Business Productivity: When It’s Okay to Drop the Ball

On Monday, I posted I was going to hit the ground running hard, one day back from vacation and I was going to be on fire. What really happened though, is my business productivity slowly took a nose dive throughout the week. And I’m SO okay with that. Here’s why I am so cool with myself for doing this, and when it’s okay for you to do the same.

When It’s Okay to Drop the Business Productivity Ball

1. When you need to sleep or rest
2. When you feel a cold coming on
3. When you feel a major shift coming on
4. When you have big business growth opportunities to attend to
5. When you choose self care over client care for once
6. When you are doing something you truly LOVE so you can experience it fully
7. When the kids have to come first

IF you do not pause the uber-productivity for the reasons above, you will:

• miss something important, by instinct or opportunity, you need to notice for yourself or your business
• you will get sick or stretched too far and this will hurt you and your business
• you will be less of a role model for your community and family than you should be.

I’ve learned all of this the hard way (as we all do). But now I really know better about self-care in relation to growing a successful business, and now I really am doing better. I hope you are learning this too!

For some reason, this week, in spite of my to do list and well-conditioned pre-school start angst I just sank happily into unproductivity around everything except being inwardly focused. And the truth is, I NEVER (like, EVER) allow myself to be inward focused without guilt.

This week I did 3 things new that make my normal business productivity level totally okay to take a wee nose dive:

• I ran. 3 times. (A big deal if you know me). With my middle daughter who is in search of a new sport (she’s already happily fit… hoping my effort to change my fitness helps keep hers).
• I slept before 11 four nights in a row. If you’ve known me for awhile, you’ll know that I’m a recovering night owl. I confess I fell off the wagon and was back to my old ways.
• I recognized a fluish cold thing coming on and I attacked it with tea and sleep and water water water.

I took the time to completely enjoy my speaking engagement at Brighter Business Empower this week. A passionate and extremely fun part of my work is public speaking. I am hungry for more opportunities like this and I allowed myself to really, really experience what that felt like before, during and after. The truth is, speaking is extremely nerve-wracking and exciting for me every time (I’ve been doing it since a teen). Usually I’m too busy to really stop and evaluate beyond my gut response how much I do love it. This time, I sunk into thoroughly enjoying it.

Out of the list above, of reasons I let my business productivity slide this week, I’m so pleased to say there were NO kiddo hiccups involved. The reasons I chose to put my clients second, were because I put myself first… for once. Literally. I believe this is the first week in my five years where I intentionally put myself first often. And wow! I’m hooked. I’m better for it. And my clients will be better for it too.

I want to wrap this article up today with a major thank you to every person who thanked ME this week in person, on social media, on their blogs for my presentation, my words and my inspirations to you this week. This week feels like a celebration of every milestone we’ve already reached together and a leaping point for the next paths we’ll forge together.

Let’s keep on rocking our awesome!