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22 Lunch and Learn. How to find the time to write (or progress your biz) when you have a busy and chaotic work and family life

By Julia Bickerstaff - Friday, April 13, 2012

I have four children, the oldest is 10, the youngest is 1 and a home life that is, well let’s just say, busy.

I also run The Business Bakery, work privately with biggish businesses, keynote at seminars, do a bunch of other stuff and I write.

I write blogs and articles (for Flying Solo and Smartcompany among others), I wrote a book “How to Bake a Business” and now I’m in the middle of my biggest writing project to date, a compendium recipes for the Kitchen@The Business Bakery.

I’ve often been asked how I find the time to write. I'm absolutely no super-woman and I don’t have a special trick, but I do have a tip that works.

I thought I’d share it with you because while I use it for writing, it will help you equally well, whatever type of work you are doing.

It’s my way of clearing a path through chaos.

What it is

Uber-business-guru Jim Collins calls this tip Fanatic Discipline. He also explains it by telling a great story called the 15 mile march, so I now call this tip the 15 mile march - it makes sense to me and I think it will to you.

Why it works

When I was writing my book I was working full time as a partner at Deloitte and had (only) three children. I desperately wanted to write the book but had very little time in which to do it. So I swallowed a large dose of self-discipline and decided I would write precisely one recipe a day (the book is a compilation of business recipes). And that's what I did. I just wrote one recipe every day until it was done.

Now that probably doesn't sound very extraordinary, and it isn't. It's just a simple way to make progress. But boy does it work!

I wouldn’t say I’m naturally self-disciplined. I’d much rather go where the mood takes me. But the rhythm of one recipe a day worked for me. I didn’t have to waste any time deciding how much I would (or wouldn’t do) on any particular day. The goal was always the same and I fell into an easy routine.

I would never have got the book written without it.

What you do

I wrote my book three years ago, way before Jim Collins published his book “Great by Choice”, but when I read his theme in it about Fanatic Discipline I realised that, in a way, that’s how I get my writing done. 

Jim uses this story of the race to the South Pole in 1911 to explain Fanatic Discipline.

“In October 1911 two teams of explorers left the coast of Antarctica to try to be the first people in history to reach the South Pole. The Norwegian team, [led by] Amundsen, got to the South Pole first. [British naval officer Robert Falcon] Scott and the British team reached the pole second, 34 days later. Amundsen and his team made it back to their base on the exact date that Amundsen had put in his planning journals when he was making his plans in Norway. Meanwhile, Scott and every member of his team died on the way back, about 10 or 11 miles from a supply depot.”

Jim then explains that the one of the key differences between Amundsen and Scott was that Amundsen had what’s called a ‘15 mile march’. This meant that every day whatever the weather Amundsen and his team would walk 15 miles. If it was nice weather they wouldn’t walk further than 15 miles, rather they would rest and save their energy for the tough days. Scott and his team, on the other hand, essentially just walked as far as they could on good days and stayed put on bad weather days.

Amundsen's fanatical, bordering on compulsive, discipline is credited with his success. And Scott's lack of the same a contributing factor to his team's decline.

If you, like me, lead a somewhat chaotic and busy life, then try using a15 mile march to make progress with your business.

How you do a 15 mile march
  1. Set a simple daily progress goal. Mine was 'one recipe', Amundsen's was '15 miles', a friend of mine's is one sales call. You can do whatever works for you but I suggest it be achievable with a little bit of a stretch.
  2. You promise yourself you will do the (metaphoric) 15 mile march every day.
  3. And you also promise yourself that you won’t do more than the 15 miles any day (this can take as much willpower on a good day as getting out of bed to do the 15 mile march does on a bad day).
  4. Do it every day.

That’s it!

Some people set the progress goal as a range with upper and lower limits but I prefer the elegance of having a single, simple goal.
In case your'e not convinced:
When I finished writing my book I’ll admit that I got a little lost with my writing. The discipline to write articles for other publications was easy; I had a deadline and I’d made a commitment. But writing for my own business, ugh. It was hard to find the time.

Then one day I decided to rekindle my own version of the 15 mile march and I got back into the habit of one business recipe a day. Now it's just what I do.

The 15 mile march gives me a sense of making progress, it get’s me results and it generates a feeling of order in my very disordered world.

I’m fanatical about my 15 mile march. I always do it. And I actually refer to my 15 mile march when I disappear to write my recipes. My kids are probably wondering how I walk that far in my study.



