How I "Do it All"

I think that this is the question I get asked more than any other.

I run my own consultancy, I run a non-profit. I’m on the board of another non-profit. I co-organise a conference, and that’s before we start on the being a wife, mother, friend roles.

So, how do I do it all? Do I have a Hermione-esque Time Turner? Sadly not, let’s break it down.

I don’t “do it all”, it’s a myth

Let’s just get this out of the way up front, I don’t do it all. I barely even do a little bit of what I could potentially be doing. I do what I need to be doing and for the most part I do what I want to be doing.

Some time ago I realised that trying to “do it all” was a short route to madness. No matter what the media told me growing up, “having it all” did not seem like a great goal if I was going to have to “do it all” as well. Who has the time for that?

Which is when I started to turn away from what other people thought I should be doing and explore what I actually wanted to be doing.

Choose only what you really want to do

Realising that I didn’t have to do it all was revelationary. Of course, there are things I need to do, basic survival needs still have to be met. But that doesn’t mean I can’t enjoy doing those things.

If you look at your to-do list, are the things on it moving you closer to the life you want or further from it? Trust me, deciding what you will and won’t do gets much easier when you view it through that lens.

Do I want to do my accounts? No, honestly, not really. Accounts in and of themselves are boring to me, I am not a numbers person. What they represent, though - financial freedom, lifestyle choice is very interesting to me and as such I will choose them because they move me closer to the life I want. Which, as it happens, is a life that includes outsourcing the most boring parts of my finances to a bookkeeper. Eyes on the prize people.

I say no, a lot

Really, a lot. As a recovering chronic people-pleaser, it has taken years to get to the point where I can confidently say no to the things I can’t do in order to say yes to the things I can.

I didn’t get there overnight. I said frequently said yes, when I really meant no. Then, for a time, I squirmed in my seat, and smiled tightly and made non-committal “uhhmm” noises. Before, finally, I realised that not only was I making myself miserable but I was doing a horrible disservice to the people around me. I strive for honesty in everything that I do and I wasn’t being honest. Not with the people I was saying yes to, or with myself.

Telling people yes, and then following it through with a heavy heart or a lack of skills is not honest. You are not offering them the best solution for them. Say no. Even if people are disappointed, even if they really, really want you to. If you know it isn’t right for both of you, say no.

At first, I used other people’s words to say no until I found the confidence to say no in my own words. If you would like to try doing the same, I recommend starting with this video from Marie Forleo and this article from Alexandra Franzen.  Then try practising a couple of times with a trusted friend until you can screw up your courage enough to say no to other people.

I’ve embraced a “whole life experience”

This is the evolution of my first point, that I don’t do it all. When I let go of the “doing it all” myth, there was still the “work-life balance” myth to bust through. For me, as a mother, wife, friend, daughter, business owner, colleague, the idea of balance in the traditional sense is utterly redundant. As Shonda Rhimes says in Year of Yes.

“Whenever you see me succeeding in one area of my life, that almost certainly means that I am failing in another area of my life.”

— Shonda Rhimes

That’s what the work-life balance myth does, it sets us up to fail. Over and over again. Now, I am not anti-failure, I accept failure as a necessary part of life and growth. What I really hate, though, is setting myself up to fail. As it turns out, my life is not designed to be weighed out into equal little boxes, perfectly balanced on top of each other. Whenever I’ve tried to do that, all I’ve managed to achieve is depriving other areas of my life as I focussed balancing one area against another.

“Life isn’t meant to be balanced, it is meant to be experienced.”

— Me

Which is why I switched my destination and I am now running headlong into a whole life experience with all its mess and adventure and failure and joy. I’ll make cookie dough, then take business calls while it’s chilling in the fridge, then stop working so my son and I can bake together. I’ll pick my son up from school each day. I’ll work on weekends because I choose to, not because I have no choice. I will take account of my family and my friends when I am planning how much work to take on each year. I will focus on joy, knowing that the path to it may be messy. I’ll fail, and I’ll get up so I can do it again only this time, better.

