T
hings started to slip a little out of control today. Only a little. Mark Forster tells us that when our daily lists start overloading us, and we are consistently not getting done what we set out to do, it's important to run a diagnosis of the problem, to figure out what's happening, how to fix it, and how to prevent it happening in the future. As an aside, Forster says that the majority of people who abandon the D.I.T. system do so because they fail to run diagnoses as required, and burn out. (Forster says the system requires fairly high energy of will to break through and actually complete all the daily tasks that are required of one. However, the amount of energy is takes to do this is simply the amount of energy that is necessary for that particular person's life. If it takes too much energy to do the tasks, that person is overcommitted, and no system on earth can help them until they drop some commitments).
So what happened? Basically, a shipping delay caused my schedule to open us last week, and a client got in touch to see if I could take on a painting job coincidentally right when I didn't have any work lined up. The problem was that I was over-motivated to fill my schedule, and not clear-eyed enough about the time required to get this particular job done. Now this job has swollen to start overlapping with other work I had planned for next week, a result which I explicitly set out to avoid not two weeks ago. So, I was rushing today, which makes me even more stressed, and I was listening to business-advice podcasts, which put me in the mindset of trying to plan even more ahead, which was not conducive to taking my time, doing a good job, and sticking to my schedule.
It's all actually fine -- I have a good relationship with all my clients, and the work is going to get done, and I'm going to get paid. But it's becoming ever clearer to me that I need help in my business. I simply don't have the time to be doing sales, finances, planning, research, and all the actual on-site work for my company. I need to figure out how to hire subcontractors, which makes me nervous, but which will open up a lot of opportunities for me. But starting your own business is not for the faint of heart. Just need to break it into smaller pieces...