December 2010 - Issue 78 - www.clareevans.co.uk

Hello ,

It's December and the end of the year is rapidly approaching. We're all either winding down for Christmas or winding up for the festive season.

Many of us in the UK have already had an enforced break from work as a result of the disruption that the snow caused.

How did it impact you and your business?

It's been an exciting year all round - there have been the challenges of a recession to deal with and a general tightening of belts all round.  New challenges and opportunities have arisen and many people have chosen this time to launch a new business.

What have your challenges been this year and how have you dealt with them?

I'm taking a two week break over Christmas and New Year and looking forward to time with family and friends.

However, before I go, I have a very special Christmas gift to help kick start your New Year. Book a coaching package before the end of the month and get 20% off either a Kick Start or Get Into Action Coaching Programme.

You can find the details here. Be sure to get in touch if you want to take up this offer and get yourself off to a good start in the New Year.

Keep in touch with what I'm up to and get extra news and tips from my blog or Follow me on Twitter.

Enjoy the rest of this month's newsletter and have a great Christmas and New Year.

Clare

P.S. Feel free to pass this newsletter on to friends and colleagues.

I often hear from people that they can't manage their time because they have to respond to whatever the clients or customers need or demand.

Some people have the kind of job where they have to respond quickly to a client's needs.  They're never quite sure what they're going to be doing from day to day.

While it might be more difficult to plan or have a regular structure you can still manage the work you have and create systems and flexibility around it to allow for the unexpected.

If 50% or 80% of your working week is taken up responding to clients or dealing with the unexpected - then plan the other 50% or 20%.

Educate your clients and customers - sometimes it's their lack of planning and organisation that means you're constantly dealing with their deadlines or their urgent problems.

Check for patterns in your work.  Are you busier at the beginning or end of the week? Are mornings busier or quieter than the afternoons? Do you have quieter periods at certain times of the month or during the course of the year?

Measure your workload over a period of time to see when you're more or less busy or the types of tasks you're dealing with.

For instant - Accountants will always be busy at year-end or when VAT returns are due. Not only does their volume of work increase but there's a natural tendency for their clients to leave or put off things like this to the last minute which adds to the pressure.

If you work in IT you can guarantee that the Monday after an installation or upgrade is likely to be busy.

Most urgent, last minutes calls are more likely to come in at about 4pm on a Friday afternoon.

Some people find their business drops off for a couple of months around the Summer holiday break or at the beginning or end of the year. All businesses are different.

Take advantage of the quieter periods to either catch up on admin, set aside time for planning or step up your marketing.

There are always unexpected things that turn up - suddenly finding that you can't get in to the office for two days because of the snow or you're off sick for a few days can all have an impact.

Some of this is about contingency planning - knowing who needs to do something or what needs to be done if someone is out of the office.

Re-prioritise your workload if you find you have to drop everything to deal with an unexpected or urgent task or if you're taken out of the office for a few days to work on a client's site.

It makes the few minutes you spend planning even more important. Knowing where you are, what you need to be doing and where you were focused.

When you get back to work - re-prioritise what needs to be done. Set aside time to deal with the backlog. Don't just launch into trying to deal with everything - deal with it in chunks at a time.

If you know where you are then it's easier to get back to where you need to be when something urgent comes up. Especially if it's already in your planner or written down and not all in your head.

What unexpected things do you need to make allowances for? They may be less unexpected than you think.