Schedule like a ninja

Of course, all this is great in theory, but how do I actually do it?

Scheduling. Like a ninja.

I have calendars for everything, I do annual planning, quarterly planning, monthly planning, weekly planning and daily planning. I have calendars which sync with my husband’s, which integrate my client’s and a giant whiteboard calendar to help my son stay on track.

I know, I know, you’ve heard this before. You’ve tried it, it didn’t work. You’re a rebel, you need spontaneity. Any and all of the above. I get it, planning isn’t exciting no matter how many journals you buy or how much washi tape you use. Even so, the results are in, planning does work and if you want to create time to do the things you want, then you have to plan for it.

Where people mostly go wrong with planning, as I did in the beginning, is filling every second of their day with “stuff”. That’s never going to work, you have to build in time for flexibility, for things going wrong and yes, for spontaneity. You have to know that if you ditch the client report to eat ice cream and play on the swings in the park (kid: optional) then you still have space to get it done before it is due. Give yourself breathing space, and when your schedule fails, because it will. Get up and start over again.

So, how do I do it all?

I don’t.

Except, that actually, I do.

My way, on my terms.

What about you?

How to Keep Going When You Just Can't Keep Going

What surprised me most about burning out wasn’t that it happened. Anyone who knew me could see it coming like a train wreck in slow motion. Even I knew it was coming, I simply felt powerless to stop it at the time. No, what surprised me most was how different it felt to depression. I had always imagined them to be sort of the same, I mean once you’ve fallen into one black hole, how different can another black hole be?

But it was different, very different. Depression feels like a wet duvet has been thrown over your soul, heavy and suffocating with the absence of light. Burning out, however, felt as though someone had powered up an emotional vacuum cleaner and sucked every ounce of joy from my life.

Burning out made me angry, that was new. Depression had made me quiet and tired since it entered my life in my teens, but burning out consumed me with an unfocused rage. I resented my work, my people, my life. Everything that touched my world made the vacuum suck harder, anything anyone did caused more joy to leave me. Some days it seemed that I could actually feel the joy exiting my body, piece by piece, it was often physically painful.

And so, in a haze of confusion, misplaced anger and a bizarre sense of curiosity about the new territory I was now entering, I burnt out.

The thing with burning out is, no matter how sad or furious you are, the world keeps on going. As a mother, a wife and a business owner even on the days when I wondered exactly what was the process I would need to undertake in order to be committed to a recovery unit. A place where I was quietly certain that I could sit and just give in to the horrors in my mind, I still had to keep going.

I had to learn, very quickly, how to live a minimum viable life as my whole self started to break apart. Which is what I now want to pass on to you…

Reduce Your Exposure

Start cutting the toxic and the unnecessary out of your life. Reduce your interactions to only those closest to you. Your days of being a social butterfly are currently over. You need to circle your wagons and make sure that they contain only the friends who will stand quietly beside you as you get through this. Listen to them, this is important, because you are not in any position to rely on the accuracy of your mind to make assessments anymore. You need external viewpoints, but only those of your most trusted people.

The Only Way Is Up

If burning out is the bottom, then at some point you have to start going back up again. Which, I discovered, is a lot like deep sea diving. You can see the surface, but it’s hazy and far away. During this period I felt a lot like Dory from Finding Nemo – just keep swimming, just keep swimming. If you have surrounded yourself with good people they will make sure you break the surface again. Just keep swimming. No matter how old you get, Dori’s here to remind us with this book that there is always a way (who cares if it’s a sticker book, this will be quite practical for de-stressing purposes)!

Get Help

Proper professional help. Whatever that means to you, be it medication or meditation. Get help. You cannot and should not do this on your own. For me it was a combination of both, medication to stop my brain from consuming me and my own versions of meditation to bring some stillness to my world. I refuse to feel shame for taking medication, if my leg broke I would use medication to help fix it. My brain broke, it’s ok to use medication to fix it. My brain, my choice.

