Last week we explored what items you’d like to dedicate time towards, and when you’re going to find time to do them. A week later, what are you noticing about the daily steps you are getting into?
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An important part of daily action is noticing the focus of these items. What are the things you are focusing on? What is important to be saying “yes” to and “no” to?
It can be useful to link the focused action to your WHY. The purpose of why you are doing this. Without connection to the WHY it may be very easy to lose motivation around daily steps. Reconnecting with your VISION and/or INTENTIONS can be a significant motivator.

If you haven’t looked at your vision since the start of the year, now’s the time to pick it up.

Another part of the FOCUS and DOING equation is noticing WHEN action is best placed? Are you wanting to get this done first thing in the day? Would it be useful to get it done later in the day? When are you earmarking time?

Are the components chunked enough? This last year one of the Weekly Planning Hacks was about chunking things down into smaller pieces. When things are too big, it may be difficult to get things accomplished. What are the chunks you want to focus in on?

Focused action is an important part of the DOING and creating momentum. What is the focus you are undertaking right now? What could you do to amplify that?
DOING is another piece of the puzzle and a couple of weeks into the month, it’s pretty easy to start losing momentum and having other things get in the way of things that are important. What can you be doing to perhaps:

• Get 15 minutes of action in around your key goals first thing in the morning
• Earmark 15-30 minutes 3-4 times a week when you might be watching TV/Netflix etc…
• OR start asking yourself what do you want to say “no” to?

Enjoy your focus this week!
​Jennifer

​Jennifer Britton - GroupCoachingEssentials | Potentials Realized
Instagram @CoachingBizBuilder
Author of Effective Group Coaching (2010), Coaching Business Builder (2018), Effective Virtual Conversations (2017) and From One to Many: Best Practices for Team and Group Coaching (2013). Check out my author page on Amazon for all publications.
Email: info@potentialsrealized.com

This week's Solopreneur Myth gets you thinking about your boundaries around time and availability. The challenge for the solopreneur is to find the balance between being available, and also having time to do the work, and keep at your prime in terms of renewal and energy.

Many newer coaches feel that it's important to always be available. Discernment in this area can help you protect time for strategic thinking and action needed in your business, networking, and keeping yourself at peak performance.
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Questions to consider:

• What times of day are you "at your best" for doing different types of work - think coaching calls, setting up new business, marketing, relationship building etc.
• What items are not getting done? What time do they need for completion? Ideally, when could they be completed?
• What are you doing to renew and/or keep at your prime? This might involve building in time for physical activity, renewal etc.
• What are you doing to not only "do the work" with your business, but move the business forward? This is one of the greatest challenges for business owners at all stages of their business. Business inflection points occur regularly throughout the entire life cycle of a business.
• What space are you leaving for other important parts of your life - i.e. family, relationships, etc?

While saying YES can be important, so can saying NO.

What are the boundaries you want to create to enhance your focus, traction and results?

Enjoy the reflection,
Jennifer

Jennifer Britton
Coaching Business Builder | Group Coaching Essentials
Supporting coaches to grow their business and skills in the areas of group coaching
Recipient of the Prism Award for Excellence in Coaching (2016), and i4pL Award of Excellence - Curriculum Design (2017)
Contact Jennifer to set up a call to see how her 1-1 coaching or group coaching support can help you move towards your Q 4 and 2020 goals.
Phone: (416)996-8326

I’ve enjoyed exploring a number of solopreneur myths over the last half a dozen weeks here at the Coaching Business Builder blog. This week I’m sharing the last in this current series, as we'll start looking at year-end activities next week.
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This week's solopreneur myth is that TIME SPENT = EFFICIENCY.

Not all of the time spent on projects and tasks is the most efficient use of our time. Think about your own scheduling — when are you at your prime? When can you complete tasks quickly and with focus, minus interruptions?
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It may be useful to track your own efficiency for the course of a few days or weeks to notice what patterns emerge.

While the notion of circadian rhythms has been around for decades, the field of chronobiology is expanding it's data set to help us understand our natural rhythms.
Some of us are early birds, others night owls. I know in my own work that much easier to get writing projects completed first thing in the morning, before I open email or get distracted with other projects. The writing I also undertake on a weekly basis from one of my local libraries, usually is more focused and plentiful than writing done from my office later in the day.

