The Blog
The emotions, actions and thought processes of my creative work.
This is where I share what I’m doing and why, how I’m thrashing out problems and what I’m trying to achieve.
Guilt and Balance: Breaking The Productivity Addiction
When I was going through the responses to my annual survey, I began to see the same struggle coming up over and over again: guilt. More specifically, guilt about not being productive enough, whilst simultaneously not taking time for oneself: “I WANT more balance, but I always seem to feel guilty when I’m not at my desk”. Over and over, in different words and in different ways people were chastising themselves for not working more, doing more, achieving more – and not being more balanced.
Goals, Intentions and Word Of The Year 2021
This new year is different. This new year there is not the clean break to “start again” that other years have. Of course this is always the case; the ticking over of a digit at the end of the year denotes nothing but our human need to control and measure time. Usually we manage to kid ourselves that the ticking over is meaningful, that it can birth us anew into a whole different world – but this year, with ongoing lockdowns and vaccine rollouts and continuing deaths around the world, it is harder to feel the change in the air.
One-To-One to One-To-Many (And Back Again?)
At the beginning of this year, one of my main goals was to be “appointment-free” by the end of it. I no longer wanted to do one-to-one work and so my plan for 2020 was to phase it out to the point where my calendar was gloriously empty and all my time was my own. This is something I was very open about and shared the detail of in my newsletter and here on the blog and I got lots of questions about how it was going along the way – so I thought I would sum it all up here. Keep reading for my journey from one-to-one to one-to-many (and back again?).
How to Be More Decisive
Indecision is one of our greatest plagues as business owners. It can exist as a constant small doubt in your chest that has you anxiously seeking out validation, and it can also come in huge waves, dashing your confidence against the rocks. “I just don’t know what to do for the best” is one of the most common struggles I hear, and when indecision sets in we stop, lose momentum, stagnate and, sometimes, give up entirely. In this post, I address that indecision and help you learn how to be more decisive.
The Small Things That Build Your Self-Trust
If you read my Q3 review you will know that this current season of my work is fraught with what I’m calling “opportunities for doubt” and practical pitfalls. With the protracted end of a relationship and the shouldering of all the financial responsibilities, I now need my business to step up for me financially (and probably emotionally too). My trust in myself to actually do this has been tested pretty much as rigorously as it can be the last few weeks.
Find Yourself On The Inward Attainment Map – And Know What To Do Next
When you feel disconnected and don’t know how to get out of the funk in your business, it’s easy to try to work your way out of it by doing whatever trick or “must-do” you stumble upon first. Maybe you decide the way back to falling in love with your business is to start getting really serious about your Instagram photos, or that you will feel more joyful if you create a one-to-many offering.
Q3 2020 Review
When I scroll back through the blog I see it was only a few posts ago that I published the quarterly review of Q2, and that, in itself, is an apt metaphor for Q3: the summer months were personally tumultuous and, as such, I struggled both with creativity and being visible in my business. Let’s get into my Q3 2020 review, shall we?
The Fetishisation Of Implementation
“It’s all meaningless unless you’re taking action”. That might not be the exact quote, but I have certainly said words to that effect numerous times over the years. To some extent, I do still believe it: if you’re just thinking about doing something, you’re not really doing it. In order to have a business, a new product, a change of direction you need to take action rather than plan it for six years. I do, however, think that it’s possible to put too much emphasis on action and implementation – and that I have definitely been doing so. There is a true difference between the fetishisation of implementation and actually doing something.
Q2 2020 Review
Welcome to this review of Q2, or as it will henceforth doubtless be known: the lockdown quarter. It has been three months where life and society have turned on their heads, and, as if to illustrate this perfectly, I write this on a storm-ravaged July day as I recall an April heatwave. In the last three months, the ground has shifted, forever, beneath our feet. We are here at the beginning of the most significant civil rights movement in history; we see the wilful negligence of governments to protect their people. We understand, more than we did at the end of Q1, that there is no normal to get back to.
