In March 2020 a huge chunk of my business and revenue simply ceased to be!
The conference-speaker, events and workshops market instantly stalled. My diary for the months ahead emptied, prospects vaporised, in-progress ideas and conversations ended. Oh dear. If I knew where it was, should I hit a panic button?
Coaching clients seemed to pause for a few weeks, as they got to terms with what lockdown meant to them and their challenges. Soon after, they relatively smoothly shifted to telephone or webinar dialogues and we began again. My business had dramatically changed shape, almost overnight and with it the income numbers too.
Maybe, in some ways, yours changed too?
The nature and volume of conversations probably shifted; the support and services your clients now needed were not yet clear; cavernous gaps in your schedule; prospecting and (pre-pandemic) business sources were drying up.
As I continued to be the best coach I could for my clients, a few glimmers of alternate service possibilities popped-up. A webinar-learning series pitch here, a team-motivation webinar there. And in the widened gaps I became introspective and began exploring, fundamentally, on what am I actually here to do, what do I offer the ‘new normal’ world, what new options could I investigate?
In truth, I loved lockdown! The early summer weather was wonderful, I enjoyed the relaxed nature of my new days, now devoid of rushing and other people’s urgencies, no crack-of-dawn packed trains into London.
I filled the days with decorating my end-of-the-garden home-office, purchased a cool Logitech Brio webcam; a green-screen (for sharper, more professional looking virtual backgrounds) and learnt the nuances of webinar-impact; I redesigned my days ‘on-purpose’. And it was that new daily practice that changed everything.
Many years ago I learnt and went on to teach a concept I referred to as a ‘Daily Action Pack’.
Everyday stuff gets done, and more often than not, it is just that… stuff!
I’ve worked with many clients over the years who loved their ‘to-do lists’ and had many ways in which they used them to keep focus and stay productive. But what I noticed was that the truly important things, the growth and aspired-future items got consumed within the stuff, and may or may not have got ticked off during the day, as distractions and meetings (and back-to-back webinars) filled the day. Perhaps only a few important actions get done each week.
Note: what you choose as important tends to be non-urgent and loses in the battle to vie for your attention. This is a chapter in “The ‘Keep It Simple’ Book” called Urgentia.
Until you make the important important, it does not compete with the flurry of everyday to-dos, masked as ‘urgent’. The simple principle of the Daily Action Pack is to bring the important back to front-and-centre. To create a section at the top of your task list for the 3 to 5 items that you WILL complete every day, without fail. You decide what is important, you decide, irrespective of the number of other tasks that get done.
Designing your Daily Action Pack of 5 important daily actions and working it means that you take 25 important steps a week, 100 per month, 1,200 per year (you can do the math!). As such progress and new results become inevitable.
This summer I noticed I was filling my days but felt a nagging sense that I wasn’t really changing my future. Rather just keeping business going until…
Time to take my own medicine, I rebuilt my Daily Action Pack.
I considered the aspects of my life that helped me in the past, the results I deeply want to nurture, the growth I was determined to have. And having worked it through I realised I wasn’t doing any of them with any regularity at the moment, so how could I expect anything to change? As Albert Einstein is quoted as saying “nothing changes, until something moves”. I needed to move!
I chose:
1 x Blog or simple post from one of my books
1 x Insightful or inspirational film (e.g. Eckhart Tolle’s Mini Awaken series was awesome!)
1 x Meditation (I already had the Calm and Chopra apps on my phone, waiting to be clicked upon!)
1 x Renew a connection (with someone I hadn’t spoken to for a while)
1 x Positive financial step
The secret to a successful D-A-P is to keep it simple, easily doable, clear and specific, yet still with the latitude for me to reach further. You might want to add an amount of time or increase the volume.
Within a couple of weeks of staying true to my D-A-P things started happening! A few books were purchased; My creative sub-conscious was sparking again; I felt more peaceful and accepting of circumstances; Conversations with contacts spawned further new connections and ideas for business; my personal finances were in slightly better shape.
And most significantly, triggered by the D-A-P actions, I explored new ways of extending my work online and began the journey of digitalising my brand and how I show up in the world, it has triggered a chain of activity and enjoyment and renewed belief, which you could do too!
So, thank you Einstein… I moved, things are happening!