THE PRACTICE For one week, note after each task, call or client interaction whether it left you energized, neutral or drained. Then use what you learn to reshape your week. Two days can have exactly the same number of working hours and feel completely different. One...
THE PRACTICE Decide now which days you’ll work, which you won’t, and what your deadlines are for the holiday season. Then tell your clients in early November. For many small business owners, the end of the year arrives the same way every time. Clients...
THE PRACTICE After any difficult call or message, take five minutes to write down what happened, decide the next step, and physically reset before going back to work. A client calls unhappy about the project. Another sends a sharp email questioning your invoice. A...
THE PRACTICE Set a regular time to tell someone close to you how the business is actually doing, including the parts that aren’t going well. When people at home ask how the business is going, a lot of owners give the same answer: “Good! Busy.”...
THE PRACTICE Decide the maximum number of hours you want to work each week, track your actual hours for a month, and adjust your week when you go over. Ask a solo owner how many hours they work and you’ll usually get a confident number. Forty. Forty-five, maybe....
THE PRACTICE Arrange, in advance, for one trusted person in your field who could step in and handle urgent client work if you had to be away unexpectedly. In a company, when someone has a family emergency or needs surgery, their work gets handed to a colleague. It...
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