Concentrate…part 3
This week’s article continues our theme of concentration and looks at some of the physical techniques you can use to keep your concentration.
- Get up and move around. If you are like many people, you probably don’t move around enough. Research shows that regularly walking around and stretching helps increase your focus. Depending on your type of work you might find it better to take mini-breaks regularly, for example, 5 minutes every half-hour, or to take breaks between tasks or different activities. For example, I leave my mobile phone on the staircase, so if it rings I have to get up to answer it.
- Breathe. It might sound obvious but most of us do not breathe properly or deeply enough. Make sure your posture is right to allow you to breathe fully. If you can’t do it constantly, then at least make sure when you take your moving around breaks above, you practice some deep breathing. Proper breathing is the key to making sure your brain gets the oxygen it needs to work properly. To help get breath into my lungs (especially when I have spent a lot of time at the computer) I stand with my back against a wall, stretch my hands above my head (keeping my arms against the wall) and breathe. Take 5 deep breaths and I’m sure you will feel a lot better.
- Start your day or take a break at lunchtime, with some exercise. Take a yoga class, go for a swim, run, cycle, walk, or use one of the many exercise apps available. Exercise produces adrenaline and other beneficial chemicals in your body, all of which will help you work and focus more effectively.
Concentrate…part 2
This week we continue to look at ways to improve your concentration. Here are some nutritional tips to keep you energised so that you can focus on what you have to do.
- Drink water! It seems self-evident and everyone says it, but many of us get busy and simply forget. Dehydration can make you feel tired, irritable, slow, or even sick. When your brain doesn’t have enough fluid, it can’t operate at peak performance. So keep a water bottle or jug with you and drink regularly. Try adding a slice of lemon to give it a bit more flavour.
- Eat breakfast – starting your day with a healthy breakfast can help you concentrate throughout the morning. Your mind wanders too easily if you are hungry.
- Have healthy energy-boosting snacks available. Keep snacks at your desk to give yourself a quick energy boost when you feel yourself flagging – almonds, whole-grain crackers, fresh fruit and vegetables are a
ll good choices (unfortunately chocolate is not – enjoyable though it may be!). - Eat something light but nutritious for lunch – a big, heavy lunch will slow you down, and many people find high gluten foods (like bread and pasta) make them sleepy in the afternoon. Keep your lunch light and healthy and you’ll feel more energised through the afternoon.
Concentrate…
Over the next few weeks we will look at ways to improve your concentration. These are tips collated from a variety of sources, but I hope that putting one or more of these into practice will help you to focus – on whatever you are trying to do.
How many times have you sat at your desk and tried to focus on a task, only to find your mind wandering? Despite your best intentions, you get distracted and just can’t concentrate. We’ve all been in this familiar, frustrating situation, and it can really undermine your performance.
This first article in our series will look at environmental factors that can help you concentrate.
The more comfortable and welcoming your environment is, the easier it is likely to be for you to stay there and focus. Here are some ideas for improving your physical environment:
- Be comfortable – adjust your chair and desk to the right height for you to work comfortably. There are plenty of websites that will help you set up your equipment correctly and give you ideas for effective ways to layout your work area.
- Add some pictures – looking at a natural scene or wildlife can help improve concentration, and can also give your eyes a break from the computer screen (we’ve mentioned before some of the eye exercise apps you can use to help your eyes stay healthy).
- Shut out distractions as much as possible – listening to music can help, especially if it’s instrumental music. Some people find white noise machines useful – this steady background noise can drown out other noise, helping you focus better and ignore distractions.
- Maintain air flow – if you have a window open it for some fresh air. If not have a pot plant on your desk to help purify the air a little.
Efficient meeting scheduling
If you run a business that requires meeting with clients or groups of people, you will know how tricky it can be to manage and organise times that suit everyone.
Don’t spend endless hours emailing, texting or phoning back and forth with everyone to try to coordinate – there are some tools that will help.
