One of the best things about designing websites in Nottingham, is meeting the wide range of businesses that establish themsleves in our fair city. It still amazes me the diversity of businesses I see. Many of them are standard businesses I know well and some are very unusual.
No matter how different each business is, there are some common aspects of business life which are common to almost, if not all businesses. One of these aspects is motivation.
If, like me, you decided to break out of the rat-race and start your own business, you will soon have discovered that as we are human, we go through natural highs and lows. At the beginning, everything is exciting and new and we seem to have limitless energy to accomplish any task. Then, with the possible exception of the super-humans amongst us, we will hit a low patch when it all seems so difficult and overwhelming.
This is natural and whiilst you cannot fight human nature, there are somethings you can do that help overcome the natural human cycle of business.
There are some jobs you must do every day, every week or every month. Write down all these tasks and keep to your schedule. You might be tempted to go with the flow now that you do not have a boss and enjoy your new found freedom, but discipline with mundane regular tasks will help focus you and leave you to get on with the other more creative aspects of your Nottingham business.
Well this just looks like I am contradicting myself. However, this is a nice benefit of following routines and being organised. It frees you up for the rest of the day to do other things and changing the order in which you do them can help. It helps even more if you can do something new and/or learn something new every day. You do not need to spend long in doing this as all it does is break up your day nicely and every once in a while gives you some new inspiration for a new idea or a new way of doing things. Try and remember always to do something new every day as this is such a help.
It is quite easy to slip into the habit of working from early in the morning to late at night without taking breaks. However, taking a regular 5 minute break every 30 minutes and at least one hour's break at lunchtime will mean that you achieve much more by the end of the day than if you had not taken a break at all. It is counter-intuitive to do this, especially when overloaded with work. However, forcing yourself to do some work can work wonders.
Once being self-employed ot a business owner becomes routine, it can be easy to forget the excitment you felt on the day that you started. It helps to remind yourself of your life before, when you had a boss, and to bask in the glorious excitement that you are the master/mistress of your own destiny!