4 Ways to power your productivity and cultivate your unique, flexible solution!

Creating your own agenda, ignite that energy by discovering your individual flexible working environment and toolkit!

Life is one big juggling act, we all work in different ways, at different times, with ever changing mindsets and scenarios arising. How can we really harness our time, energy, skills and cultivate a more flexible approach to our working environments so that we can be our best selves, at least most of the time?

Whatever your set-up most of us have experienced times of low productivity, low clarity, distractions and guilt with our time management, struggling to get tasks completed or even started. We’ve probably all experienced guilt through not having enough quality time to spend with our friends and family.

Have you ever considered the ‘wheel of life’? This is a tool in the toolbox for personal development that has been around for over a thousand years. It’s a tool that can be used to assess how balanced your life is. It’s been proven that in order to be our happiest, most energetic and most productive our lives must include certain elements including energy, fun time, growth, relaxation.  But, the key factors here are ‘balance and energy’. Choosing the flexible work environment and set up that’s right for you can go a long way to balancing other areas of your life.

When we consider the volume we have to juggle, how a lot of work and personal day to day tasks are overlapped, how our situations can often change from minute to minute never mind day to day then it’s not surprising that by forcing ourselves in to one fixed place of work and a rigid routine doesn’t always work so well.

What about a more hybrid, flexible approach that moves with the ebbs and flows of life? Consider where you are right now and where you need to be going forward…cultivating a flexible attitude, agenda and environment can bring a lot of solutions and help you regain that sense of clarity and perspective.

Consider the following:

1. What time do you have each day to work with, when are your core hours that you have to play with and block out in your diary and what absolutely has to be completed in this time?

• Think about the actual task and what it requires from you, do you need a creative work space, maybe you need to move around during the task to keep the creativity flowing. Do you need to be around other people or do you prefer solitude?
• What infrastructure do you need, what facilities do these tasks require from you? A desk, will you be sitting for long periods so you’ll need to consider an ergonomic work station. Do you need good lighting for recording and reliable wifi? Do you need a space that offers a community of business people to connect with, bounce ideas off and look to grow a wider audience?
• Taking the above into account what working environment are you likely to be most productive in – home, office, coffee shop maybe a coworking space where there are various working environments and flexible spaces with good ergonomic setups, meeting rooms, solid wifi & infrastructure or even the outdoors if you can record on a phone or make a video.

Naturally, your overall situation will dictate how flexible you can be with regards to location, commuting, childcare responsibilities and this may affect your choices.

2. Are there parts of your days where you’re wasting time, could you be responding to emails & distractions whilst making a cup of tea or waiting to pick the kids up? These are times when you’re distracted anyway and so it’s a win win here and you’ll not then be eating into your core focus time. You can also use this time for self care, read a book, listen to a podcast, a quick 5 minute meditation?

3. Are there things that you’re really not good at and could delegate or outsource? I know this can be a challenge, especially if you’ve not had to delegate before but we can’t do it all ourselves, going it alone is exhausting and you’ll never be able to use your best value if you’re spread so thin.

Finding the right person / expert / knowledge that you trust is really key here and often if you try working from coworking or flex space for part of your week then you will soon build relationships and get referrals for the skills sets that you need help with in your business. Word of mouth is so much more reliable than just taking a chance.

4. Are you actually using your strengths and values to build your business and add value or are you wasting time doing stuff I’m expected to do because everyone else is doing it?

You’ll know where your spark is, what really drives you and you have to let that shine through. To do this you need to be in the right working environment and it doesn’t have to be the same one all the time.

In summary. We are all constantly in flow, changing all the time and our environment can change too. We’re not all lucky enough to be able to choose where our work is based but we do all have elements that we can flex to match our frame of mind, personality and make better use of our strengths, focus periods and distraction periods.

 So cultivating that less rigid approach to life and moving with the ebbs and flows can really bring a sense of perspective and allows you to harness the nuggets of time and energy in the most productive way!

As mentioned before, everyone works best in different ways, pick & choose bits of this that might work for you. Hope it helps!

If you would like any more help on creating your own agenda & choosing your unique flexible working environment please get in touch with Suzanne.

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