Hello, most excellent readers!
Ask Me Anything week continues, with a question from Amy:
I've got Amy's age-old question for you: How do you expand and grow when you're too busy hustling Closest to Cash to make rent?
[When Amy says “Closest to Cash”, she's referring to a concept we talked about in Emergency Turnaround Clinic, which I cannot even locate, let alone try and sell you.]
My answer is VERY simple. It is not, regrettably, very easy.
1. Make a list of what you would do to expand and grow if you were not hustling all the time. This list can suck, but it has to be a list. “Spend at least an hour a day in Facebook Groups” is a list item. “Get out more” is not.
2. Ruthlessly find as many ways as you possibly can to free up a couple of minutes. You know when you go to the bathroom in the middle of the workday, and when you're done, you spend a couple minutes sniffing your body scrubs? And then you pull up Aveda on your phone? And then you check the reviews for the Clove Hair Conditioner?
Yeah, don't do that.
As there is no piggy bank for time, this is more of a mental exercise than a physical one. (Unlike a quarter you find under the couch, there's no jar where you can put those six minutes you found.)
3. Put all those minutes together in a row. Like, today, for example. When would you normally clock out and listen to podcasts and eat cottage cheese out of the tub in your underwear for the rest of the night? 8?
Well, take all those little minutes you found and put them all together and pretend you had an appointment to get to at 7. Get your work done by 7. Hey, look! You've got a whole hour between work and This American Life!
4. Use your extra minutes wisely. If you spend an hour a day on growth, and you eliminate weekends and public holidays, in a year you will have devoted 261 hours to Expansion Stuff. If you used your 261 hours Thinking Very Hard About How Difficult It All Is And Perhaps Attending That Webinar Thing From That Guy, you will find yourself with not much to show at the end of the year. If you used your 261 hours doing Very Conscious Shit, you'll be farther ahead than I've ever seen you.
I hope this helps, Amy!
xx
ND
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Naomi founded IttyBiz in 2006. You can find her IttyBiz business products in the Karma Store.
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