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21 Lunch and Learn: The two tweaks to your day that will boost your profitability

By Julia Bickerstaff - Tuesday, April 10, 2012

Two tweaks to your day that will boost your profitability

We’ve all had days when we have been busy, busy, busy but, really, have accomplished nothing. And then we have other days, most often when a deadline is looming, when we are super efficient.

Now we can’t  - or shouldn’t - work under the threat of a scary deadline every day, and we can get that sort of output without it. We just need to make a couple of tweaks to our day and combine it with a (large) spoonful of self-discipline.

What it is

Quite simply this recipe is about focussing ourselves on high payoff activities and letting go of the low payoff ones. Not revolutionary but there’s a tip below to help you actually do it!

Why it works

I’m sure you have heard of the 80/20 rule (also called the Pareto Principle, or my favourite,“The Law of the Few”). Just in case you’re not, it seems to be the natural order of things that roughly 20 % of the effort gives us 80% of the reward.

So in business, 20% of the work gives you 80% of the upside in your business. These are high payoff activities.

It works the other way round too though, and there’s another 20% of your work that is generating 80% what feels like wasted time. These are the low payoff activities.

This recipe is about helping you to identify and then focus on the high payoff stuff.

What you do

I once worked with a guy who never, ever, read emails. He figured that if a message was important enough someone would phone him to discuss it. That way he never had to trawl through an inbox. Crazy but it worked for him!

Here’s how to tweak your business to more high payoff activities:

Step 1

First of all we need to get a sense of which are our highest payoff activities and which are our lowest ones.

You don’t need to do this too scientifically as your gut feeling will be pretty accurate on this one. But you do need to make yourself think about it.

That’s why I suggest that you keep a daily record for a week or two of the types of work you are doing, how long (roughly) you are spending on it, and whether it’s a high payoff, low payoff or neutral activity. If you’re thinking it sounds like another timesheet, groan, you’re right! But it’s worth it.

Step 2

Remember that the high payoff activities are the ones that give you super-results for your effort. They tend to be quite tough to do (that’s why we don’t do them more, methinks) but the output is so very worth it.

Low payoff activities are the opposite, and there are two varieties. There is the ‘fun-to-do-but-fruitless’, you know which ones these are and they are easily fixed by a bit of self-discipline. The other variety is a bit tougher. It’s the painful customer, the tricky employee, the red-tape admin. These look like they need to be done, but can they be trimmed or outsourced? Or even dumped (remember this blog post!)

On the timesheet in step one, lots of smiley faces for the work with the highest payoffs. Sad faces for the ‘fun-to-do-but-fruitless’ and grumpy faces for the painful work.

Step 3

Every day, for three weeks, swap one hour of low payoff work for one hour of high payoff.

I find this easiest to make happen by doing my high payoffs first thing in the morning, before I get distracted, and doing the low payoffs later, but do whatever suits you.

Step 4

At the end of three weeks you should see an amazing improvement in the progress of your business. Depending on where you have been spending your 21 extra hours of high payoff time you could have a bundle of new clients or a finished new product. And, really, it wasn’t that painful.

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#1 How to be productive by doing the right things right

By Julia Bickerstaff - Tuesday, January 31, 2012


What it is:

A better way of looking at productivity

Why it works:

When we talk about productivity - which lets face it, is often - we are mostly referring to getting more stuff done in less time.

But that’s missing half the equation and most of the good stuff.

Because while we might be mega-efficient at getting stuff done, sometimes the stuff we are doing doesn’t progress our business, groan.

So what we really need to be referring to is doing the right stuff as well as doing stuff quickly.

Verne Harnish has a lovely shorthand for this “right things right’

Doing the right things is about strategy, it’s about working out and selecting the best stuff to do to get to your goal. It’s about doing stuff that is effective.

Doing stuff right is pretty obvious; it’s doing it correctly and quickly. And it’s about being efficient.

So this recipe is designed to get your thinking about being productive in a bigger way: being effective as well as efficient.

What you do:

1. At the end of every day ask yourself:
  • What have I done today that has been effective?
  • What have I done today that has been efficient?


I find that when I know I’m going to ask myself these questions I pay more attention to doing the right things (being effective)!  


2. Also ask yourself the opposite

  • What have I done today that has been ineffective?
  • What have I done today that has been inefficient?


I love these two because they highlight the really wasted time, ugh, and there is always some.


3. Do this every day for three weeks. At the end of that time you will see some interesting patterns emerge (so you can take remedial action!) but even better, you will be so very much more focused on doing the right (effective) stuff.

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