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Women Business Owners - The Power of Guided Multi-Tasking
Multi-tasking is a natural aspect
of business for women business owners, especially those
with families.
The fact is if you are a woman business
owner, you are most likely already a multi-tasker of
epic proportions. You know how to combine family, childcare
and business tasks as a matter of course. Whether it's
carpooling, deliveries, and business errands, or phoning
clients, babysitters and arranging multiple schedules,
you think in terms of multiple areas of impact most
of the time.
When your business is in your home you
have additional challenges and benefits which your multi-tasking
abilities can make work for you. You can handle household
chores and meal preparation in between appointments,
phone consultations, or writing that new piece for your
monthly newsletter. You routinely make decisions which
involve multiple areas of your life more or less simultaneously.
Taking that next step of how to apply
your natural ability to enhance your business success
is not so difficult, but it does require a new focus.
You have to start thinking in terms of the various areas
of your business the same way you think of the various
areas of your life. You have to step back and get a
little wider view of things.
The best way to do this is to set aside
some quiet time when you will not be disturbed and really
take a look at what it is you want your business to
accomplish, in what time frame. Using the backward planning
approach works very well.
Once you have developed your general
goals, rework them into specific targets. In other words,
take the generalized goal, say of "X number of
new clients by X" and develop the set targets you'll
need to accomplish to reach that goal.
A project plan (target list) and work
chart can be a very helpful tool for the next process
of breaking down each target into the associated tasks
required to fulfill each objective. Using these two
tools, you can create the work chart for each specific
area, and then see how the various targets are related.
For instance, a new promotional pack for your business
will have various components: brochure, logo, support
materials, testimonial letters, perhaps a multi media
presentation. Each of these items becomes a block in
the project work chart, and completing portions of any
one may provide materials for the others.
Once you have accomplished this you
will have a clear picture of all the tasks required
for each area of your business. Now the process of checking
in on the larger picture as you work each day becomes
a simple matter of using these tools to keep you on
track.
Target lists and project work charts
are tools often used by engineers as they develop a
new piece of equipment, hardware, firmware, or software.
First the targets or functions of each piece are defined
and then the steps to creating each working component
are laid out. By following this method, the relationships
between the various targets, or, in this case, components
of your business plan, are visible and easily identified.
This avoids getting the cart before
the horse, or working on portions of the plan that cannot
be implemented without other components also being in
place.
The next step is to integrate the project
work charts into a daily system of self check as you
naturally group your work according to like tasks which
can be accomplished in clusters of multi-tasking events.
In this way you can significantly increase your progress
and your business will thrive.
Once you have clearly charted targets
for the business you can start to apply the multi tasking
skills you aridly have to what needs to be done to make
the targets happen.
The next step to optimizing your multi-tasking
is to ask yourself where you do your best work. What
gives you the most energy and creativity? What is the
most difficult for you to tackle of the things that
require your attention?
A professional counselor, in the midst
of changing her business from one based on individual
clients to seminars and group events met the challenge
of having to think in ways unfamiliar to her by relocating
her new event planning activities to her kitchen! She
recognized that her most relaxing and enjoyable activity
was preparing fresh foods for family and friends. When
she moved her event planning to the kitchen, her natural
confidence and creativity in that environment enabled
her to expand her event planning thinking much more
easily than she could in her office.
The food and her pleasure in its preparation,
as well as her sense of well being and confidence in
this environment gave her the creative energy she needed
to expand her thinking and create new and different
events for her clients. By providing herself with the
support of her naturally creative environment, in this
case cooking, she added to her creative power in an
area where she had less strength and experience.
Often, by breaking up more mundane tasks
with those which are more creative or inspiring, it
is possible to keep your energy level higher than if
you were to attempt to force yourself to do the "boring"
task alone.
Learning your own personal rhythm and
areas of your own natural creativity and enthusiasm
and thinking in ways which allow you to tap into those
parts of yourself you can greatly enhance not only the
results of your work, but the sense of well being you
find in your work.
Finally, as a multi-tasker, there is
some danger that you can become too diversified and
lose the focus and clarity of knowing what is most important
in your business and in your life. By implementing target
lists and project work charts as a guide to daily actions
and updating them as each new target is complete you
have a simple and effective system for starting each
new day, and for meeting all your business objectives.
The daily action of a quick review of
the target list and work chart also provides the added
benefit of stimulating new ideas and inspirations to
continue enhancing your multi tasking skills, keeping
your work fresh, interesting and exciting.
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