107 - How I'm Simplifying My Work This Year
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Resources from this episode:
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Show Notes:
In a lot of ways my work has really been simplified for me—I'm going on eight months of no childcare other than the two days that my kids are at preschool and kindergarten. I have been forced to be really strategic and simplified with my time and my plans.
Today, I'm going to share ways that I took things off of my plate, got organized and really simplified my work and my goals this year, and moving forward.
For the full episode, hit play above or read through it below.
So I'm going to separate this podcast episode into a couple of categories.
First, my goals—how I have streamlined and simplified my work goals this year.
Second, my tools—the tools that I use as I work, I've really kind of pared down on those tools and chosen only the ones that I use all the time.
And lastly, my time—what I do with the limited amount of time that I have.
GOALS
So the first way I've simplified my work this year is through my goals. Now this is nothing new for me. I have been using this method and model for years, but I will say that I just have been doing less this year and it feels really good. I've just simply been making less work goals or things that I feel like are really attainable in my season of life.
So the model that I use is called the EOS model, the Entrepreneurial Operating System. It's from the book Traction by Gino Wickman. I did a whole episode about this book because I love it so much. You can go back and listen to Episode 026, which is my favorite business book of all time and learn about how Traction works. But what I want to focus on today is how to set goals within the Traction model.
They encourage you to lay out a one-year plan. What are your one year goals in your work, in your business? And then divide those up into quarterly rocks, which means quarterly goals. But it's basically a way to say, what are the most important things that we need to do to move my business forward this quarter? That's what you want to know to determine your quarterly rocks.
You're never supposed to set any less than three quarterly rocks or any more than seven. You're supposed to keep it tight. And then you just tackle issues during the regular meeting cadence, which I won't get into today. You can go back and listen to another episode, but basically I just wanted to share how helpful it is to have a yearly plan for your business, and then divide them up into quarterly rocks.
So this year for me is a very interesting year. I'm having a baby in the middle of the year, so the last half of the year I'm not going to be working. Actually, I'll be working very hard, keeping a newborn baby alive—I’ll be working way harder the last half of this year that I will be the first half of this year—but as far as my work goes and my quarterly rocks, I have quarter one and quarter two to basically do all of the work for this year. So any podcast episodes I want recorded, I'm going to do them all ahead of time. Any financial goals I need to meet, I need to do it the first half of this year, knowing I can come back quarter three, quarter four, if I want to and do a little bit of work, but I really want to focus it this year.
So my rocks first quarter of 2021 are to:
Create two new videos in my Legacy Photo System course, just to keep that current and relevant.
To record 20 podcast episodes for Work and Play.
To host and complete the Contentment Challenge.
To transition all of our emails to Flodesk.
And I think what's so great about these goals are, they're not all up to me. I share these goals with my teammate, Sammy Jo. So she's in charge of a couple of them, but there are a few of these that only I can do. And so having them clearly written down, helps me have a guide for where I'm spending my time in my work every time I show up to work.
And every quarter we put our quarterly rocks in Tasksboard, which I'll tell you about in a second when we talk about my favorite tools that I'm using this year, and it keeps us focused and streamlined. So that's really all I'm doing for goal setting this year with my work. I’ve got my annual goals and then every quarter we set quarterly goals.
As we're nearing the end of quarter one, we'll meet together and set our quarter two goals or rocks—call them goals or rocks, whatever you want—and then in a normal year, as we end quarter two, we would meet together and set new goals for quarter three. But I already know my goals for quarter three and quarter four, basically to have a baby and keep it alive.
So that's what this year looks like for me.
TOOLS
The second way I've simplified my work this year are the tools that I'm using. I've decided to simplify all of my paper tools and notebooks and things that I usually have and carry with me everywhere, which ends up being like four or five books and journals and things to really just using one planner. And that's it.
This year I'm actually trying a new planner called the Golden Coil planner. I don't know if you've ever heard of it, but it's a planner that you completely customized. A friend of mine showed it to me last year. And I was so amazed at the quality of it. I love the linen pages, the linen cover, I guess not linen pages, but really, really great quality pages. And then how you just choose to put the things in your planner that you want, you build it custom to yourself. And I loved how clean it was, how streamlined it was and how I really could build it to my needs and my wants. And so I've simplified it down to one planner and I do everything in this planner—my work stuff, my home stuff, anything that needs to get done, all of my appointments, they all go in this planner.
I'm also using for the first time TasksBoard, which is basically Google Tasks. And it's a really great app that is very simplified, and you can share the list with somebody you work with, which is what I do in my work, so that we can kind of follow along the same things. And for me, it's a place where I put those quarterly rocks so that I can constantly look back at them, and then I also will put different tasks that I need to accomplish in my work so that I know as soon as I sit down to work, I know the things that I need to focus on are the things that need my attention.
Also, we're big users of Google docs. We've been using Google docs for years for so many things. I'm using Google docs right now, as I record this podcast episode, it is such a great way to share documents and also just keep all of your ideas and projects in one place.
