Francesco Nencini _ Workaholics #05, originally uploaded by Francesco Nencini, detto Nencio..

I haven’t worked long hours (over 50 hours)for quite a long time, since my investment banking and consultancy days in fact. Ok there are still days where I am burning the midnight oil but it’s my work so it doesn’t occur as such and it’s not on a regular basis
Anyway recently I got myself a job. Setting up my business was taking too long and I needed the money and a different challenge.

I’ve been working self employed as a coach for almost a year now and while I love it, one thing I realized is that I need more from my work… mental stimulation.

I have an analytical mind and like to solve problems, learn new things and create solutions. I have a degree in Electronic Engineering, I have a corporate finance background, and I’m interested in technology, science, business and learning new things. While I can and do my own research for my business, applying it in service of another company and getting paid for it is very satisfying.

So right now I’m getting the feel good factor of making a difference in my work as a consultant/coach/speaker and the intellectual satisfaction of putting my analytical mind to use…

Funnily enough as a coach you have to quell the problem solving side of yourself as you tend to try and figure out the solutions to people’s problems. As a coach you need to empower people to figure out their own problems.

Anyway I’m doing some consulting work involving operational modeling using Excel at the same time I’m still developing my business and I also have some corporate finance consulting work on the horizon. And I’m loving it. I love the sheer challenge of managing 2 jobs and a business. It pulls me to be way more efficient and effective.

The job is 9-6.30, the coaching project was 2 days a week (but I’ve noticed part-time work always seems to expand to fill your free time is almost as much as full time work), and my business I do on the weekends.

I’ve managed to organize my week so I do a few hours coaching a week and ½ a day on my business. I’m learning the power of delegation, planning and working in concentrated work bursts.
The great thing is I also have a great social life. I went out clubbing last weekend and usually have at least 2 social evenings and a week.

So I guess I am a workaholic I’m excited about having lots to do and accomplishing it all while still having a great social life.

My whole reason for my being in business is to have it all and teach people to have it all, so obviously I need to walk the walk
In all of this I’m a bit different from the average workaholic in that I realize it’s about getting the job done and that doesn’t mean I have to do it all.   I’m not working to avoid life I’m working to achieve more and enjoy life.

So here’s to the true alcoholic there are plenty of us around who are working, building businesses, running charities, multi careerists

So here are my tips for the true workaholic
1. Realize you’re never going to get it all done, focus on the priorities and the big wins

2. There will be breakdowns and setbacks, anticipate them, learn from them and make sure they don’t happen again.

3. Give up frustration. There is no time to get angry or frustrated with setbacks. When they occur, deal with them quickly and as completely as you can. Then move on to something else

4. Keep a to-do list of quick wins that you can do whenever you have a few minutes.

5. Manage your energy. Energy management is vital when you have more to do. You will put in more hours so you need to be at peak performance. The consequence of not managing your energy is stress, exhaustion and burn out.

6. Use your waiting time.  Whenever you find yourself waiting practice abdominal breathing and energy management techniques. I have some great energy techniques in the Zone Life System.

7. Delegate. Delegate. Delegate. We all know to delegate but sometimes you need to give away work. This means giving away the opportunity to someone else. This may be money or recognition but people are willing to take things on because they get something from it. Let them have it. Think win/win
8. Manage eustress – Ok you are having so much fun doing what you are doing you just can’t contain yourself.  Eustress (positive stress) can be a great thing, it is fun to be excited but too much eustress leads to burnout and exhaustion. I’m guilty of having bouts of hyper excitement. I’ve trained myself to check in to my body and calm down my heart rate and pulse when I notice that I am in eustress

9. Know when to quit- if you are pushing and not getting results take a break, call it a day and come back to it. Or you can delegate it or ask for advice.

10. Work to your strengths. Again delegate the things you are weak in and work to where your strengths or interests lie.

11. Manage your emotional stress. Getting frustrated about what you can’t do or change is energy depleting.  We all have to deal with work colleagues, impossible work structures/environments but you’ll be happier in life and more effective when you accept the things that you can’t change.Practice emotional freeing techniques. I’ll be sharing some of these in the future

12. Get your time managment/productivity systems in order. Set up your productivity systems and keep refining them so they support you.

13. Practice focusing on one thing at a time. Set up the morning so you focus on one thing and get a good chunk of solid work under your belt before you do anything else.  Then have a break where you can relax or do other things that you may have missed out on e.g. emails, phone calls etc..  Then resume focusing on one thing. You’ll find you’ll get way more done and feel a lot more relaxed.

14. Schedule time windows to manage your various projects and check email. Check email relating to various projects once or twice a day. My windows are around 11.30 and 3pm for 15-30 minutes but sometimes I go to 60 minutes. In your time window do the things that will make the most difference to your project/Endeavour. Don’t go over your allocated time. You are training yourself to be more efficient.

15. Focus on completing loops – David Allen in his book “Getting Things Done” talks about keeping loops completed so they are out of your psyche.  Open loops keep a background attention unit and create a feeling of not quite feeling settled.  The more you close open work loops the more at ease you will feel.  This is one of those things where you have to do it to know what i’m talking about.  If you live in a world of open loops you won’t know the power of closing loops until you start doing it.

Day 28: Blackberry Jam, originally uploaded by JordyR.

I’ve just discovered social oomph. An application that lets you super manage your twitter account and schedule to send out tweets.

Recommended to me by Social Media consultant, I struggled to find an appropriate use for it until he explained to me that it would allow me to send out updates without having to be at my computer.

“Hmmm ok, useful”, I thought but not essential. But it got me thinking…

A friend of mine works in a consulting firm where the corporate culture is that those who want to appear to be dedicated hard workers, have a habit of sending out work related emails late at night. She often gets woken up by the sound of her blackberry pinging at 11:30pm.

Ok I have been guilty of sending out late night work emails when I worked as an investment banker, but that’s because I was really working at 1am in the morning, and thought if I’m here I might as well let people know about it.

I have no doubt that these guys are getting on their computer or blackberries at 11:30pm to spend 5 mins sending out their emails that they have been sitting on since they got home from work at 8pm.

So this leads to my great idea for a new product. An even better application than SocialOomph would be Email Oomph.

You could set it up to send emails at late hours while you are in your bed or down the pub and still give the impression that you are doing work.

Even better you could schedule days worth of useful and timely emails first thing in the morning and last thing at night. People would be amazed at your dedication to the job.

Want to take a secret extended lunch break or pop out to the gym, set it up to send progress updates on that report that’s due Friday

I would love for someone to create this… Oh found it, Email scheduler for Outlook. Now all we need is one for the blackberry.