the Workbook and Planner
Complete pages 25 and 27 in both the Coaching Business Builder and PlanDoTrack, to identify your habits in work, and how they are helping and how they are hindering you.

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