Prioritize Like A Ninja

Multi-tasking is dead to you for now. Frankly if you achieve one task a day it should be celebrated. Choose that task wisely. Overachieving is probably what got you into this mess in the first place. Let it go.

Learn How Powerful the Word ‘No’ Can Be

I am a reformed chronic people pleaser. I would say yes to helping anyone with anything. I would have to sit on my hands to stop myself from volunteering for yet another thing that no-one else was willing to commit to. Thanks to the burnout, and its accompanying rage issues, saying no got really easy. Are you kidding? You want more from me?!? No. N.O. No. It was revelationary. Learning how to set proper boundaries as an adult produced some very unexpected (by me) results. People respected my time more, I respected my time more. I got decisive, I was laser focused, I took action. It helped me recover.

Of course, it would be infinitely better if we took the steps we needed to protect ourselves before we burnt out. But life isn’t always that easy or straightforward. Burn out happens. It isn’t shameful or taboo. It isn’t your fault. Most importantly, it is completely recoverable from. And while it is true that you won’t be the same after it, the new evolved you comes with its own benefits.

Just keep swimming.

This post originally appeared on Hit the Gem.

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NOTES FOR THE CURIOUS

If you want more systems and strategies to help you work on your business instead of in your business, then you'll love my Notes for the Curious. It's published every two-weeks and delivered straight to your inbox. Notes for the Curious is a curated digest of everything I am learning and loving about running a business and living a life on purpose. From time management, to goal setting, community building to confidence boosting as well as systems and tools to make your life easier, we will cover it all.

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Questions You Must Ask Before Hiring a Business Coach or Consultant

I’m about to tell you that I don’t want you to hire me.

I really don’t. Which may seem an odd statement for someone who makes a living out of and more importantly, derives great pleasure from making small businesses better.

Let me explain….

The coach/consultancy industry is going through a tricky time right now. Which is common amongst young industries as they establish their future direction. I see far too much “I can teach you how to make 6 figures in a weekend” and far too little of due diligence that you as a business owner should be undertaking before you hire someone to support your business.

Which is why I want to encourage you not to hire me, until you can confidently answer the following questions:

1) Why are you thinking of hiring someone?

If you only ask yourself one question before hiring someone, make it this one; “Why are you considering hiring a coach or a consultant into your business?” Unfortunately, this is often the last question that people ask themselves. And trust me, from personal experience, “because I don’t know what else to do” is always the wrong answer.

Approaches to coaches and consultants are rarely made because everything is running absolutely wonderfully in your business. Usually, when you start to consider an outside advisor it is because you are feeling more than a little lost or you believe you lack a skill set necessary to develop your business. It may be that you have reached a tipping point you don’t know how to move forward from, or you’ve lost direction and want to get back on track or you are ready to stop puttering along in the slow lane when you know that what you have to offer could help so many people.

Whatever your answer, “why” is your first, and best, question. Then make sure you bring in someone who can give you the best support in solving that specific issue.

2) What are your goals?

This ties directly to your “why”. Once you know why you want to hire someone into your business you need to drill down into what it is specifically that you want to achieve. That doesn’t mean that you have to have it all outlined into week-by-week actions. Most of the time you are bringing someone into your business to help you define your next direction and that necessitates a flexible, fluid approach to where you are going. Overall, though, you should know what you want to eventually achieve.

There is a reason that the SMART method of goal setting has stood the test of time. It just works.

Let’s say you think that your goal is more growth. “More growth” is not a goal in and of itself, though. As an example; if your goal is growth then you need to make sure you can answer the following questions fully:

What does growth mean to my business? Is it customer growth, mailing list growth, financial growth?

How will I measure that growth? Numbers? Revenue? Profit? Gut feel?

How will this growth actually happen? What will I have to do in order to achieve it?

Is that a realistic growth target, if so, what is it based on? If you don’t already have historic data from your business to refer to, at least do your research on similar businesses at similar stages.

