Welcome to January 2021! Hopefully you had a restful Christmas and New Year period!
Below is a newsletter article we shared with our clients, I hope you find it useful and something to think about.
Here’s 3 things l learned from my Christmas-New Year break:
1. Make the most of changing circumstances
The end of 2020 in the Canberra region saw a change of where we could travel to. Just when we thought our Christmas travel plans were untouchable; ouch.
Annette, my wife, and I had to change our holiday plans at the last moment. I’m sure we were not the only ones!
I’ve always had the philosophy, “don’t mess with my holidays”.
It’s something I’ve always held great regard for and highly anticipate as it provides the opportunity for refreshment and mental recharge.
When we were advised that we couldn’t go to our holiday destination, we had to change our plans only days before we were due to arrive. Christmas seemed to be cancelled for us and we were pretty disappointed.
Fortunately, the people who are looking after our holiday stay were flexible enough to provide us the opportunity to cancel the first week and re-book the next week at a later date.
With restrictions still around for the second week, Annette went back to work and this left me an opportunity to tidy up a backlog of things.
I was able to do some creative thinking and get some jobs done! In a sense it was a holiday in a way that I didn’t really expect.
The changing circumstances became an opportunity to improve some things.
2. Be adaptable
I believe 2021 will be the year of adaptability.
You can pretty well guess this year is going to be the same as 2020. We have to adapt and also be accepting of doing things differently.
For our business, this means that we have to be on the lookout for those ‘left-field’ things that come into our court, and we have to respond quickly and adapt to the situation.
When speaking to many of you over the past year, this was the thing you noticed the most – adapting to the changing circumstances.
One of our clients mentioned that their commercial sales had dropped off, but on the other hand, the number of people who were doing home projects had gone through the roof!
After reflecting on the year, the questions I have put to myself are,
- What did we learn from the experience of 2020?
- What can we take away that was beneficial in developing our business and ourselves, and in particular how we served our customers?
- What things do we want to drop that are inconsequential to us moving forward?
Ask yourself the same questions – What do I want to take away from 2020 and put into 2021 that is going to help my customers and help my business?
Perhaps for 2021, one of your goals can focus on being adaptable.
When the left-field activity comes your way, you’re not surprised or hung up on the frustration or the disappointment, but are ready to adapt to the situation.
2020 has proven to us that we can!
In the past, businesses have used the unpredictability of life as an opportunity to improve something.
Take for example the people who use to head off to the gold fields to ‘make their millions’ only to find out they weren’t cut out for the digging, however, realised they could create a tool to improve the gold diggers lot and they did.
Subsequently, made their fortune supplying gold-digging equipment.
So let’s look forward to being adaptable this year. We can safely assume some curveballs are going to be thrown so let’s be ready and adapt!
3. Go hard and go fast
When the COVID19 outbreaks on the Northern Beaches of Sydney and Brisbane occurred, the underlying message was, ’go hard, go fast’.
This was the attitude the government had as a way of containing the virus from spreading.
If there’s one thing I learned over this Christmas period is to go hard and go fast. I had several projects hanging around that just needed that attitude to get them over the line.
Many projects don’t go anywhere because I go slow and give myself time or assure myself that it’ll get done when I have the time. Well, that was the time. Let’s face it, it was then or never.
What I mean by ‘go hard, go fast’, is getting as much done as quickly as possible and not burning energy or time on unnecessary things.
Cleaning up a desk or de-cluttering your storage spaces can be a bit like that.
We put so much mental effort into putting it off and the day never comes around because we just don’t make it happen. We need to put a maximum effort in to get as much done as possible and as quickly as possible.
I wonder if you have any of those jobs or tasks hanging around that you’ve put off because they’ll take too much time or it seems too hard?
I want to encourage you to get in there and just do it…NOW! Don’t think about it, just go hard and fast, and then take a deep breath of relief (or victory).
On a little side note, I am aware that sometimes the ‘go hard, go fast’ attitude can burn a lot of bridges along the way.
Not everyone is often on board with this and it can just be you heading down that path. So when you do have that approach, remember, to have everybody around you on side so you can be more effective, make it a team effort.
So there’s my three tips from what I’ve learnt over the Christmas period. I hope they give you something to think about as 2021 is in launch mode.
Looking forward to seeing and working with you in 2021.