Overwhelm Shutdown

Things to Look at to Bounce Back

“How long will that video last?”  I asked my husband.

The question was innocent enough, but the tension in my voice suggested otherwise.

Have you ever felt like a computer … and you’re running at the maximum RAM capacity?  Like one thing more and your screen shows that little busy symbol going in circles?

That was me going into last weekend.  One thing more and I couldn’t think. 

If my husband made a short comment to my son, it totally scrambled my brain for a bit.  A video?  Forget it!

You see, there were signs.  I ignored them for too long. Are you experiencing any of these?

•             Can’t think
•             Don’t “have time” to take care of yourself
•             Tremendous pressure to make it all happen
•             Persistent nagging headache
•             Stomach seems increasingly picky
•             Distracted
•             Exhausted
•             Lack of creativity
•             Fill in your own unique symptoms of stress

 Overwhelm Hurts

It feels like the proverbial catch-22.  No time to relax and let go.  The wolf is at the door.  Deadlines, deadlines, deadlines.

Maybe if I start earlier.  Work later.  Problem is, burning the candle at both ends only uses up the candle faster.

I realized I needed to stop.  I saw my opportunities to put in extra time go up in smoke because I just didn’t have the focus to work.

Here’s what I needed to do:

•             Write down all of the things I felt like I needed to do
•             Sit down, away from your work, and rest. 
•               Remember the big picture.  Praying helps.
•             Evaluate what items actually must be done now.
•             Let all those items go that aren’t honestly musts.
•             Make time for activities that replenish me.

The trick here is to actively avoid thinking about the non-critical items. The unnecessary pressure needs to let up.

I found doing a task and taking a short break helped me cope.  It gave me space to transition between tasks.

I needed to carefully review my self-care:

•             Having my daily time with God?
•             Taking my supplements?
•             Eating enough fruits and vegetables?
•             Exercising 20-30 minutes 6 days a week?
•             Taking regular breaks?
•             Sleeping 8 hours a night?
•             Drinking my water?
•             Mentally celebrating my small wins?
•             Doing simple refreshing things like a bubble bath?
•             Using a schedule for time management?

I was falling short on all of it.  Yet these are the most crucial things to staying on top of my game.  Without them, I lose sight of the big picture.  I lose my creativity, my peace of mind.  

At first, I was thinking that focusing on the business was the big picture.  But it’s not.  Not for me.  Being in the Word regularly, engaging in relationship with God and asking Him for direction first is the biggest picture of all.  

From there, go back to scheduling self-care. 

THEN I can get back to doing my freelance business – big picture style.

Weekly Challenge

I finally got my logo done.  Now we’re working on the web banner, favicon, and all that.

This is Week 1 of the 12 week program.  I spoke to my accountability partner for the first time yesterday evening.  We are supposed to email our daily six. 

Monday through Saturday, we are to make a list of six action items that move our businesses forward.  For example, I have a research project.  I’m breaking that down into action items and plugging away at six of them today.

I got so little of the email challenge done as to have done nothing toward it.  That adds stress whichever way I go with it.  However, it doesn’t rank high enough to stress myself about whether or not I’m getting to it.

My focus will be on finishing up the research project I’m doing and decide on a specific marketing method to stick to.

What are you doing to move your business forward this week?

A Little Inspiration to Tame the Savage Email Beast

Email Fatigue Is Real, But You Can Stop the Pain!

Counting the Cost

 

Have you missed important emails like I have?  

Freelance businesses or anyone working from home already has to battle the temptation to “stay at work” just a little longer.

But email strikes everyone.  And it has a special little curse.   We can check it anytime, often without disturbing anyone else.   In the car, standing in line, laying bed, even in the bathroom for crying out loud!  We sneak a peek everywhere because ... we don’t want to miss something important.

It happens anyway.

The worst part: we signed up for it!

• Professional growth blogs to help us up our game
• Free e-courses to optimize our game
• Quick, easy, healthy recipes to save our dinner-making sanity
• Inspirational quotes to keep us going when we want to give up
• Individual lists for market study to stay on top of our game
• Travel offers for business trips and that escape to a small island nation with no internet
• E-bills/E-banking to help us stay on top of our finances.

The list of possibilities are endless.   All good things.  

That doesn’t even include your other email which is just for fun, spiritual growth, hobbies, bills, notes from friends and family …

It’s easy to get 50 or 100+ emails a day that aren’t directly related to work.  Worse, it’s easy to get sucked in by great-looking free offers enticing us to sign up for more.

It’s time to get that monster vanquished and I’m determined.  Want to join me in reclaiming your inbox sanity?  Read on!