What is the time period I wish to achieve this growth within, is that a plausible time frame? What are you basing that on?

Because, believe me, asking you to define your goals is the first thing your coach/consultant should be doing and it is better for you to think about this ahead of time so that you are not caught by surprise when it happens. 

3) What is your budget?

If you are hiring on the hope that “this” will be the thing that finally makes your business profitable or because you’ve been sucked in by the “you have to spend money to make money” mantra then hit pause immediately on your search for a consultant or coach.

There is no magic bullet. I cannot say this enough. Nobody, no matter how brilliant, is going to be able to come in and make an immediate, measurable difference to your business. Everything takes time. And that time is going to cost you money. Please do not cross your fingers and hope. Work out what you will need to make in order and how you are going to do that before you sign the contract.

4) Do you need a coach, a consultant or something else?

This may seem obvious but, do you know what you are hiring? Do you know what your business needs? Coaching, consultancy and business strategy, these are unregulated industries. What does that mean?

It means that anyone can set themselves up as any of those businesses, call themselves whatever they like and they are answerable to no one but themselves (except, hopefully, their clients).

Even within the industries of coaching and consultancy experience, training and standards can vary wildly. It doesn’t help that many coaches call what they do consultancy and many consultants are, in fact, offering coaching. To break it down to basics for small business coaching and consultancy as I understand them:

Coach = Someone who works with you to help you personally to remove the blocks which are stopping you from getting to where you want to be from where you currently are. Coaching usually has an individual focus.

Consultant = Someone who brings a level of expertise to one or more areas of your business. This is usually tied to the strategic development of your business and will involve analysis, goal setting and taking action. Consultancy usually has an organisational focus.

Again, these are my interpretations, and as a hybrid of a consultant, who is also an accredited coach, I consider myself a consultant first and foremost, who uses coaching as one of the many tools in my arsenal to help my clients achieve the results they want. You only have to Google Coach vs. Consultant to see how many different interpretations there are of those terms. Which is why you need to do your research. 

5) Have you done your research?

I love a good sales page. They are siren songs to struggling business owners. They promise to solve all your problems. Before you know it, you’re hovering your cursor over that PayPal button ready to give up a significant chunk of money that you may not have in the hope that this time, this is the thing that will solve your problems.

WAIT.

Before you click that button, I need to tell you to step away from the sales page. There are some questions I want you to be able to answer before you hit “pay”

Do you know why you are hiring them? (go back to question 1 if you are not sure)

Have you consumed enough of their free content (website, social media, blogs, downloads, podcasts etc.) to be aware of their working style? Is it a good fit for you?

Have you checked out their testimonials, and if you are being ultra thorough, have you contacted people they have worked with to make sure that they were happy with the results?

6) Are you prepared to be the boss?

When you hire a coach or consultant you are bringing someone into the inner circle of your business. They are going to need to be able to ask you about every area of it in order to help you facilitate the change you want. 

But, and this is important, you are still the boss. You are still in charge, you are still directing where this relationship will go, you are still responsible for setting and monitoring the goals. A coach/consultant who is not being managed by the client cannot effectively help you to make the changes you want in your business. It is not their business to run your business for you.  They may become your right hand, your trusted advisor but they are not your replacement. Set goals, establish regular check-ins and ensure that the lines of communication are fully open between you.

Final Steps

There is no substitute for getting on the phone or setting up a meeting and speaking to your potential coach/consultant directly but it will be a much more productive meeting if you have already considered the above questions so that you know exactly what you are asking for during the meeting.  

Don't ever feel that you have to commit during or directly after that meeting. Ask for a proposal, take your time, ask follow-up questions.

If the coach/consultant is not the right fit for the goals you want to achieve then they should have no hesitation  Taking on a coach or consultant into your business can be a game-changing move, but before you take that leap of faith in the future of business, make sure you are making a calculated leap.

Time for Action

Download the free workbook which accompanies this guide - no opt-in necessary.

And if it is me you are looking for to help you take the next right steps in your business, you know exactly where to find me.