The last several months have been a challenge for most in business. With a pandemic surrounding us, keeping things focused on the opportunities, rather than the threats swirling, has not always been easy.

There is a part of our brain known as the Reticular Articulating System, which works to focus on what we filter and let through to our brain and what we ignore.

There’s a well used phrase “What we focus on, expands”.  It’s sometimes also known as the shiny red object syndrome. You start noticing a new type of car, and then everywhere you look, there it is. In part, this can be because of what you are focusing on.

Think about your mindset at the moment. Where are you focusing? What do you notice?

Are you taking time to focus on the opportunities that exist? These might entail:

• Ways to do things differently?
• A different process?
• A new partnership?
• Joint ventures to expand into a new market?

What else would help to expand opportunities?

Best,
​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 these Instagram accounts @coachingbizbuilder & @remotepathways!
Check out upcoming programs on our calendar!

Are you a remote professional? Listen into the Remote Pathways Podcast on your favorite podcast player!

Just like a cup of coffee or a stew, creative ideas often benefit from some percolation time. Perhaps you are working on a big project, or a creative task. Taking time to step away can be of benefit to let our brains still work on it. In fact, our brains still work on projects, even when we step away from it.

A great strategy for tasks which might not be flowing yet, is to start it and then let it percolate. Perhaps go for a walk or a swim or have a discussion with some one.

This marination, percolation time can be necessary.

Check out these articles:

• Minda Zetlin’s article at Inc on: Your Brain Has Two Ways of Solving Problems, Which One Is Better
• Redbooth.com’s blog post from Diana Ecker on “Letting Ideas Percolate and How to Do It” 

​Enjoy your reflections!
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 these Instagram accounts @coachingbizbuilder & @remotepathways!
Check out upcoming programs on our calendar!

Are you a remote professional? Listen into the Remote Pathways Podcast on your favorite podcast player!

​We are exploring five of the different productivity keys captured in PlanDoTrack. The second one is around experimentation. With today’s business context characterized by change and disruption, experimentation can be an important strategy in product development, service delivery and also learning.

Just as in an experimental mindset, we can approach some of our project work from a trial and error standpoint. While these may not be all projects, some areas may be earmarked for innovation and experimentation.

Adopting an experimental mindset can lead to an ongoing cycle of trial, results, learning, iteration, adjustment.

Some of the areas you might consider experimenting with could include:

• Meetings: (times, flows and processes) – Given that many organizations realize that current meeting processes are not the most effective or efficient, might this be an area to experiment with different approaches and strategies? For example, facilitation at team meetings – Rather than the same person leading each team meeting might you rotate that?
• Program Delivery – Instead of offering everything in an in-person format, might you experiment with offering something as a virtual or online offering?
• Content Delivery – Instead of always writing something, might you experiment with something that is delivered via audio or video?

What are the changes you are noting in your industry? Where might experimentation be of service?

For more on this topic check out:

• Michael Thompsons article – 5 Benefits of Adopting an Experimental Mindset
• Alex Cuthbert’s article on Embracing and Experimental Mindset

What does an experimental mindset mean for you as a team or business? What can it look like?

Best,
​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 these Instagram accounts @coachingbizbuilder & @remotepathways!
Check out upcoming programs on our calendar!

Are you a remote professional? Listen into the Remote Pathways Podcast on your favorite podcast player!

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! 
​

Week 45 Focus — Renewal
Focus Question: What does renewal mean for you?

Description
The fields of sports and business shows us that teams that excel, are great at both “playing hard” and also resting hard.
 
Just as physical renewal is essential after a long race, periods of renewal are key in business to help us remain at our prime. What does renewal mean for you? When is the last time you took time to renew?
 
Decision fatigue, social media burnout, task switching and cognitive overload, take a toll on us as professionals. When things become unbalanced it can also become luggage we bring into our family life.
 
As solopreneurs, keeping ourselves “at our prime” is key as the business relies on you. Without you there, it’s unlikely that it can keep going for long. Therefore, renewal should take a priority.
 
Here are some different ways to consider renewal:

• Taking vacation time on a regular basis
• Scheduling time away from our work (i.e. conferences, meetings with colleagues)
• Enjoying a compressed 4-day work week at different parts of the year so you can enjoy a longer weekend
• Having clear boundaries around “when you are ON” and “when you are OFF”
• Swimming/running/hiking/going to the gym over lunchtime on a regular basis
• Going on a retreat

What will help you renew?
 
