191 - My Top 8 Work Hacks
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Resources from this episode:
The Work & Play Weekly Checklist (Free Download!)
Show Notes:
Jumping in right off the bat with a few really fun announcements!
Number one, I have a new website as of today and a new brand, new colors new look. Shout out to Sammy Jo, I love you. Thank you for creating such a beautiful space. Head to nancyray.com to see it.
Number two, along with the website, I am launching a Mastermind group (!) for a group of women, only 12 women who are business owners in the Raleigh area. I'm so excited. You can go to my website to learn more and I'll talk a little bit more about it in the podcast today.
And third next month, starting next week, we're already almost in May—crazy—we start May is for Mamas! Every May I set aside my episodes and I dedicate them to the Mamas listening. And I have some exciting guests lined up, some great content for you, and I can't believe we're almost already in May.
Okay, let's jump in to today's episode. My top eight work hacks or tips or advice, or, I had the hardest time naming this episode, but these are just random things that I have pieced together after my 16 years of experience of being an entrepreneur.
Some of them I've created, some of them I have learned from books, some of them are systems, some of them are habits, but they're the things I keep coming back to again and again. Now, you might be surprised at some of them, but here's the deal: I know I struggled the most in my work and in my business when I have a lack of clarity and when I feel really overwhelmed with all that I have to do.
So this list of eight things are things that I've brainstormed based on my years of being an entrepreneur. They're the things that have worked when I've worked by myself and they've worked when I've had a team working with me. They helped me not only in my work but in my life and being more present with my family as well, and just being more fulfilled. They helped me stay inspired and passionate about my work and I'm so excited to share them with you today.
For the full episode, hit play above or read through below.
So I usually end the month with an episode about the book that I've read this month. And while I have loved this month's book, The Power of Writing It Down, I'm gonna save that for my patrons and it'll come out soon. And today I wanted a little bit more of a work focus just to share a little bit of my heart and some helpful tips and just share kind of an update on what's going on here.
So today I launched a new website, like I mentioned, and it's been something that we have been working on behind the scenes for a very long time, and it's come alive today. I'm so excited to share it with you. I feel like it's a little bit more in line with who I am right now and my heart and what I want to share with you.
And hopefully it'll be a little bit easier for you to search and find things that are helpful to you. And along with the website, I've announced that I'm gonna start this mastermind group, this group it, it's, I struggle with the word mastermind, if I'm honest, because it's not the typical business mastermind group.
Yes, the women who are gonna join it are going to be entrepreneurs, we're gonna be business minded women. You'll own a business if you join it because we're gonna be doing a deep dive into creating a healthy business, but the picture that I get in my head for this mastermind is so much more than just, I don't know, than growing your empire. That is not what we are after. We are not after growing your empire or you know, becoming the biggest and the best.
What I want this space to be is a place for women to gather together in person. Yes, I'm hosting it here in Raleigh in my home, just 12 of us. And I, the picture I get in my mind is us worshiping together, praying together, pouring into one another, asking each other the hard questions, wrestling the answers. You know, just the stuff of life that we need that I feel like we, we miss as moms, as entrepreneurs, as people who are busy. It's really hard to take the time to set aside and work on your business and not just in it all the time.
And I just wanna create a space for six months. It's gonna be once a month that we'll meet at my home for six months and we're just gonna press into the Lord and press into each other and hopefully come out of it at the end with healthier businesses, with stronger families, and with healthier hearts and just feeling so uplifted and encouraged by one another.
So I'm so excited. I don't know that I'm gonna be able to take everyone who's gonna apply for it, but I'm really excited to just have a very specific hand-picked group of people to be part of this group with me through the rest of this year.
Okay, let's jump into some fun stuff.
My eight tips or work hacks or I don't know, whatever you wanna say. My, there's so much more than that. My eight pieces of wisdom or practical. Okay, I'm getting really long-winded with this. They're, they're helpful work advice, tips. Yeah. Okay, here we go. Eight of them. Let's start.
Number 1: My poster board and Sharpie.
This little hack is something that I do whenever I need clarity. It costs $3 and it's a lot of fun. All you do is you get a poster board from the store and you get a big fat sharpie. And if you want, you can get a big fat sharpie and then get a little skinny sharpie and you just start writing. Usually I do this at the beginning of the year and I'll write, you know, the year in the middle of it and then I'll write different categories like the wheel of life or different categories in my life. I wanna focus on finances, marriage, family, health, spirituality, personal growth, fun, leisure work. And then I just, I start writing, I make a total mess, I cross things out. I get everything swimming around in my head onto this big huge poster board. I write down the scary thing, I write down whatever comes to my mind and afterward I have this big sheet of poster board that I can look at and process and I can sort of visually sort it out like, what are the things that just came out of my hand onto this paper that I wanna keep?
What are things that I wanna maybe save for another time in my life and what are the things I wanna scratch out? And after I do that, I can translate them into my calendar or my journal and I can just throw it away. This, you don't have to show this to anybody, you can do this privately if you want to. You can share it with people if you want to.
