Do you ever let yourself be a total slacker? I know a few people who never do this. They are going all the time, every minute of every day scheduled and carefully accounted for. I admire those folks, sort of. They appear to be productive.
They do not appear to be creative, though, and creativity is essential to me – it is the first word I use when describing myself. One of the reasons I love running my own business and working from home is that I can build in that time for slacking – because, of course, it’s not really slacking. It’s time to let my brain wander and do it’s best work. Sometimes, you do need to give yourself a break as your mind can become overwhelmed quite quickly. However, it’s important to monitor these breaks to make sure they aren’t becoming too regular. Running a business can be difficult, but you still need to put the work in. When trying to work from home, it’s also important to make sure that your internet connection is good enough to be able to get things done. Recently, one of my friends had to change her internet provider for a satellite internet provider instead. Satellite internet is known for being quite fast, so she decided to move over to that internet to benefit her business. Maybe I should do that too, especially now that this business is my main source of income.
My current internet seems fine though, however, if it ever becomes troublesome, I wouldn’t hesitate to change providers. Anyway, sometimes I worry about being slack a little too often or that I am only avoiding real work when I am sitting around with what feels like a mushy brain. But, if I relax and stop worrying, I always get back to work with a vengeance – eventually. Ideas take time to form and coalesce into something worth doing, but once they do it’s hard to ignore them.
If you don’t make time to be flexible in your business and you don’t let new ideas take hold and grow, how will you adapt? Things are always evolving and changing and your business should be as well.
I’ve heard salespeople say that in order to make a sale, you must relieve a prospect’s pain. The painful spots change with time, the emergence of new technologies, growth and countless other circumstances. You need a certain amount of creativity to figure out how you fit into an ever-changing picture, and in order to help your creativity blossom, you must have time when you are not going and doing.