Unsubscribe, Unsubscribe, Unsubscribe

Streamline for better time management.  Less inbox distractions means less things to intend to get done. Merely deleting (or worse, ignoring) the stuff you aren’t reading is only creating pain for you tomorrow, or the next time they send you something. 

If you aren’t going to read it, you aren’t getting any benefit from having emails sent to you, right?  Let go of guilt and shame about what you “should” read.  Be realistic about your time, those things that move your business forward, and cut the cord! 

If it helps you feel any better, create a bookmark to their website, in case you find some spare time and want to re-subscribe.  (Decluttering bookmarks will be another project for another time!)

Subscribe Wisely

I have developed a new policy.  When I subscribe to something, I will give it 2-4 weeks max to evaluate.  I will access the return on time investment. 

Inbox offenders who send multiple emails a day don’t take me as long to remove, unless I want it for market study.  If they are sending a great email once a week, it may take a month for me to decide if it’s something I want to read regularly.   

If the majority are saved to “get back to later” it’s a candidate for elimination.  If I’m really unsure, I’ll give it another week or two.

It always comes back to priorities.  There isn’t enough time to read all of the great stuff out there.  No shame in realizing it’s time to let go.  (I'm trying to build up my courage to do this - can you tell?)

Make Use of Technology Helpers

If you Google inbox helpers, you’ll find a slew of options like Unroll.me, Boxer, ProtonMail … etc available to help you manage your email.  Quite a few people swear by them. 

For me, it’s just one more technology thingie to figure out.  It’s more potential to get a setting wrong … and wasting time tracking down which setting is creating the problem.  That annoys me enough to avoid it until someone proves fantastic value to overcome potentially wasted time.

I prefer to make use of filters to sort some of my email ahead of time.  You can also just make folders and manually move each email as it comes in so that you see it as it comes.  

Inbox Zero does that.  I tried to open the site today, but couldn’t.  Lots of other articles are available if you are interested in that system. 

I have set up an entirely different email for my market studies so that I’m not sidetracked until I’m ready to engage with them.   I don’t want to see folders with 163 emails in them.  Too much pressure.  We’ll see how I like doing it this way.

Develop Folders To Suit Your Style

I made one for actionables … one for emails I must deal with and empty often.  Putting it there meant out of sight for an uncluttered inbox, but readily accessible for action time.  It's a favorite for bills or reminders to renew my car registration.

Another folder is for billing reference.  I have this silly thing about holding my payment receipt until the next billing cycle.  Makes me feel invincible in case someone says they didn’t receive my payment.

When I have a project I’m working on, I put “1” before the name so the folder sits on top.  It’s more convenient for me to engage with it several times a day.  Others might find that obnoxious … your mileage may vary.

The Great Purge

I have folders from when I tried to create a system before.  Full of good things.  Several hundred good things.  In 54 folders.  I’m slowly coming to accept that I must let go.  If I haven’t read them by now, what makes me think I’m likely to do so in the future?  It’s time to purge these, too.   

To borrow a Flylady-ism, organized clutter is still clutter.  Yet, some of that is archived stuff  I refer to and I appreciate the organization.

You know by now I wrote this to myself to bolster my courage to tackle this beast of 1000's of emails.  Good stuff mixed with stuff I'll never miss.  But I will do this.  Do you need to join me?  Post below and we'll hold each other accountable!

Once I have done all of the unsubscribing I need to do, and I shift things to their new folders, I won’t miss any more email – unless of course my email provider is slow to get it to me. 

A big part of my motivation is some email trouble.  Some of yesterday’s email quietly sneaks into my inbox 24-36 hours later and sits down with yesterday’s emails as if it arrived yesterday, too.  I already looked at yesterday’s email, so I only look at the most recent arrivals.  If my inbox is empty, I won’t miss them anymore.  Take that, slow email provider!

Did you enjoy this post?  Please like and share!

Weekly Challenge

Last week has been about bits and pieces.  Preparation details.  My logo is still in process due to delays on my end, then on his end.  This morning I received word that the revisions should be received today.  It’s after 6 and I haven’t seen anything yet.  May just be a slow email thing and I’ll have a notification in the morning.  Fingers crossed!

I’m still working on assigned reading.  Apparently this week is the foundations week, an introduction to the system.  The 12 weeks starts next week.

Depending on how much spare time I have, I want to see my main inbox reduced by 1000 emails.  I will make myself subscribe from 10 lists.  That’s going to hurt, because I like them … but I’m not reading them.  I will also change emails for the marketing study lists that are still in my regular mail.

Why A Freelancer Must Have An Education Budget

How Mentoring Benefits Your Freelance Business

 

Let’s face it - you are perfectly capable of figuring it all out on your own.  The web offers a wealth of information on virtually any subject you want to learn.  Why would you want to think about paying for education or mentoring?  

