I’ve been away from my blog for a while. Make that a long while – a four month hiatus.
While common wisdom holds that once a blog is launched it needs to be maintained judiciously and regularly, unfortunately that has not been the case. The good news is that it was done by design.
In planning for juggling several major events all taking place within a 90 day period – presenting at the IABC World Conference in San Diego, being fortunate to be working on several challenging and meaningful client projects, moving both my home and the Ingenium office while also creating a whole new Results Map program and website, something had to give. And I chose the blog.
I share this not because I’m pleased about it or because I think it’s a good idea – but because I know that many of you also face the same challenge of juggling a seemingly impossible workload while also feeling disappointed or guilty that you can’t get everything done.
The lesson for me along this imperfect path is this – better to make a conscious, deliberate decision about what stays on the task list and what has to be let go. So often, when life takes over we end up in some kind of trance of busy-ness, hopping from one burning priority to another without ever taking a step back to assess, analyze and focus.
Strategic planning is ultimately very much about focus, and part of zooming in on what’s important is also having the clarity – and the guts to identify what’s optional, and what can wait. The irony is that in my strategic communications planning work with clients, these are exactly the tough questions I ask, and encourage my clients to make a gutsy move by sometimes choosing to say “no”.
Of course, there can be other options too – delegating, de-scoping or postponing but again the fundamental issue remains the same. It’s about being deliberate in making a decision about prioritizing rather than randomly waiting for something to fall between the cracks without any conscious thinking about what may be free falling off the To Do List.
It felt like an opportune time to share this lesson I’ve learned as this month I mark my ten year anniversary of being an entrepreneur. Entrepreneurship has been one of the greatest schools of life lessons for me and I am profoundly grateful to all the supporters and contributors to this adventure.
To read about the story of my “accidental entrepreneurship” and what it taught me, click here.