Wow, am I behind on my Evo Lessons. As you may recall, I’ve gone back and reflected on my Lessons Learned from my First and Second Evo Planners (which usually is about three months worth of lessons) hoping that if I picked up something along the way that you might learn from it, too. Well, my third evo planner was actually in the Fall. I’ve actually just started my fifth planner!
But even with sheltering in place, I’m working just as much as before. And these learnings are still influencing my current activities and acting as my North Star for growing my business.
Without further ado, my lessons!
- Try to plan time for “blitzes” where I have a lot of little things I can try to knock out with an hour sprint, when I’m feeling extra productive.
- TV watching for more than three hours is too much for this body to not move. Only when I’m sleeping should I stay still for that long.
- Everything I do for myself now in the present is a gift to my future self… do I ever want a sucky gift?
- For the parties and socials we host, we need to pick the dates that fit best with our schedules and energy levels. If someone (or even a lot of people) can’t make it, it allows for a more intimate evening with friends, which is always truly special, anyway.
- Writer’s Update: With Shelter in Place, we’re doing a lot of Virtual Happy Hours and for the ones that I host with my SWET group, this still stands.
- NORTH STAR ALERT!: Nonprofits need more help with survey work. Customized surveys are too expensive and no one has anything available that is affordable, effective, and off-the-shelf. Data Wonderment to the rescue!
- Once a month, take a mini-vacation from DW to clear my head and just think about things.
- Only one event should happen on a work-from-home day. If another comes up, get rid of the FOMO and cancel/reschedule one! It will help aid in my sanity!
- Writer’s Update: With every day being a Work From Home day, and not many events happening, this hasn’t been much of a problem. But as more organizations I’m a part of get on the “virtual” bandwagon, there are more enticing “lunch meetings” and “virtual happy hours.” I still need to be selective knowing that at least the first one for every organization is going to be more about how we all are doing than how we can all continue to help each other (at least the majority is weighted towards the sanity check). This can get rather overwhelming.
- Carpooling to the main gig with John is actually a nice experience (we both thought we’d annoy each other).
- Writer’s Update: Now that we sit back to back together for most of the day, we’re still listening to music and podcasts together. But not having a commute doesn’t suck!
- Work productivity schedule (lady friends will understand this):
- Spring 50%
- Summer 75%
- Fall 50%
- Winter 25%
- I really need to get myself into permanent Writing Days and sticking to it. They are lovely, productive, creative, and necessary.
- Writer’s Update: That’s how I got to this blog post! 🙂
- In order to focus on some super important things, I will need to let go of some important things and know that they’ll be taken care of by others just as well.
- Visualize each day that has many moving parts to figure out how it should really go. Of course, try not to pack in a day, too!
- Try to plan moments after meetings that will help teams get to know each other better. They are very worthwhile in building rapport and trust.
- Writer’s Update: This is now more important than ever for work teams. Think about how to over-communicate and not just talk about work in order to continue to tap into this.
- Increase my vitamins C and D intake any time I’m going to a public space. There is no reason to catch the Orlando cold again!
- Writer’s Update; C & D have just doubled since I caught the flu in January. And I still managed to get a cold in March, but it wasn’t bad.
- There are always five minutes available for meditation. ALWAYS.
- Writer’s Update: With some encouragement from some executive coaches, this has moved up to 10 minutes a day. And on Patti Does Nothing Nights (well, now Patti & John Do Nothing Nights) we also meditate for at least an additional 20 minutes.
Patti is still learning 