Definite Changes for 2020

Planning is Key

Hello everyone. I  had a bit of a late start this morning, because I discovered that every episode of NCIS was free on Prime video and I may have stayed up a bit late watching the first few. Got to love me a bit of Mark Harmon. 

Anyway the extra time in bed was worth it, I feel nice and relaxed today and given that I only work for 4 hours on a Saturday and Sunday, I can still finish at 2 and spend the rest of the day doing nice things. (Like watching more NCIS :D .)

Everyone needs a bit of extra sleep sometimes!

Today's blog post is focusing more on the actual actions that I am going to take to make Byzantine Crafts a successful business, rather than just the vague ideas and thoughts I have been doing.

I have been doing some training as I have mentioned before, with a lady called Stacey Storino. If you check out her YouTube channel you can see how awesome her teaching style is. Stacey amongst many other things is part of the Cupcake Training's team. She runs monthly courses which she calls Frostin' which teach many different aspects of running a business online, with particular emphasis on handmade product based businesses. In the batch of Frostin' she released in early December you also had the opportunity to buy what the cupcake team call Planathon 2020. This is very intense training about content marketing and is probably the most useful and valuable thing I bought all year.

Along side this I have also been reading Atomic Habits as I mentioned yesterday and the main thing that I am learning from both of these forms of training is that planning and scheduling are some of the best tools you can have at your disposal.

I have an app that is both on my internet browser and on my smart phone called Todoist and it is a fantastic, easy to use scheduling app. You can use it both as a planner and a diary, you can set up daily goals as well as long term projects and if you do not complete all of your daily tasks you can reschedule them for the next day. 

So the first thing and the second thing are to do with that mostly. The first thing is that I gave myself set work hours every day of the week. I do an 8 hour shift, Monday to Friday and a 4 hour shift Saturday and Sunday. During the week I get up and 5.30 and work from 6 am until 2 pm and on the weekends it is supposed to be 6 am until 10 am. I am allowing myself a bit of flexibility on the weekends though as you can see, (I blame NCIS) but that is only in terms of what time I start. I still need to do the four hours each day. The second thing is that I use Todoist to plan out all the things that I need to get done next in the business. Each day, I do what I can in the time allotted and what I do not manage to achieve is rescheduled for the next day. In the project section of Todoist, I have made a massive list of all the things I need to do in order to launch at the end of April, and the daily tasks will be spent working through that list.

I have to split my allotted time each day in half however, so that the first half is solely focused on the back end of the business. This is all the behind the scenes, technical things, like building the website, taking and editing pictures, seo (search engine optimisation), marketing, networking, that kind of thing. The second half of the working day is spent making mosaics. Sometimes I carry on longer with the second half as micro mosaicing is my passion after all and if I am on a good flow I like to finish. Micro mosaicing satisfies a basic, primitive urge for creative work in me, so I do need to include plenty of time to be creating these unique heirloom pieces.

Doesn't matter how you schedule as long as you do.

I think the main thing that I am having to do differently, working like this, is learning that 8 hours a day on a week day and 4 hours a day on the weekend are enough. I have to learn to reschedule the back end stuff after the hours I have to do it in are over, so that I can mosaic and build my stock up, without beating myself over the head about all  the things I didn't get done.

Last year most of what I did was work and when I wasn't working I was worrying about work. I ended up burning out completely and still didn't get everything done that I wanted to.

I have to learn from this, because I was neglecting my health, not spending enough time with my family and around the home and I was definitely not relaxing enough.

I think the hardest person to forgive is ourselves for our failures, perceived or real and that some of the things that we see as being failures are actually some of our biggest strengths. I pride myself on always being there for everyone else, but sometimes that means I am not physically or emotionally available for the people closest to me or for the thing that really matter. I absolutely have to learn how to say no. 

The upside of all of this planning and structure though, is that for a large part of the day I have to say no. No I can't pop over to see you at 10 in the morning, I am at work then and just because I work from home, doesn't mean that my work is any less important than if I worked outside the home. 

I am finding that getting up so early in the morning is actually helping me physically too. I am usually asleep by about 9 at night (NCIS aside) and the early hours before everyone else wakes up and the daily clamour starts are so peaceful and amongst my most productive.

I have to limit the amount of time that I am on social media for personal and procrastination purposes too. Sure I can go on it after work (I home educate Byzantine Boy as well so not really until the evenings) but if I am on social media now during work hours it is just to market the things I am doing on there and for networking purposes. 

This sort of routine would have been impossible for me to even contemplate previously as I was always working and when I wasn't working I was just stressing. Now when it get to the time that work is finished, I know I have done a full day and achieved a huge amount and the rest of the day is mine without guilt. It seems to make the time outside of work more precious and I am finding myself doing so much more in my off time than I ever did before.

I had my last cigarette at 7pm on New Year's Eve as well and that is making a huge amount of difference to me as well. Particularly in the saving money department. The app that I use to help me with this, lets me know how much money I have saved by not smoking and at the end of each day, I transfer that money from my current account to my savings account.  I have transferred £16.00 already and we are only on the beginning of day 4. I expect it will be £20.00 by 6.30 tonight. It seems that I was spending about £45.00 a week on smoking and now I am seeing this money grow in my savings account. When I get a really bad craving, I can think of thing that I really want to buy, or do around the house and so on and work out how many days it will take to get me to be able to afford them. By the time I have done this the craving is gone, replaced by a sense of achievement and excitement. 

It doesn't take long for the pennies to turn into pounds.

I was also able to obtain a consolidation loan earlier this week that will allow me to pay of one of my credit cards straight away and this card had outrageous amounts of interest on it. I was paying £100 a week on this card and still not really whittling the card down because of the interest. I was paying about £125 a month on interest and the new loan is only going to be £128 total so I will be a lot better off. I can use the extra money I am saving to pay off other loans and lines of credit and get myself completely debt free by the end of the year. Also the new loan can be paid off earlier without penalty, in fact I will save annual interest if I pay it off sooner.

So with all the planning and scheduling, and getting my finances sorted out, 2020 is already looking to be a much better year so far than the last one was.

Are you making any definite changes this year and if so, how are you going about it? I would love to hear all about the positive things that are happening in your lives as well, so comment below and let me know what is working for you.

If you are interest in the training of Stacey Storino or any of the other trainers that are part of the cupcake trainings academy, pop along here to check things out - cupcaketrainings.com

You can find Stacey's YouTube channel here - Stacey Storino

I hope that some of the thing I have talked about today resonate with you and that you are able to use the ideas I mention to help you have a more productive 2020.

Bright Blessings, Nici xxx

Ps. Stopping smoking has changed my sense of taste a lot already, I can taste and appreciate food and drink so much more than I did before which is another brilliant surprise!