Activity:
Think about some of the recent tasks you have completed. What do you notice about speed? Quality? Efficiency?
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Consider tracking your work output for several days in several locations and/or at different times of the day. This will work if your tasks are similar but may be harder if they are not. As you look at your work output, and time spent, what do you notice?

Enjoy the exploration!
Jennifer

One of my favorite activities over the last few years has been to create a summer project list of small, and larger tasks, to complete in what some find to be a quieter time. There always are lots of project possibilities in the summer months. Have you considered:

• Updating your website
• Incorporating a new system
• Catching up on the reading you have piled around your office (or bed)
• Taking time to plan for a new program
• Writing some blog posts (and getting ahead of the curve)
• Creating a content calendar for your business
• Writing your newsletters for the next few months
• Starting a new series on Instagram

Some useful questions to consider as you go to decide what projects you want to put attention around:

• What have your clients been asking for?
• What are your key goals this year?
• What new activities would support your action and achievement of these?
• What projects would you like to move off of your “TO DO” List?
• What milestones would you create for yourself so that this is completed before the end of the month, or the end of the summer?
• What resources do you need in order to be successful with this?

For some more inspiration around this topic, listen into this 20 minute video I did last year on 2018 project ideas – check it out on my YouTube channel.

Best wishes,
​Jennifer

In both the Coaching Business Builder and PlanDoTrack, I include four business philosophies which are critical to all types of virtual and remote professionals, and business owners today – Focus, Experimentation, Momentum and Reflective Pause.

In my work with teams, and individuals, over the last fifteen years in my business I’ve seen that these make the difference between good and exceptional.

With this in mind, over the next few weeks I’ll be taking a deeper dive into the realm of these four areas looking at:

• What it means in today’s business context
• Why it’s important
• Ideas for putting it into practice
• And resources you may want to follow up around

​A reminder that if you like these topics you may want to check out my weekly Facebook Live, where I put into voice quick planning ideas and activities. You will find it over at the PlanDoTrack Facebook page.

Let’s turn our attention to the first topic of FOCUS.

We live and operate today in what is often considered an era of distraction. Our ability to focus and keep our eye on what is important to us, and to our work, is key.
Did you know that:

• The average worker receives 90 emails in the span of a day?
• It takes 22 minutes to get back on track after an interruption?

It’s not uncommon for workers (not just managers) to be spending 5-10 hours a week in meetings? I’ve met managers who wear the badge of
Focused work and attention are critical, and essential in order to create foundations, and grow a business.

How To- Creating Focus:

• Consider building in focused blocks of work – turn off email, move into a conference room, or take your work mobile. What will give you the space and time to do the focused work you need in your job/business?
• Leverage the circadian rhythm. Science continues to show that we have different times of day when we are at our best. What are those times for you? What can you do to ensure you have focused work times within those blocks.
• Create your to-do list of Top 5. With change being the norm for many workplaces, having a top five list each day is important. It’s interesting as the writing of James Clear has pointed to the early 1900s productivity hack from Ivy who asserted that a focus on a top 6 list every day would lead to productivity advances. Whether it’s five or six, being able to check core items off the list can help with efficiency and also motivation.
• Know your priorities – and your teams. Priorities also keep us grounded. They will help us shape our top five as well as discern where our time needs to go. What are your priorities for the week? The month? The quarter?

 
Refer To - Focus
When: The Science of Perfect Timing – Daniel Pink
Atomic Habits – James Clear
Outer Order and Inner Calm – Gretchen Rubin
Deep Work and Digital Minimalism – Cal Newport

Check out my April 3, 2019 Facebook Live 

Wishing you all the best,
Jennifer

It’s officially the end of Q1 of the year, and yet another reason to pause and take stock of your successes from the last quarter and some planning for the month ahead.
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Looking backwards to the last quarter:

• What successes did you have over the last quarter?
• ​What major accomplishments did you have?
• ​What were key lessons learned?
• ​What habits or practices helped you?

• What role did planning play?
• What forms/templates and practices supported your focus and planning?
• What got in the way?
• What do you want to make sure you don't carry forward into this season?

Now turning to the next quarter’s planning:

• What are your goals for April, May and June?