I’ve been using Dropbox for a while, you'll know I love Dropbox for my photo storage for my photo organization backups, but I use it for all of my personal documents and I use it for all of my work documents. I have a pretty organized folder system for all of my work categories, and I'm just now bringing up Dropbox so I can read through them and you can know kind of how I organize it. So the first one is EOS, which is where we keep our vision traction organizer and all of our rocks and team meeting information, anything having to do with EOS we put in there, then I have a content folder, PDFs folder, courses folder, collaborations folder, images—which is like all of my photos for my work, marketing plan, coaching calls, speaking, affiliates, learning, finances, book club, photography, and branding. And so these are different folders that I have organized for my work for my brand Work & Play and within each and every one of these folders, it's further organized and split apart into different categories.
So knowing that Dropbox is online is so great because I can really access it anywhere. I can share those folders with my teammates. It's just really a great way to have cloud storage organized really well for you.
Okay, and then the last thing, which is a great tool where it's brand new for me really loved it this year, but it's a big way I've simplified. My work is switching to Flodesk. Flodesk is now where all of my email subscribers come and get my emails. So I used to use Convertkit and I loved Convertkit— it's just a really powerful machine and way more expensive, and Flodesk is a lot simpler. It doesn't quite have as many features as Convertkit, but it fits my work in my brand perfectly because it simplified things and it's so much less expensive. And it's really, really pretty.
So I've really enjoyed switching to Flodesk.
And so, again, my tools this year are my planner—my Golden Coil planner, TasksBoard, Google Docs, Dropbox and Flodesk.
Those are the main things that I use to run my business, not counting emails, but I'll get to emails in a second.
Time
So the third way I have really simplified my work is just with my time. And like I said, this has been a forced organization. When you have not a lot of time to do your work, you have to get really organized with how you spend your time and be really intentional with it.
So the first thing that I do on the Mondays and Wednesdays, the days where all three of my kids are in school for about three hours. I take the first five to 10 minutes just to plan how I'm going to spend my time. I block it. Maybe hour one is for Email Ninja. Maybe our two is for drafting a podcast episode. And hour three is for recording a podcast. Whatever it is, it changes every week.
It changes every day that I have the work, but the most important thing is that I always take the first five to 10 minutes to plan how I'm going to spend my time.
And I'm always referring back to this quarterly rocks because I know those are the things I have decided on that will move my business forward this quarter.
It takes a lot of the thinking out of it, which is wonderful because I think, I mean, if you've listened to my episode on how to eliminate decision fatigue, there's just so many decisions. There's so many things that I could be doing in my work, but I think having those goals, having my tools in place and then having my time so limited—I just show up and I go to work. I take five to 10 minutes to organize the time that I have, and then I just go for it. And I try to get into that deep work zone, turn off all notifications and get as much done as possible.
The last thing I've really been trying to implement with my time is doing an Email Ninja hour once a week. That has been really helpful for me recently, just to stay on top of the most important emails. Sometimes that is in the afternoon when my kids are playing or napping, and sometimes that's during those times where my kids are being taken care of by maybe a random babysitter or they're all at school, whatever it is—I try to find or make one hour a week to do Email Ninja.
Now, when I was running Nancy Ray Photography, I did one hour a day and I had my Email Ninja time one hour a day. I'm just not getting as many emails as I used to because I'm not dealing with the client load that I had. So you'll have to tweak that and choose whatever works for you as far as how you do your emails, but having the dedicated focused email time has really been helpful.
So last thing I'm going to add is it takes time to get organized upfront. It takes time getting a system down that works for you, organizing your folders in Dropbox and in Google docs. All of that takes a lot of time upfront, but once you spend the time and do that, it pays off big because you can just show up and it's like a well-oiled machine.
So I think paying constant attention to the organization of your files and systems and tweaking it constantly is really a huge component of keeping your work simplified and productive, and maybe your next quarterly rocker goal needs to be organizing all of your folders in Dropbox or organizing all of your Google docs or practicing the Email Ninja habit and getting that down.
If you don't know what I'm talking about, I'll leave a link in the show notes, but that was just a couple episodes back where I talk about how to be an Email Ninja and really maximize your email inbox time.
Getting those systems in place is really a key to having a successful simplified work life. So sometimes it does take a lot of time to get it all set up in the front. I've taken plenty of time to get those things set up in the front end, but it pays off as you show up and keep working.
Okay, that's it for today. Now, instead of adding things to my Cornerstore on Amazon today, I'm just going to add links to all of these tools and apps in the show notes. So nothing's going to go to my affiliate store today because none of these things are located at Amazon anyway, even the planner, you can't order it on Amazon, it’s a custom planner. You have to order through their website. So just scroll up to the resources links to find those.
And don't forget, you can always connect with me on Instagram @nancyray.
Thanks so much for listening. I'm going to close with these words from Zig Ziglar, which I love—
Success means doing the best we can with what we have. Success is the doing, not the getting. Success is in the trying, not the triumph. Success is a personal standard, reaching for the highest that is in us, becoming all that we can be.
I hope today's episode reminded you that you get to make your work whatever you want it to be.
Thanks for listening.