Allowing clients to book time with you directly is a great option that lets your clients feel like they matter – they can select a time to suit themselves and put it into your diary directly. I use an app called Timetrade for this. This neat app hooks itself into my Outlook calendar. Via my website it shows my existing appointments/meetings as busy time (no, it doesn’t show who I’m with, it just shows the time as busy) and gives clients the opportunity to create a meeting with me.
Another handy feature of this app is that I can have different views of my calendar for different websites/businesses. In my consulting business, clients have the opportunity to set up two hour meetings. Whereas for my face-to-face training business, clients prefer either morning or afternoon bookings, so I publish different calendar options for each on my websites.
If you need to organise meetings with multiple people, whether for business or socially, Doodle is great. Simply set up as many or as few choices of dates and times as you like, add people to the list and an auto-generated email will invite them to select those times they can attend. You can then choose the option that suits most people and lock it in.
Time to keep track of time?
When running your small business it is important to keep track of time.
Tracking time serves several purposes. It can help you at the end of a day/week/month when you reflect on what you’ve actually done with your time. If you charge for your work on a time spent basis, it’s essential to keep records so you can accurately bill your clients.
For those just starting out, tracking your time will help you calculate the cost of doing business. You can see how much time you need to spend with prospects before they purchase (helping you price your services more easily). You will also see the amount of time you spend doing your business administration (accounts, paying bills, BAS returns and so forth). And knowing the time you spend in marketing/business development activities will help you to judge the value of those activities in context of the results you get from them.
I’ve been using time recording apps for quite some time now – and it is one of the best time management tools I have. When you see how much time you spend on thinking (procrastinating, if you are truthful), watching TV, shopping and coffee meetings, you will soon see how much time you have to re-purpose on other activities.
There are a number of time recording apps available. I find the easiest way is to have one on my mobile phone as I always have this with me. It’s important that you make sure whichever app you choose, it has the capability to upload/save your information (eg. to another computer, to the cloud, Dropbox) so that you don’t risk losing it. If you’re using it for charging clients you don’t want to be double entering your billable information, so choose an app that will export to a spreadsheet or your accounting system and/or create invoices for you.
Most apps will have a free version which may be fine for personal time-keeping, but if keeping track of billable time you will need to pay for a full version. I have found these apps effective and reasonably priced:
- TimeClock: http://www.spotlightsix.com
- OfficeTime: http://www.officetime.net
Don’t SPAM me!
Sometimes in the interests of marketing ourselves or our business, we get caught up in connecting with as many people as possible.
Once someone is on our contact list it can be easy to keep sending emails, SMS, or IM to try to get them on board as clients. But you do need to think about what permission you got from them to contact them in the first place, and there are also rules around ongoing communications.
The Australian SPAM Act was passed in 2003 and that’s a relatively long time ago, so it is not necessarily front of mind. Under the Act you are required to include an opt-out method with every communication.
Whether you’re continuing your existing marketing communications plan or putting new strategies in place it is worth refreshing your memory and checking that you are complying properly.
Check out the ACMA website http://www.acma.gov.au/Industry/Marketers/Anti-Spam for clear information on what you can and can’t do.
Clean out your browsing history
Following on from the blog “Spring clean your computer” posted couple of weeks ago, another idea is to clear out your browsing history.
Clearing your browsing history isn’t just a way to hide whatever websites you’ve been looking at, but deleting temporary files and your history will clear space and help ensure your computer is running fast. If you’ve experienced problems on certain websites it will also clear “cached” pages. Cached pages are computer speak for pages where your computer holds the memory of the page rather than the latest version of it.
Here’s how to clear the history on your PC for several common browsers:
Safari
- Click on “Edit”
- Then choose the “Reset Safari” option
- You will then see a box with multiple options – select whether you want to empty the cache, clear downloads, remove all cookies and website icons, etc
- Choose carefully, because if you remove all cookies and AutoFill you may find it annoying later
- Click “Reset” and you’re done.
