Last week was rough - This is what helped me survive it
I don’t know what was in the air last week but it was a rough one.
It started with three straight days of no internet at home, which meant working out of my comfort office was no longer optional. Plus side of this - I found an awesome co-working space! But as someone who LOVES (and needs routine) I felt lost.
And then, as if the universe wanted to test just how much I could carry at once, every animal in my house - there’s 3 of them - decided this was the week to have something going on. No full night's sleep. Midnight throw ups. Their cuteness was not making up for it this time. I was tired.
(I should add here that everyone is now OK!)
It really was a week.
But now that I’m hopefully on the other side of it, I can reflect a little bit: I only fell apart a little bit and everything that still needed to get done, both personally and professionally, did.
And that’s only because I have systems set in place for myself! So I wanted to take today to share what I have set up so if a rough patch happens to hit you, you also survive it with minimal derailing.
The #1 thing that saved me was Asana. I did not have the bandwidth to think, remember, or plan what I needed to be doing this week. Thankfully everything I needed to do was already in Asana. I could see the full picture of the week + beyond (thank you, calendar view), which meant I could actually make decisions. Like seeing the team's bandwidth to take on a few extra things or realizing that the next week was lighter and I could push some of this there. That's not something I would have been able to easily do if I kept all the tasks and lists in my head. And I'm a visual person, and Asana let me be one, even in the middle of chaos.
The second thing is that this fell during the last week of the month, which is one of my low meeting weeks. I build one of these into my calendar every single month, on purpose, because I know by the end of the month I need some space to actually get work done instead of just talking about the work I need to do. If you're someone who's constantly on calls and never seems to have time to execute, I can't recommend this enough: protect a week where you simply don't take many meetings. Future you will thank you!
The last thing that really minimized my stress this week was that I still had leads coming in. My email list kept growing (if you are new here, Hi 👋!). I have a lead gen system running in the background of my business, and even in a week where I couldn't show up the way I normally would, I didn't feel that panic of "I need to post or the business stops." It gave me the freedom to show up because I wanted to and had the space to - which honestly makes for better content anyways!
If you don't have any of this infrastructure set up yet, take this as a sign to start! And if it’s a lead gen system that you are missing, here is my shameless plug for my Curated Lead Generation Experience which will get this full system set up for you in just 10-days. While I really hope that all of your weeks are smooth sailing, I’m also realistic enough to know that life happens and having some structure in place helps us get through it.