Weekends

Blessings, Darlings!

Weekends are when we get to work ON our business, not FOR or IN our business, focusing on the internet marketing aspect.  We catch up on marketing and sales webinars and reading, we work on the website, we work on e-mail follow-up sequences, etc.

We are an affiliate of Infusionsoft (links and more promo of that coming soon!  Whoo hoo!).  For now, just a link to the book by one of the founders, which is a good (and cheap) buy:  Conquer The Chaos: How to Grow a Successful Small Business Without Going Crazy.  We are also members of (but not affiliates of) Stompernet.

Someday I'll do a blog full of all my favorite people/resources here.  But not today.

Back to sharpening my saw!

Frondly, Fern

LW Monday - Multitasking FAILs

Blessings, Darlings!

Way back when I started blogging the Life Wellness series I mentioned that you should approach these wellness suggestions one at a time, spending about 3 weeks integrating that ONE thing into your life. Given that most of us - myself included - started this process needing improvement in so many wellness areas, why didn't I have everyone jump in with everything at once?

First, because it would have been one terribly long blog post, covering EVERYTHING in wellness. You'd still be reading it. Heck, I'd still be writing it, so I guess you wouldn't have read ANY of it!

Second, and the topic of this blog post, is that people have trouble when they try to focus on too much. Yes, we can juggle two, maybe three, things at once. We can handle them better if they are split between long term and short term projects. But put too much in the pile and the pile come tumbling down.

And EVERYTHING, no matter what the priority, gets delayed. Let me show you ....

Let's say that you have 4 projects going, and you're trying to multitask and do them all at once. Let's FURTHER say, for simplicity, that there is no down-time in switching between the tasks. You will INSTANTLY be able to go from one to the other, no time lost putting away one set of files and getting another out, or cleaning and putting away the gardening tools and changing clothes to exercise, or having to try to remember where you were on the project you're changing to. And isn't that last one one HECK of an assumption? There's one FAIL right there!

So, again, 4 projects. Say it will take 3 days per project. Let's map that out as multitasked, putting even amounts of time (in days) per project 'so you get at least a little done on each'.

Project 1 = 1
Project 2 = 2
Project 3 = 3
Project 4 = 4

Dang, I'm creative, aren't I?

Four projects multitasked in days:

1 2 3 4 1 2 3 4 1 2 3 4

Twelve days. And you don't even finish the FIRST project until day 9.

Instead, do one of them at a time, and getting things DONE looks like this:

1 1 1 2 2 2 3 3 3 4 4 4

Twelve days, still. But Project 1 is done on day 3 instead of day 9. Project 2 is done day 6 instead of day 10. Project 3 is done by day 9 instead of day 11. Project 4 is still done by day 12, no change there.

But look at the great changes in dates done on those first three project JUST by not trying to do them all at once!

Hmmmm.

Giving credit where credit is due: I was taught about this by Dr. Lisa Lang's webinars on Stompernet.


Frondly, Fern

Growing Consultants

Yesterday's Washington Post had several articles on Defense Secretary Robert Gates' new focus in defense spending. The article above the fold http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/04/06/AR2009040601784.html explained that Gates is moving away from high-tech spending to a focus on lower tech weaponry. The article below the fold points out the impact it will have on jobs in our area: Contracting Boom Could Fizzle Out http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/04/06/AR2009040604049.html. We are in the DC area, in case anyone didn't know that - the Washington Post IS my local paper.

We own/operate a small engineering consulting company. We don't do govt contracting ourselves, but we get a sense of what's going on because we are active in the local IEEE (that's the Institute for Electrical and Electronic and all other Engineers) Consultants Network. When contractors "contract" (uh, shrink) that means engineers move from being employees to becoming unemployed or becoming consultants. Or both, because let's face it, saying that someone is "really good at marketing, for an engineer" is damning them with really faint praise.

Even before this military spending shift, the IEEE National Capital Area Consultants Network had been getting a boost in attendence because of the economic downturn. The Consultants Network started running a series on how to get started, called the Art of Consulting. In fact, the first session saw a record setting 60 people register for it.

Many, maybe most of those new folks, don't have websites. What websites they do have - hell, even the website for the consultants network itself! - tend to be just awful. The second page of the CN's website still contains that sample Latin "lipsum orem" text, for goodness sake.

All of these new Engineering/Programming/etc consultants need help. They have been thinking like engineers all their lives, and engineers are not known for their social skills, their communication skills, or their marketing skills. They have been employees all of their working lives, so they think like employees and not like owners/business folks. They 'get' Linkedin, sort of, but they don't get Facebook, professional blogs, or Twitter. They understand bullet points, but they don't have a clue about CSS, SEO, or Joomla!, or pleasing/professional looking graphics on a web page.

These newly and soon-to-be minted consultants need the help of the Consulting Network, its experienced consulting members, the greater IEEE (which has SOME articles on consulting on its web site ... with URLs over 200 characters long - I swear I heard Twitter laugh at them), and local resources such as Joomla! or Drupal web professionals, marketing professionals, basic business professionals. It would be great if they could join more expensive marketing education and support services such as Stompernet (we are getting incredible help from Stompernet ourselves).

So, if you are in ANY of the aboved named groups - how about attending the next Art of Consulting meeting? Tuesday, April 21, 2009, in Northern VA. Detailed information is at http://ewh.ieee.org/r2/capitalarea/eSCANNER/calendar.html#CONSULT.

I might even see you there - I've threatened to film the speaker!