Re-Focusing
Last December, Christine Kane posted on her blog about choosing a word-of-the-year. The idea is you select one word to guide your intentions for the coming year.
I thought about a variety of words over the next couple of weeks, but the one word I kept coming back to was focus. As in “I need to get focused…” and “I really want to focus on being…”, etc. So, my word for 2009 became “focus”.
We go into the new year and I am filled with excitement about what I am going to focus on. And then….some changes in my personal life made me wonder if I shouldn’t change my word to “patience”, something I have little of on a good day. Instead, I decided to focus on patience while I needed to, then focus on other things.
I focused on where I was in life and where I wanted to be. I made a Vision Board with images and words I wanted in my life. I completely changed my plans for the future, started a business very unlike what I’d been talking about for the past 3-4 years (and which in its first 7 months has made more money than my other business ever did).
I’ve focused on my business. I’ve focused on getting clients, on making clients happy, or networking to get more clients. And I’ve focused on pursuing what makes me happy.
But along the way, I’ve felt overwhelmed and, well, unfocused. The last couple of months have been exhausting mentally. I sit down and make out a plan on ways to move my business forward, then never follow through. I say I don’t have time (and in many ways, that is true), but I also feel like I am trying to do so much, that there will NEVER be enough time for it all. Yet is all seems so important…
Several weeks ago, a good friend and client (who is also a small business owner) said that for the rest of the year she was putting aside some hobbies she enjoys to devote the extra time to her business to get it moving in the direction she wanted. That really made me think. My first reaction was “I don’t want to give up things that makes me happy”, but then I realized, maybe I need to temporarily put it put them aside to focus on other areas that will move me and my business forward. Later, I can add them back in if I find they still have meaning for my life.
And then this post by Jonathan Fields showed up in my Google Reader. Wow! Talk about making me think, and encouraging me to focus in on what is really important to me now and in the future. If I am going to play a bigger game, what is going to need to be set aside, even temporarily. What are my priorities? What am I going to focus on?
We are now into the last quarter of 2009; the perfect time to make plans to end it with a bang! I’m still sorting out how this will play out in my life and business, but I have made some decisions.
Business-wise, I am focusing (there’s that word again!) on areas that are my strengths, that I enjoy, and that are in high demand. There are new skills that I want to learn, but I am being very selective about which ones I pursue right now – and I’ll only do one at a time rather than having my focus scattered in too many directions.
I am also focusing on taking care of the clients I have now, and meeting more of my ideal clients. I’m not going to just throw my name out there. Instead I’m going to direct it toward people I want to work with. I’m not responding to every RFP I come across; instead, I will reply to those that seem to be a good fit with my skills and personality.
There are plenty of articles I want to read, podcasts I want to listen to, and web sites to check out. For the rest of 2009, however, I am seriously limiting how many of these I pursue. If it doesn’t offer something to my business – or to the business of one of my clients – then it will have to be put aside.
What about you? What are you going to focus on for the rest of 2009?
This Week’s Articles Of Interest
I am late getting the post up this week. It was almost ready to go, and then I got a phone call which pulled me in a completely different direction. So…I am now back on track. Better late than never!
Here are the articles and blog posts that caught my attention this week:
I’ve used Google Calendar for a couple of years, and I don’t even want to think about living without it! However, there is still a lot I can learn to use it more efficiently, and this Mashable article is a great place to start.
This article points out mistakes to avoid when sending email. Be sure and read the comments as well, as they contain even more mistakes. What else would you add to the list?
Trying to get going on Twitter? One thing to do to connect with more people is to get retweeted, and according to Dan Zarella, there is a science to it. Check out this post on Mashable for some clues on improving your retweet rate
Yes, it is another list of blogs that are helpful to business owners to read. No, I have no idea when I’ll find the time check these out, but it looks to be an awesome list. Maybe I’ll try to check out a couple each day – eventually I’ll work my way through them. Let me know which ones you find valuable.
There’s this weeks list. Leave a comment and share what articles and blog posts you took notice of this week.
Fourth Quarter Goals
First, a brief update….I have officially moved to site/blog over to WordPress.org. I still can’t get the theme to upload, but it has been two weeks and I want to start playing around on here. So it is moved. As with any move, there are still a lot of things to be unpacked, sorted out, made just right, so please hang in there. I plan to blog about my progress, so maybe someone can learn from my mistakes!
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Where did September go? When did October get here? Can you believe we are already in the last quarter of 2009? This year has gone really fast for me, partly because I’ve been so busy getting my business going. Whatever the reason, 2010 is coming up quickly.
Photo by architekt2
My birthday was earlier this week, and lately, it has become a time of reflection and regrouping. The new year usually fills me with hope and excitement – I look at where I want to be, see what I have to do differently to get there, and go through a big decluttering period. For the most part, I am looking forward.
My birthday, however, has become more of a time to look back at what I had hoped to accomplish and see where I am. The last couple of years, it has been quite a depressing time, realizing how far I am from where I want to be. Last year, I was in quite a funk. It took nearly a month to get out of it, and I finally did because I was tired of hearing myself whine so much. This year I was heading down the same path, but then began to really look at how much I have accomplished, how much I have changed. I realized that I had actually made a lot of changes and that I am making good progress.
This time of reflection, however painful it can be, is also a good thing and comes at a good time. I’m not where I want to be, so what do I need to do in the last three months of 2009 to move me closer to my goals? What changes did I begin that have gotten stuck? What areas can I focus on for the next three months that will have the greatest impact?
I’m still sorting through all those questions, but one thing I wanted was to get my site and blog moved. I wanted everything to be “perfect” (whatever that means!), but if I waited until then, I might not get it moved before the end of the year. I’ve also found that I’ve put off working on it because I didn’t have a large chunk of time to devote to it.
I finally realized I could spend a few minutes each day tackling one or two tasks. Take baby steps. Eventually it would all get done. And if I actually moved my blog and began directing people to it, I would be motivated to actually take those baby step and work on it consistently.
Now it’s your turn – what are your plans/goals for the rest of 2009? What was on your list for this year that you haven’t gotten to, or haven’t completed? What can you focus on that will move you and your business into 2010 and beyond? Please leave a comment and tell us your plans for the rest of the year.
