Over the past few weeks I’ve been doing a couple of workshops that are part of the mastermind I’m in. One of the things I’ve come to realise over the past few weeks is how being so focused on taking action (or in many cases procrastinating about taking action) has made me fall a bit out of love with my business.
I stopped taking courses (not buying!) because I told myself that it was just another form of procrastination – that I was procrastilearning. Instead of doing. I often feel shame in my procrastination and inability to be doing all the things that I think I should be doing.
These workshops have reminded me of my love of learning. That I love learning about new ideas and being challenged to consider how I want to run my business. I get such a sense of satisfaction from it when it’s a good course aligned to my values. Sometimes courses make me cranky – especially when it is unexpectedly about manipulative marketing techniques. Luckily these workshops don’t fall into that category and I’ve had some great takeaways that I’m going to put into action in my business.
I don’t know why I’m surprised by this realisation. Every time I do strengths tests, learning comes up as my number one strength. So what to do with this new (not really new) knowledge.
The first step is to stop shaming myself for wanting to learn! I’m ditching the term procrastilearning and all the connotations that are contained within it.
But I also know that I do need to keep taking action in my business. That spending all my time taking courses isn’t going to pay the bills – that would more likely lead to a drained bank account.
Instead I’m setting aside time to learn each week. I want to keep it time bound to about an hour/ an hour and a half.
I’m also not buying any new courses at the moment. I’ve got quite a few already that I’ve never looked at because I felt too busy.
In Hidden Potential, Adam Grant shares:
“The best way to unlock hidden potential isn’t to suffer through the daily grind. It’s to transform the daily grind into a source of daily joy. It’s not a coincidence that in music, the term for practice is play.”
If there is one thing I learnt from burning out is that you need to make time for those things that light you up. My problem has been trying to find those things just through doing in my business (and really struggling when it comes to marketing) and not considering that other things like learning and reading are also valid.
If you take off that productivity hat, what would you like to be doing in your business. It’s so easy to get caught up in working the plan that we forget that one of the reasons we start small businesses is to create something we enjoy. It’s almost like we are trying to recreate the corporate environments that we so desperately wanted to leave.