Just have fun with it. That's the main thing. This activity, it's just helpful, but it's fun and I hope that it helps you gain clarity. You don't have to just do it at the beginning of the year. You can do it halfway through the year if you want some clarity in what steps you should take in different areas of your life.
It's just a really good way to visualize and see and write out where you want to grow and where you want to go. Okay.
Number 2: Traction
My second resource to share with you is actually a book. I have a whole podcast episode about it. It's called Traction. And specifically the thing inside this book that I think is the biggest, most helpful tool in work is what's called a Vision-Traction Organizer.
It's a business plan on two sheets of paper. It's like a 5 year or 10 year business plan on two sheets of paper. It's amazing. Traction is written by Gino Wickman. It's my favorite business book. Like I said, I'll leave a link in the show notes for the podcast episode where I just outlined the entire book. But it's so helpful to have the Vision-Traction organizer in front of you because you know where you're headed in your business in the next 5-10 years.
And you have very specific goals in this Vision-Traction Organizer for where what you're doing this calendar year. And it's split up into, oh, I'm getting into the weeds about this. It's split up in, you look at your year in quarters, and so there's 90 day sections. Okay, moving on. It's amazing. I'll leave a link for that book. So helpful, but specifically implementing the VTO in your business.
Number 3: The email ninja
There's a lot of opinions out there about your email inbox, and I am of the opinion that it helps me feel like I'm not dropping the ball when I can get my email inbox down to zero. There are a lot of people who say, don't even try, like what is the point? That is such a waste of time. And I, I see their point if I'm honest, I do. I'm also gonna be honest and say my email inbox is nowhere close to zero right now. It's a little out of control. But here's the thing that I love about this email ninja exercise: It's just something that you do and it helps you gain progress very quickly in your inbox and feel caught up and answer the more pressing emails.
Okay, I'm just gonna describe how you do it. First, you take a post-it note and you write down email ninja at the top. Then you write down the time, let's say it's 3:00 PM and you write down how many emails you have in your inbox. Let's say it's 2000. Let's say it's 784, let's say it's 321. I don't know, you write down how many are in your email inbox. I write down the ones that are read and unread. I just write down all of them. And then you write down the time that you wanna finish. So let's say it's 3:00 PM 321 emails, and then underneath you write 4:00 PM you set a timer for one hour and then you write a blank little spot.
And in one hour you are going to focus and delete everything you possibly can. Send out quick email answers to everyone you possibly can in that hour and whittle your email, inbox down as quick as you can and you file every single e email that has been addressed or taken care of. You either delete it or you file it away. And after an hour, then you're gonna write down that new number of how low you got and you just would be so surprised at how low you can get. I, I hardly ever reach zero, but if I did this regularly, I could reach zero often. And I will say, whenever I do this, I feel so much better about, like I said, just not dropping the ball, making sure that I'm answering the important information.
It's really helpful to set aside time to really tackle your emails. And this is a way to do it, that it doesn't leave you feeling so overwhelmed. There's a start and finish time and then you just move on.
Number 4: Start your workday with the routine of three S'
I stole this from the book 2 Second Lean, and the three S's are sort, sweep and standardize. So you're gonna sort your space, your area, you're gonna kind of declutter some things, throw away some things, put them in their place, sort the things around you if it's a mess. Number two, sweep, like wipe down the surface, sweep the floor. Do something just to make it nice and clean and tidy, light a candle and then standardize. So you're gonna follow a certain action or list or routine to get you in your workflow to dec decrease decision fatigue. So whether that's to write for an hour, whether that's to knock out your email ninja first, what you know, whatever it is, it's something that you do every single time. You start working, you sweep, sort, standardize, and then you follow a routine for your day.
It helps so much with just getting going and making sure you know exactly what you're doing that day. And I'm gonna follow this one up with another routine…
Number 5: Wind down your day with a “shutdown complete” routine
And this is something I got from Cal Newport in the book Deep Work.
I think it was that book. I've read a couple of his books where he says that literally at the end of his day, I've talked about this before in the podcast, he'll close this computer. Well, okay, no backing up. At the end of the day, he will go through his emails one last time, make sure there's nothing urgent.
He'll write down his list of things to do the following day in his planner or his to-do list or whatever. And then he will close his computer and out loud he'll say, shut down complete. And by saying it out loud, it tells his brain that work is done for the day. I can go home, I can be with my family and be present.
And by checking over the emails and writing out that list, he'll know exactly where to pick up and start the next day in his work. Okay, let me just say the days that I do this, I love it. It's so dorky. It's really dorky, I'm just gonna say it really is. But it allows your brain to just leave work at work and then just to go be with family. It's wonderful. So even if yours isn't that cheesy, just choose some sort of habit where you can just finish up your work, just a little ritual, and then you can go be with your family.
