My five favourite sources of inspiration

However much we love our business, there are days when even the most motivated of us ends up feeling a bit ‘meh’. Whether you’re looking for inspiration for your latest blog post, a new direction for your business or just a regular day doing great things for your clients, sometimes there’s just nothing there. So when you’re working on your own, how can you revitalise and restore your va va voom? Here are some of the things that work for me.

• Get moving – go for a walk, a run, a swim. Anything that gets you moving physically boosts your brainpower too. I am useless at getting out of bed but when I manage to get myself to the gym in the morning, I find I have a clearer head and much more momentum when I sit down to start my day. The added benefit is the ideas that ping into my head when I’m running. I’m not actively looking for the solutions but given another activity to focus on (not falling flat on my face) my brain is still working on them in the background – genius!

• Change your environment – the best example of this is to take a holiday, preferably somewhere you haven’t been before, with new sights and sounds on every corner. Whenever I travel abroad I feel energised by the people I meet and the new experiences along the way. Stepping away from your everyday life helps you focus on positive things rather than pitfalls and makes you feel as if anything is possible. We can’t take an exotic trip everyday but there are simple things you can do to change your environment: get out of your home office and into a coffee shop, get outside in the fresh air and notice everything around you, or swap a noisy city for an afternoon in a sleepy village.
• Do something creative – doing something that uses different skills helps you switch off from your day-to-day work and can help to get the ideas flowing. Whether it’s baking, learning a new language, or using your camera to create a photo journal, the options are endless. Just pick something you’ll really enjoy.
• Listen to some great music – not everyone likes to work to music but listening to some of your favourite tracks to get you in the right frame of mind before you start, or when you take a break can work wonders. For maximum impact consider combining it with one of the activities in 1-3. I love a drive through stunning scenery with some great tunes on top volume!
• Collaborate – working on your own all the time is tough. Look for projects where you can collaborate with someone else. It’s amazing how the ideas and energy can flow when there are two or more people to inspire each other.

So these are some of my tips. What gets you inspired when you’re feeling a bit lack lustre and stuck in a rut? I’d love to know.

Love and inspiration,

 

 

 

Photo credit: Unsplash

How to stop your business taking over your life

For many of us, running a business we’re passionate about, on our own terms, is a dream come true. It’s something we’ve thought long and hard about, shed tears over and put our heart and soul into. It’s a fabulous way of life. If your business is home based, you can make money without even putting any make up on or straightening your hair and you don’t waste valuable time commuting. But when you’re fully absorbed in it, it’s easy to lose track of time, allowing your business to eat into the precious moments you want to spend socialising, with your family, exercising etc.

So how do you stop the business you love from taking over your life?

Set your hours and stick to them. This doesn’t necessarily mean working 9-5. We’re all different and we do our best work at different times of day. Once you know what routine works for you, aim to stick roughly to it. Starting work by a set time each day means the day is less likely to run away from you and you’ll be more productive. I bought myself a sign for my door, which says Ouvert/Open on one side and Ferme/Closed on the other. It’s a bit of fun but turning it over at the beginning and end of the day is also a good prompt to make the mental switch.

Do your work in blocks and keep an eye on the clock. If you’re easily distracted by social media or chores round the house, work on something for a set amount of time, say 90 minutes, then allow yourself a break. Splitting your day into blocks like this helps you plan out how much you can achieve too.

Have a designated area of your house that you work in. This helps you switch off when you leave that area for a break or at the end of the day and there’s less temptation to get sucked into your work when you should be doing something else. If you don’t have a separate office, always clear your work things away at the end of the day – out of sight, out of mind!

Set rules with your partner and family. If your other half or your mum has never run a business, there’s a danger that they will assume working from home means you have all day to chat on the phone, run errands and clean the house. Be clear with them when you’re available and when you’re not. You can schedule a long lunch with them or nip to the shops when it’s nice and quiet but make sure you’re not working long into the night and missing other social events to make up for it.

Set appointments/gym classes/meet friends early in the evening so that you have to finish on time. Not only will it force you to get your butt out of your home office rather than faffing around with ‘just one more task’ you think you need to do, it’s amazing how much more productive you are throughout the day when you’ve got a deadline to work to. Think how productive you are the day before you go on holiday.

Set rules for yourself around when you will and won’t allow yourself to look at your phone, iPad etc. As a rule I try not to look after 9pm at all. Before that in the evenings, I’ll check Facebook and Twitter as these are more social channels for me. I try to resist looking at my emails as this is where the work stuff will hit. It’s rare that something will come in that’s so urgent I must deal with it there and then but I’ll still think about it and it will disturb my relaxation. Much better to leave it alone till the business day starts again tomorrow.

These may sound like very rigid ideas to impose on the business that you love. However, once you have a framework to work within, you can relax and get as engrossed as you want in your work. One of the huge benefits of running your own business is the flexibility to do what you want, when you want. Just make sure that it really is you who is setting the agenda, not your clients or your family.