Phew, we made it, went through 2018 with all its highs and lows to enter a new year with all the opportunities it brings. Surely, “doing better this 2019” is among your New Year Resolutions. Continuing your personal growth, cultivating the ties you have with family and loved ones, and helping your business or startup improve. Thankfully, these are all attainable – you just have to work at them. And the trick is working smarter, not working harder. So, here are a few useful nuggets for achieving that goal:
Get Rested Before Jumping Into the Grind
Had a busy holiday? Better be at 100% before you get back into the hustle. You don’t want to start your year trying to catch up because you’re lacking sleep or rest from an eventful vacation. The same advice applies for the rest of the year. You need to be able to step back and breathe or else you’ll wear yourself down. And, of course, what’s good for the business owner is good for the employee as well. Self-care’s the name of the game these days, they even have TED Talks about it!
[row v_align=”middle”] [col span=”6″ span__sm=”12″]Continue Learning
The world is changing and 2019 will have its fair share of surprises. So learn from 2018 but keep yourself open to whatever new lessons or curveball this year has to offer. You’ll need to be able to leverage new technologies, markets and demographics, management styles, and such if you want your startup to prosper.
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Prioritize and Delegate
Time is money, especially your time. So don’t sweat the small stuff, delegate it to someone with a more fitting paygrade and specialization – that’s what they are for! Fight the urge to micromanage and focus on matters that are actually important. And if you’ve already taken care of all the priorities? Then conserve your energy, there’s no point in being busy on inconsequential matters (that might drain reserves best saved for the Next Big Thing).
Leverage Technology… But Not Unnecessarily
It’s 2019, the future is here, and with it all sorts of ways to make your life easier. Consider making the shift to The Cloud and saving yourself and your staff the trouble of manual backups. Done that already? Great! You don’t want to start the year losing your data to a crash.
Overall, leveraging tech means your business will operate better, faster and smarter – while avoiding hazards and risks. So embrace change.
Nonetheless, unnecessarily adopting overly new or untested systems has its fair share of downsides – kinks might still need working out, your staff may need time to transition to unfamiliar software, support could be limited, and these might slow down your business in the beginning.
Consider a Virtual Assistant, or Two
This is where intelligent prioritization and delegation converges with leveraging technology, as with a Virtual Assistant or a Virtual Staff, you can have rest easy knowing that you have a specialist or a team of them handling the back-end affairs of your business. Hand over your headaches to your VA, free yourself and your in-house staff from tedious tasks and focus on what you’re great at. Play to your strengths, just as the VAs will play to theirs. In the end, your productivity grows, your stress decreases, and everyone wins!
Finding the Balance
Like the first step, Get Rested, but moreso. This is the sum of the other steps: learning, delegating and prioritizing, technology, VAs. So by working smarter as a result, you can then attain a state of stability in which you can pursue other meaningful aspects of life, like being there for your family, or honing your artistic pursuits and passions, traveling, charitable works, or even just finding the time to breathe and enjoy stillness.
Give Back to the Community
“What goes around, comes around,” as they say. And karma notwithstanding, helping others is just the right thing to do. Share what blessings you have, give others a hand in overcoming challenges, opportunities to get back on their feet. We at Virtual BizNest take it to heart with our volunteering activities. It’s enriching and meaningful, and worth doing just for the sake of it. After all, what are we working for if not to help make a better tomorrow for each other and those we care for?
In Closing… May 2019 Be Awesome
We’re in this for the long haul, and there’s so much to do, so many adventures and achievements just waiting for the bold and the daring, as well as opportunities to reflect and luxuriate. This year is going to be full of promises and surprises, as all years are. So, let’s go and take the plunge!
-John Li