Number 6: Use the time timer to help you accomplish things in your work
Now you've heard of Parkinson's law, which means that work is gonna expand to fill the time allotted for it or contract to fill the time allotted for it, depending on how much time you have. So yeah, it's like the principle of cramming for a test. If you only have an hour to study, it's like you get so zone in and focus because you procrastinated. You just study, study, study in that hour. Or if you, you know, have six hours to do this project, it's like, okay, well you'll do it little by little over the course of all six hours. The idea is that whatever time you've been given to complete something, you'll fill that time, whether it's an hour or six hours. So you just fill it, it will expand or contract. Okay, you probably already know what this is, so I'm just explaining it to you because I want to. But bottom line is, the Time Timer is a visual timer I use with my kids. Hello. It's the the best thing ever.
But also I use it for me and when I need to accomplish something like the email Ninja or prepping this podcast episode or you know, writing a blog post, whatever it is, I just will set the Time Timer and I will work as much as I can. I'll keep my eye on that timer and it really helps me complete things in shorter amounts of time, which is helpful.
One of my core values in my business is GETMO. It's a made up word by Craig Rochelle, thank you very much. I heard it from the Global Leadership Conference a few years ago, but it stands for Good Enough To Move On. And I need to hear that sometimes I need to tell myself, you know what? I'm gonna set a timer for an hour by the end of this hour. If it's good enough to move on, we're just gonna let it be that it's good enough to move on. So it's like a principle I live by because I, I'm busy, I don't have a ton of time to make everything in my work.
Perfect. So that's like a core value. If it's good enough to move on, then I move on. So I use the Time Timer to help me with that.
Number 7: When you're setting goals in your business, follow a 90 day goal setting cycle.
Or you can do it like there, I have another podcast episode about this, the 12 week year, 90 days, 12 weeks, whatever it is, it's like quarterly. You want to accomplish your goals in that kind of timeframe. I have tried monthly goals, I have tried yearly goals and, and I still kind of do both. But really what I found to be the most effective way to set goals is that 90 day cycle or that three month, 12 week cycle of really trying to accomplish goals in that amount of time.
It's enough time where you can accomplish some really big stuff, but it's not so much time that it feels like, oh, well I got the whole year to do this. It's like, no, it's 12 weeks. There's 12 weeks to do it. And so it really focuses you in on completing bigger projects and I love it.
So in the book Traction, which I've already mentioned, they call it your Quarterly Rocks, but obviously in the 12 week year, they say to view your entire year in a 12 week section.
Number 8: My final piece of advice for you today—set aside time to dream and write and plan for your work.
I heard this quote one time again at the Global Leadership Summit. Someone said, whose responsibility, I'm paraphrasing cuz I can't remember exactly, but they said, who's responsibility is it to make sure that the leader's passion bucket stays full? And the answer is, it's the leader's responsibility. So my question to you is, what does that look like for you? How do you keep your passion bucket full? How do you stay excited about your work? How do you stay invigorated about dreaming about what you can do, what you can create, what you can make, how you can serve your people? Because that's no one's job but yours. And that's an exciting thing.
I have a friend who every week she sets aside work hours. I, I think it's like either half a day or maybe a full day just to dream up things, to write about things to work on, ideas, fresh ideas that she has. And to me, that sounds so exciting and fulfilling to do something like that. So make sure you are planning in that time, that's just empty space that's open, that allows you to, I don't know, go to the woods and take a walk in the woods or like go on a hike or go to a beautiful space where you can look at the water or go for a walk in your neighborhood or just, I don't know, book an Airbnb for half a day. Did you know that? A lot of times you can contact Airbnb owners and just ask them for half a day. Like, I'm not gonna sleep in your bed or anything, I just want a space to get away. You can do that. I didn't know that. A friend told me.
I thought that was kind of cool. Just take some time. Make some time for yourself to make sure that your passion bucket stays full. And that's all I have for you and I hope it's encouraging to you today. There's some practical stuff in here. There's some creative fun stuff in here, like the poster board and Sharpie. There's some challenging stuff in here like setting your timer, doing the email ninja, just making sure that you're effective, the best timeframe and how to write your goals and actually accomplish what you want to is following that 90 day strategy. And then just making sure that you set aside time to dream and write and fill your passion bucket. I'm gonna leave links to a lot of the books that I've mentioned today and the resources I've shared, like Traction and Two Second Lean and The Advantage. He originally taught me about just the importance of organizational health and how that trumps everything else in business, and a couple other things. I'll just write them or make sure they're linked in the show notes. But I hope that you've enjoyed today.
And also, if you'd like to apply to be part of my mastermind group this year, head here for more details. Applications are going to close May 17th, and then we're gonna start mid-June and meet once a month all the way through November. Side note, we're gonna end the Mastermind with an overnight retreat!! It's included, and so I'm really excited for that piece of it because I'm hopefully gonna bring in someone to lead worship and speak and for us just to hang out together. I'm just, I'm really, I'm really excited. I'm excited. I'm already praying for the women who are going to apply and join and I can't wait to see what God does through that this year.
It was Pat Lencioni who said:
“The impact of organizational health goes far beyond the walls of a company extending to customers and vendors, even to spouses and children. It sends people to work in the morning with clarity, hope, and anticipation, and brings them home at night with a greater sense of accomplishment, contribution, and self-esteem. The impact of this is as important as.it is impossible to measure.”