For Safari on an iPad
- Go to “Settings”
- Select “Safari”
- Then scroll to Clear History and Website Data.
Be careful, because you don’t have any options – it’s all or nothing when you “Clear”.
Firefox
- Go to the tool bar
- Select “Tools”
- Select “Clear Recent History”.
Firefox actually allows you to clear your browsing history by the hour, so if you prefer, you can clear your files based on the past few hours of browsing time only. As in Safari, you can select which files you want to purge.
Chrome
- From the Customise menu choose “More Tools”
- Then “Clear browsing data”.
Again you can choose which files to delete, and the time frame (from the last hour out to the beginning of time!).
Internet Explorer
- Select “Tools”
- Select “Safety”
- Select “Delete Browsing History” – just like the other browsers, you can select which elements you want to purge
- Click “Delete” and you’re done.
You may not see a noticeable difference in the speed of your computer but it’s still a good idea to purge your history every now and again.
Keeping track of everything
I used to think I had a great memory and didn’t need to write things down. But I came to realise that there is always so much happening it pays to keep track of ideas, agreements, etc, especially when you are running a business.
I’ve always been a fan of keeping a notepad in my handbag. But now I use Evernote. Why Evernote? Well, it helps me keep track of everything and it works on any and all of my devices (my iPad, android phone, the laptop and my desktop computer).
Evernote lets me take notes (both written and audio), make to do lists, clip and save items from the web, share and discuss ideas and more. I can set up as many folders as I wish to store my information (although I do recommend keeping the number of folders as low as possible). When I’m finished taking notes on one device it shares the information between all my nominated devices. And the best feature is, it is fully searchable.
I use it, for example, in client meetings to take note of important issues or agreements, and even more importantly, while I’m working on something, if a random idea drops into my head I have a safe place to record it.
Evernote was enormously helpful while writing my book, Technology Made Simple, as I could add points to my “book” folder at any time, from whatever device I had at hand, and could easily reference and incorporate them later.
If you’re not convinced how useful this app can be, why not try the free version? I almost guarantee you’ll soon upgrade to the paid version (which is reasonably priced), which has the added benefit of being available offline when you haven’t got internet access and has loads of storage space.
Emails in focus
We’ve talked about emails before, particularly the subject lines, but here are a few more tips to ensure your email gets read:
- Don’t leave your subject line blank. This is your opportunity to catch people’s attention and inform them why they should read your email over the the other twenty or more sitting in their inbox.
- Don’t put “Hi” or something trivial in the subject line – this gives your reader no idea of the content of your email.
- Do include a date if you want people to respond or to RSVP to you.
- Do change the content of your subject line if you have been playing ping pong with your recipient to keep their attention.
So don’t waste time in crafting a great message if you are not going to use your valuable subject line effectively, as I can almost guarantee your message will not get read.
Simple privacy policy solutions
Does your business sell products or services online? Do you collect people’s contact information via your website so that you can stay in contact and/or provide them with services?
If so, an important part of your business is ensuring you have a privacy policy that complies with Australian regulations and explains how you keep and deal with people’s information.
I’m sure you will know from your own online experiences that most privacy policies on websites (if they have it) are unnecessarily long, use complicated language and are hard to understand, even if you can be bothered reading them in full. Most of us tick the box without even reading the policy because we just want to buy or subscribe and don’t want to waste our time trying to figure out what it actually means. Sometimes though, we might be put off or think twice about purchasing or subscribing when a policy is overly complex does not make clear what the business will do with our personal details. You don’t want to lose even one potential customer because of your privacy policy.
Now, thanks to a project developed through RMIT and the Smart Services Cooperative Research Centre, there is a way for small businesses to have a privacy policy that is simple, easy to understand, and fully compliant with Australian requirements for free.
On Simple Privacy’s website you can enter some essential details about your business (these are important details you should know anyway) and generate a simple, tailored policy. And of course, Simple Privacy’s own privacy policy is clearly documented so you can be reassured before you start providing information!