Below are several possibilities.  Do any of these fit your situation?

You are serious about your business

You want to be effective. Find someone who has achieved the level of success you seek.  You avoid the pitfalls they point out.

You want to achieve results as quickly as possible

Instead of taking the scenic route, you want to find out what others discovered the hard way. Find someone who has done it.  You learn how to advance quickly.

You want accountability

Walking this road alone is hard.  A mentor who provides accountability will call you out on time wasters like too much email or social media – or your lack of focus on one main thing until the process is performing solidly.  You stay on target.

You are stuck

This is probably the biggest reason people seek a mentor.  Businesses at all levels experience plateaus.  Getting  someone who isn’t personally involved is valuable to gain perspective and ideas.  You save valuable time and resources and move forward again.

What are your mentoring options?

There are quite a few options to get direction in running your business.  There’s something to fit all budgets.

Books are the easiest form of mentoring you can engage.  If your budget permits, you can find almost any book online. 

You may also find relevant books at the library, depending upon the size of your library.  Some are available free online, if you know how to find them.  

You can study on your own time.  On the other hand, authors are rarely available for questions. 

Classes require availability at a certain time.  You can ask the teacher questions.  You can get feedback by doing assignments.  Accountability is available at differing levels. 

If you must drive a long way, it disrupts your schedule for several weeks.   

Class costs vary by length, frequency,  and quality.

Conferences can be great for focused learning in a short time.  Being in a room (or arena) with a lot of people who want the same thing is powerful.  You come away enthusiastic and ready to take on the world.

You may or may not be able to get questions answered depending upon the size of the event. 

Be prepared for conference let-down, because that high doesn’t last forever.  Costs can be prohibitive because it’s not just the event but often the additional costs of meals, lodging, and transportation.

Workshops are like mini-conferences.  Smaller in nature, there can be time to practice the concepts, and you should be able to get questions answered. 

These also vary in cost with the possible added burden of food, lodging, and transportation to factor in.

Webinars are the online version of a conference or workshop.  Often a shorter, focused event, it may feature a question and answer session at the end.  

Price varies, but is more affordable without transportation time and costs to factor in, nor lodging. 

Some webinars are available the next day if the time isn’t convenient for you.  You often lose the opportunity to interact with the teacher, but it's better than missing out entirely.   

Online conferences usually are a series of webinars.

Online courses vary in length, value, and price.  From free to many thousands of dollars, many successful people offer their knowledge through videos and other content through a private section on their website.  

Often the most convenient, you also usually have a way to get questions answered.  Some courses provide assignments to practice.  

Some provide a coach or mentor to go over your results or create an action plan with you, with some level of accountability.  The ones with accountability are more expensive, especially if they’ve been around for a while.

Direct mentoring costs the most.  One-on-one mentoring means getting expert advice directed to your situation.  If you have selected wisely, this is the most beneficial mentoring.  You don’t have to waste time getting bases covered all over again unless you have a weakness to be addressed. 

Depending upon the mentor's level of expertise, you could be talking $50,000 or more for a single session.  Cost could be considered a downside.

Return on Investment

When looking at your mentor investment options, look at the return on investment.  When you are starting out, the idea of paying for a $10,000 business conference feels crazy.  Struggling to break $100,000 is a big deal.   

Could your investment in that conference show you how to get to $500,000 this year?  Could you return with a roadmap to scale to a million?  At that point, you’ll be looking at the $10k price tag and asking, “Is that all?”

Set Your Budget

Tai Lopez, entrepreneur, offers this practical recommendation.  Set aside 3% of your income for education.  As your income goes up, so does the quality of education you can afford.  

If you can afford  a high-powered business seminar like Tony Robbins’ Business Mastery when you are just starting out.  If you implement what you learn, you will have a huge jump ahead of others just starting out.  The return on investment will  likely shock you.

Never stop being hungry to learn.  Mentors wisely chosen will be worth so much more than you pay.

Weekly Challenge

This past week was about finishing as much of my homework as possible for the Joshua Boswell workshop last week.  I finished all but 30 pages of the reading.  Now I’ve been assigned two more books to read!

I signed up for his 12-week mentoring program.  Yes, I could do it on my own, working with the workshop materials.  However, he has a process to make it faster PLUS accountability.  I need my feet kept to the fire at this point.  This will help me focus.  The 12 weeks start next Monday.  

In the meantime, I will be developing my information packet.  Some people call it a credibility packet.

The logo process is resuming.  I didn’t have time to work with the edits last week.  I want to get that finished this week so I can use it in my packet.  I want to do the writing for my webpage as well.

I have two questions for you:

What are you doing to move your business forward this week?

Is this blog useful to you?  Please comment below and let me know what topics you’d like me to cover.