Put In Time For Your Projects First

The investment community
constantly talks about the concept of
paying yourself first.
You set aside a portion of your salary
for investing
and you invest it immediately.

It works better than paying yourself last
because when you pay yourself last,
little expenses here and there
gobble up your investment funds.

That is the strategy I use
for my time.
The first hour of the day,
even while working a business gig,
is spent working on my own projects.

I’ll write for that hour,
giving my project
my fresh brain and my best creativity.
Everyone else gets what is left over.

I’ll come home exhausted,
with little time left to spare,
because small tasks have eaten it up.

That’s okay,
because I put the time in
for my own projects first.

Spend your time wisely.
Allocate a portion to your projects first.

Testing Your Self Discipline

A loved one
believes he would make
a wonderful entrepreneur.
He has some great ideas.
He has the intelligence.
What I fear he’s missing
is an entrepreneurial strategy for self discipline.

Currently, he needs the structure of a job,
with a manager holding him
to deadlines.
He doesn’t know how to achieve
the same results solo.

So I suggested
he work his self discipline issues out
while continuing to work his day job.

How to do this?

Simple.
He gives himself an aggressive extra project
with a concrete deadline.
If he achieves the results on time,
he has a good grasp on self discipline.
If he doesn’t,
he has work to do.

I suspect it will take him
several attempts at different strategies
until he finds one that works.
That’s to be expected.

Don’t quit your day job
to become an entrepreneur
until you know you have the self discipline strategies
to BE an entrepreneur.

Know When To Lead And When To Support

Whenever I get invited
to an author promotional activity like a chat,
one of the first questions I ask is
“Am I supporting you,
or am I co-leading the activity?”

There’s an assumption
that leadership is the role to have,
and support positions are to be avoided.
That’s bull shit.

There is nothing more powerful
than having a known leader
riding shotgun on one of your promos.
In order for that to happen,
you need to ride shotgun on their promos.
You help them.
They help you.
That’s how the world works.

So take the support role.
Shine the spotlight on someone else.
It’ll ensure your own spotlight
beams brightly.

Published
Categorized as Marketing

Time-Sucking Transitions

I am back to a business gig,
much to my relief,
not because of the money
or because my workload decreased
(it increased majorly)
but because I’m out of
that time-sucking transition period.

Transitions or changes
eat brain power.
Many of us worry during transitions
and that part of our mind
isn’t being used for more productive thinking.

Transitions also mess with ‘the plan.’
I live and die by my to-do lists.
I plan days, weeks, months.
Uncertainty means frequent revamping
of the to-do list.
I’m inefficient because
I’m getting the must-do’s done immediately,
rather than grouping them.

Change is part of life,
but try to limit the time-sucking transitions.

Mompreneuring

I sat in on a writing seminar
where two successful romance writers were brutally honest
about their writing lives.
They said that they worked,
hard,
writing for over eight hours a day,
and THEN promoting and editing
and doing the zillion other things writers do.
One mommy writer said she took edits
to her kid’s soccer games
and when her kid wasn’t on the field,
she was working.

Mompreneurs, despite media perception,
have it as rough.
They work long hours for their success.

Danielle Botterell,
one of the co-authors of
Mom Inc.,
says
“Mompreneurship has been in the press
for the past few years,
but sometimes we find the accounts
in the press are a bit one-sided.
‘I’m with my baby all the time
and I’m making so much money.’
We wanted to let people know
spending time on the floor
playing with your baby
and making money
is sometimes mutually exclusive.”
“If you’re planning on
having your children around
when you’re starting your business,
like we did,
that’s working part time
and that means part time money,
but of course children grow
and things change
so it’s really about finding the right balance.”

Having it all isn’t a myth.
Having it all at the same time IS.

Intermediaries And Communication

I interviewed two days ago
via a placement agency.
Knowing the hiring company
wanted the temp to start ASAP,
I expected a call from the placement agency
within 24 hours.

I didn’t hear anything.
Nothing.
Jack squat.

So, five minutes ago,
I called them.
(There was no answer.)

I shouldn’t have to call.
When you’re an intermediary,
your main role is communication
between the two parties.

If you have no updated information,
you call and say you don’t have an update.

If you don’t,
one or both parties
will assume the other party isn’t interested
(as I did)
and move onto the next opportunity.

Interviewing Sure Things

I have a second interview
with a V-P and a manager.
My recruiter told me
I’m the only person being considered.

I told him
that’s bull shit
(in more politically correct terms).

If it was a meeting with the V-P,
maybe.
Some V-P’s like to
put their seal of approval on
new hires.

But the only reason
to meet with another manager
is because there are multiple candidates.

And that the hiring decision
is not being led by
the reporting manager
makes me suspect
that HIS leading candidate
has some sort of personal relationship
to him.
He gives the responsibility to his buddies
and his other buddy gets hired.

That means I’m fucked.
If I wow these decision makers,
I get the job
but my reporting manager will be pissed
and will be gunning for me
(proving that he was right).
If I don’t wow the decision makers,
I don’t get the job.

I’ll wow with the best of my ability
because that’s how I play
and hope for the best.

Doers And Time Change

The Spring
Daylight Savings Time
isn’t my favorite time of year.

Folks say things like
“We lost an hour’s sleep.”

Ahhh… no.
For doers,
we lost an hour of doing.
Sleep, we can only sacrifice
so much more of
before we stop to function.

For me,
that hour less on the weekend
translated to 1,000 less words written.
That was the promotional short
I wanted to submit to my publisher’s ezine.

Sure, it will even out.
In the Fall,
I’ll have an hour more.

But if your fellow doers are grumpy today,
it is likely
due to that one less hour of doing.

An Outside View

I never catch my own typos.
(in the world of spell check,
typos are often misused words,
not misspelled words)
I can look at a piece of writing
a thousand times
and not see what is wrong.
I send it to my editor
and she picks up on the typos right away.

When I was in product development,
our team once all signed off
on a new package design.
Then a member of another team
casually dropped by an office
and asked
‘why is our brand name spelled wrong?’
Oops!

You can’t see your own mistakes.
Your brain auto-corrects.

If you are checking your own work,
you’ve delegated the job
to the wrong person.
Give it to someone trustworthy
but
not involved with your project.

It is well worth the slight hassle.

Let It Go

In Shaunti Feldhahn’s new book
The Male Factor,
she explores the differences
between males and females in the workplace.

In a survey of 3,000 men,
their main issues with female coworkers
were that women take things too personally,
they get too emotional,
and they don’t let issues go.

“The men may say,
‘Well, I disagree with you about that,’
or ‘That’s fine.’
Then they walk away and it’s over.
It’s not really that way with women,
even senior women.”

I don’t have time
to revisit past decisions.
Once the group has come to a decision,
I roll with it,
whether I agree or disagree.
If I find myself dwelling on a past decision,
I know I don’t have enough to do.

Let the past go,
and that dumbass decision the board just made?
That’s the past.