The life of an entrepreneur and founder/co-founder of a start-up enterprise can certainly be challenging. Each day brings with it a different set of new challenges – growing the top-line, managing your biggest asset (your people), juggling your limited cash flow, getting new customers, dealing with customer complaints, managing your suppliers – the list goes on …
As you read this, I am sure you can add to this list with your own set of challenges that you encounter. Each of us have our own routine to deal with our daily challenges – we would often consult our team, engage with a mentor, seek counsel from our board, phone a friend and even just talk to ourselves (sounds strange, but many people do this!!).
Similar to most of you, as an entrepreneur (and mentor in some of my spare time), I too am presented with many daily challenges. Sometimes I get myself into this ‘rut’ of not really knowing what to do next – I am sure many of you can relate to this!! You become stuck with not allowing yourself to deal with the challenge by not changing your approach to dealing with the challenge. This was something that was ‘plaguing’ me for the last few months of last year – which got me thinking. What could I do differently to mix things up and allow myself to have different perspective?
And so in this new year my wife (aka my boss) and I decided to move our work environment on a periodic basis, just to have a change in scenery. As some of you may know, I really enjoy my coffee (as I know most of you do), and the logical option was to immerse myself into a coffee-shop environment to see how that would work. A few weeks ago, we found this lovely coffee shop in Melrose Arch and spent most of our day amongst other coffee lovers, entrepreneurs, students and the odd romantics out for a cuppa.
This change of our office for the day was really productive. In between the many work calls, online meetings and a few cups of coffee, we both got lots done. Some of the ‘stuckness’ seemed to have gone away, and we were both able to get different and positive perspective on those few niggling challenges. All in all a very productive day’s work in a new office for the day. This will certainly form part of a changed office for the day for us – every other week!!
As a closing note – it did get me thinking. Sometime a small change in your daily routine can have a profound impact on your day. Working in your garden or your patio, sitting on the other side of your office, sitting in a coffee shop, dressing up … the list goes on. What are you doing to change your ‘office for the day’? And how is that impacting on your daily routines and productivity?