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
Take a look at your calendar. What have you done to build in renewal periods on a WEEKLY, MONTHLY and QUARTERLY basis?

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 think about reframing. Reframing issues may mean that you step into a new perspective around it, look at it through a different lens, or take a different time frame around it.

Let’s look at a couple of examples. If you are a business owner, remote worker or leader it’s likely that you have a number of different issues which are creating some challenge and/or tension for the team. With one of these challenges in mind, consider these questions to help reframe the situation:

• The challenge is ______
• Another way to look at this might be:
• An alternative solution to what we are doing right now is _________________
• The flip side is ____________________
• If I were to have more resources around this issue, I would add _______________. It would help to ______________
• If I were to take a long-term view around this challenge, I would notice ___________________
• The opposite approach to what we are doing is _____________________. If I/we took this it would help to _____________________
• The 30,000-foot view around this issue is _________________________
• If I were to look at it from the top of a hill or mountain, I would notice:
• Alternative perspectives we could take around this issue area_____________
• Alternative steps we could take around this issue are _____________________

There are some excellent facilitation tools which can help us with reframing including DeBono’s Six Thinking Hats. Read more about this from the DeBono Group here.
​
What other questions can help you to reframe your current challenge?

What new insights have you gleaned from working through these questions?

All the best,
​Jennifer

​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

Welcome back to the 30th weekly planning hack. This week’s WPH is about engaging in ongoing learning. Today we have many options to engage in ongoing learning – from books, and podcasts to MOOCS (Massive Open Online Courses) to industry recommended programs.

What is the ongoing learning that’s going to help you get where you want to go?
​
Consider these questions:

• What are the skills you wish you had in your toolbox, so you could do things quicker or faster?
• What are the practice opportunities you wish you had to translate things you know into action? When can you schedule those in?
• What are the things your mentor would indicate are important to you?

I hope that you will spend a few minutes this week exploring options which exist for you to learn more about these areas.

Enjoy your learning!
​Jennifer 

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:

• What’s possible?
• If you were to wave a magic wand, what would be the end result?
• If there were no limits, what would you do?

​The benefit of these questions is that it:

• Helps us look larger and bigger
• It may shift some of the limiting beliefs and inner critical voices we face around that goal and the related change we need to take in order to make it happen
• Helps us stretch
• Supports more ideas and possibilities

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 

​In today’s Digitally Disrupted world, the skill set of discernment and focus are taking precedence. The ability to find “micro-pauses” where you can stop, assess and make decisions plays a critical role in productivity, teams and leadership.
​
Here’s what I wrote bout the skill of discernment earlier this year here at the PlanDoTrack Blog in February:

​“Leveraging our time is as much about getting organized, as it is getting clear on what’s important. Against the backdrop of complexity, ongoing change and disruption, getting ruthless with our time management can be so important to many. As a business owner, or remote worker, this is especially true. We can’t get out time back. So, when we go down a rabbit hole (whether it’s doing too much research online, following a shiny red object or thinking we just need to learn “one more thing”), the costs can be tremendous. Not just in NOT getting things done, but in terms of our focus, our motivation and also our profit line!

Discernment is about getting clear on what’s important and what’s not. It is about being clear of what’s going to provide impact now, later or never.
​
As a remote worker or virtual business owner, we are quite control of our time. Our colleagues and/or superiors may be hundreds of miles away, or several time zones ahead. As remote workers, it’s not always about how we manage our time, but how we get our results. Those who feel the crunch in getting something over the finish line is usually only us (and those loved ones around us!).

With this in mind, what is the cost of not being discerning around where your time goes, or how clear your projects are, or what is a more important priority than another?
​
As we embark on new projects, or start a new week, it can be useful to be asking (ourselves, and our stakeholders):

• What’s most important today?
• What are the top 3-5 things I want to get completed?
• What are the MUST Dos?
• What will success look like with this project/task?
• As it relates to this project/task, what’s important?
• Have I considered the short-term, medium-term and long-term in making decisions?
• What would my colleague/boss/peer/customer say is most important to focus on today?
• What impact will this activity have? And that one?

 
What questions do you want to consider asking as you decide one priority to another?”

How can discernment help you in your work and focus right now?

Let us know!
​Jennifer