• ​Narrowing it down, what are your top 3- 5 priorities? (Think - by June 21st I hope to have achieved)
• What time are you earmarking for planning?
• What time is earmarked for projects?
• What new habits and practices do you want to put into place?
• What relationships do you want to put more focus around?
• ​What is one thing you could do on a daily basis each day of spring to move your goals forward?
• What relationships do you want to put attention around?
• ​What do you need to, and want to take action on?
• What needs clearing up?
• What else is significant for you this quarter?

Finally...
​What pauses and renewal periods do you want to build in? Grab a calendar and schedule that now.

​What else will help you remain at your peak?
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Enjoy your reflection and be sure to update your Monthly Tracking Forms in the Coaching Business Builder/PlanDoTrack.

You will also want to fill out some new Quarterly To-Dos and do a weekly breakdown (check out pages 140 and 141 of the PlanDoTrack Workbook and Planner and Coaching Business Builder).

Enjoy the planning and celebrations!
Jennifer

Jennifer Britton, PCC, CPCC
Author multiple books including the Coaching Business Builder Workbook and Planner (2018), Effective Group Coaching (2010)
Potentials Realized
Phone: 416-996-8326
Looking to grow your coaching business this year? Check out the Coaching BizGrowth Lab. We meet the 1st and 3rd weeks of the month for 1 hour group coaching conversations. Focus this month is on collaboration and building community. In addition to the group calls you have access to a growing resource library of monthly articles, templates and recordings. Join us this quarter or for the rest of the year!

Happy Spring! As we step into a new season, I hope that you will take a few minutes to take stock of the winter – your accomplishments, learning and achievement. Take a look at the Quarterly Review questions I shared a few months ago here. 

Today I wanted to remind you of the resource available to you here - the Weekly Sweep for Your Business. This is a one-page document you can use on a weekly basis to undertake a sweep of your work or business.
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The “Why” behind this document is that regular actions clear things out. As we move into a new season, there may be more energy to get things organized.

If you haven’t downloaded a copy of the Weekly Sweep for your Business document, download it here.
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As you will note at top of the Sweep for your Business, get you to outline your key priorities for the week around:

• Planning,
• Doing,
• Tracking

As well as key goals in the areas of

• Business
• Your Environment (home, office, etc)
• Yourself

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The next section gets you to outline your goals for the next seven days, with prompts for possible tasks scattered across the week. These include things such as – administrative tasks, outreach to clients/prospects, content creation, and taking 15 minutes to clear some clutter.

On that note, it doesn’t need to take a lot of time to get things into order. 15 minutes at a time can make a big difference to a cupboard, a table, a filing cabinet or your email. Set the timer and see what you get done in 15 minutes!

This is a document you can refer to week after week! Be sure to download it now.

Enjoy!
Jennifer

Building a business can be all-consuming. While it may be important to “push it” at several times of the year, building a business sustainably also means building in blocks to renew, and setting boundaries in terms of when you are available and when you may not be. In this post, we’ll explore three areas you might want to consider in tightening up your boundaries in business.

Boundaries in business can involve:

Learning how to delegate. Consider the tasks that could be passed on to others. This might include posting your articles on social media, designing graphics for your work, laying out brochures or other.

• Putting it into practice: Look at all your tasks for the next few months and consider what could be delegated. Consider the tasks that are taking a lot of time for you right now, but don’t really require your involvement. Make a list, put some time frames around it, and think about what instructions you would give so someone else could complete this.

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Time at work – As a business owner the work will always be there. It’s important to remember that productivity does not always equal amount of time worked. Many of you took advantage of the Heart of Coaching Giveaway item I shared this year which was the 19 Productivity and Business Development Tips. I’ve now made this into a video-based program which also includes a series of bi-weekly live calls. You can join us here.

Becoming more discerning. Check out the blog post I included over at the PlanDoTrack blog a short while ago on discernment. You can search out the PlanDoTrack blog posts here.
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Questions to help you with discernment:

• What is really important to the business right now?
• What are the activities that are having the impact I want?
• What are the things my clients are asking for?
• What support am I able to offer in a high-impact way?
• What tasks could be systematized or automated? Think about things which are taking time and are done repetitively.
• What are the items which are taking away focus on the main parts of the business, and revenue generation?
• What do I need to say NO to and either Defer, Delete or Delegate?
• What do I need to say more YES to – and focus even more on!

Best,
​Jennifer