The Final, Scary Leap: Saying It Out Loud
There is nothing left to say, but to say it out loud. As I hinted at in last week’s post, this is the point where you make the change. You’ve given yourself permission, you’ve contemplated the bigger problem, you’ve planned, you’ve crafted – but the change doesn’t happen until you give it life. It is all theoretical until you nudge your baby bird out of the nest and let it fly. You have the final, scary leap.
Being Brave and Actually Making a Change
It is one thing to know a change needs to be made, and another to be brave and actually start making the change. The first is an uneasy place to live, but there is a kind of comfort in it. Strangely, the knowing is enough and becomes an excuse – “I know it’s not right, but I’m not ready/too busy/not the right time to do anything about it.” Because taking action and making the change is a fearful place; it risks failure, risks you not knowing what you’re doing, and risks discomfort. Far easier to sit in the knowledge of “something’s not right” than to head out on the quest to rectify it.
The One Question That Is Changing My Business
Who’d have thought it would only take one simple question to unlock the next phase in my business? It’s one of those “yeah yeah, it’s that easy, ok then” kind of claims. I have never been a fan of the “one thing” narrative because it puts us on a quest to find the one thing forsaking all others, instead of experimenting and finding magic in a mixture of ingredients. Also, it’s just too simplistic. There’s never one thing, but a finely balanced system of lots of little things. But really, this one question started the engine that would elevate my ideas and business to the next level. It is the one question that is changing my business.
What You Need To Know When You Feel Stuck
I created a business that gave everyone what they wanted, except for me. This wasn’t an a-ha moment of a realisation, a time I can pinpoint and say, “that’s when I knew.” It was an ongoing unpeeling of beliefs and actions until I came to terms, with hindsight, that that was the truth of it. I had set my business up for martyrdom. So it is quite a change that I now find myself teaching people to start with what they want, and more so that I am tweaking and transitioning every part of my business so that it works for me first.
In This House We Do Not Glorify Busy
Ever hear something come out of your mouth and have no idea where it came from? A moment where you float outside of yourself for just a moment, those words hanging in the air and think “well…that’s new”. Let me set the scene – it’s sunny, and I am lying on our front wall, propped up by bolster cushions and reading a book. My boyfriend walks out of the house and asks, “busy?” – in that semi-taunting, semi-shaming way that people do. My eyes flick up to him, and I say, “in this house, we do not glorify busy.”
How To Stop Being A Perfectionist
“Oh yes, I’m a perfectionist” – that’s always been my default position. At school, if my exercise book had an unruly dot or ink flick, I would carefully eek the page out from the staples and start again clean. There was a time in primary school where we thought I might need extra time in exams because I was so slow doing my work, but actually, I was attempting to complete each task to microscopic levels of perfection. As an adult, this morphed into an inability to take criticism and flat refusals to try anything new – as both would show the world that I was less than perfect.
Q1 2020 Quarterly Review
It was always my plan that this year I would share my quarterly reviews on the blog, although I hadn’t expected to be publishing the first one in the midst of a global pandemic. While it is not my intention to spend this whole post discussing tragedy, as a planet Q1 has been destructive and traumatic: Australia on fire, devastating storms and floods and now a global lockdown and millions of lives irreparably changed by a virus.
How to know what you want
I just want to know what I want. It sounds counterintuitive doesn’t it, like that should be the very least that you know. It’s fine that you might not know how to get it yet or exactly when, but you should at least know what it is you want. But I think sometimes this can be the hardest thing to know.
Why it’s so important to reflect before taking action
We live in a work culture where perpetual motion is valued highest. A constant state of activity and optimisation is more or less the only respected way to be working in your business. When things aren’t going as we’d hoped or we get disappointment, we tell ourselves we’re not doing enough; when things go really well and we get a big success then we say it’s no time no rest on our haunches, we need to make the most of this, do more of what’s working. Our view of business is action-centric, and if you’re not doing something you’re automatically failing.
Getting Into A Focused Mindset For A Productive Day
Sometimes we just need to have a really productive day. Maybe there’s a looming deadline, maybe you’ve got behind on your to-do list for the week or maybe you’ve got a precious free Saturday to work on your business. Whatever the reason, there’s an amount of pressure on that day – it weighs heavy with your expectations and you’re worried that you won’t be able to ‘make the most of it’.