Being a small-business owner requires nothing short of majoring in multitasking.
Whether it’s managing customers or employees, running a budget, or navigating products and systems, it’s often an all-consuming task.
Throw in a family and a household to run and it’s fair to say professional development is probably not on most women’s to-do lists.
However, the right kind of professional development can be transformational for women in business, and it doesn’t always require a new degree or a course.
Consider these five practical strategies to help switch up your thinking and boost your productivity this year.
1. Forget about achieving work/life balance
The quest for work/life balance became a national conversation during the COVID-19 pandemic as many Australians were forced to work from home.
A study from the Australian Institute of Family Studies in 2020 found 46 per cent of working women with families said their work-life balance was “quite or very difficult”.
Rather than seeking to explicitly balance work and home responsibilities and obligations, being more mindful about how you are spending your time can help to deliver better harmony.
For example, could you strive to have more quality time rather than quantity with your partner, friends, or children? Can you lean on others during busy periods and accept that busy periods come in ebbs and flows? If you have perfectionist tendencies, can you reassess your priorities and be ok with some things sometimes being just ok?
2. Listen to your feelings of imposter syndrome
That nagging feeling like you just aren’t good enough or just can’t do it might be a positive.
Many senior business leaders today actively work to surround themselves with a network of people they can learn from and leverage their expertise.
Finding yourself in a situation where you accept you don’t have all the answers can often help you to really engage with others who might be able to teach you something new.
3. Check-in with how you are really spending your time
If your to-do list never seems to be done, it might be time for a productivity review.
Productivity experts suggest a great place to start is looking at your calendar every Friday to review the week just gone. How did you spend the bulk of your time? Was it focused on your core business priorities or is something less important becoming a time-suck? Stopping to perform this check each week can be a game-changer for your productivity and your to-do list.
4. Try to embrace failure
Many small-business owners, particularly women, hold off on launching their businesses or making a change out of fear of failure.
However, reframing failure as an essential part of the learning experience can help to remove the associated fears.
If you wait until your business idea feels perfect or your website is exactly right, you might never launch or miss the opportunity to learn from your customers about what they really want.
5. Make your mental health a priority
Another by-product of the pandemic was a renewed business and community focus on building resilience and mental health.
Educating yourself about mental health and checking in with your own state of mind are important first steps to supporting yourself and your employees better.
It’s common for people to put off the things that best support their mental health – like exercise and mindfulness – when they are busy or stressed, but these are often the times when those strategies are the most impactful.
Whether you are a one-woman operation or leading a team, prioritising your professional development can help lead to game-changing strategies at work and at home.
A focus on continuous improvement each day can help break down the barriers of learning a new skill and help you become a more powerful small-business leader.
