Debbie Mayo-Smith: Refocus for pleasure and profit

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It was a business changing moment when I overhead one of my young triplets Matthew say to a friend "oh that's my mom. She's always on the computer."

That innocent comment was like a hot knife slicing butter, slashing my heart. How right that little boy was. It kick started an examination of my marketing consultancy business. Being self-employed, I was able to analyse each type of work I accepted as well as my responsibilities at home.

Therefore by 10am the next morning I had a whole new focus on life -personal as well as business.

You might not know we have six children (a single, twins and triplets) Matthew's comment focused my mind and I decided to only do 'work' at home and for business that fit a three 'P' criteria. The work had to be something I was passionate about. It had to be a profitable use of my time. It had to be a pleasurable activity. Sounds impossible? Not at all.

I hired part time administrative help for the business to eliminate the mundane tasks that was a poor use of my time.

In the same vein we had part time home help. This eliminated the cleaning, a bit of cooking and some of the sports practice driving. For both the admin and 'home' chores, it wasn't a profitable use of my time - nor pleasurable.

For the business, I decided to change course and become a motivational speaker. It fit all three criteria beautifully. Did it happen overnight? No. As a goal I simply created an action plan to accomplish it as quickly as possible. The rest is history.

How do you apply this principle to your business and personal life?

What are your activities now?

Write down all the things you do. Then score each by how passionate you are and how pleasurable an activity it is. Next rate the income production activities by how profitable they are. Pleasurable/ passionate has to be part of the equation as life isn't about money alone.

For example a self employed parent would find a better use of time marketing for new business as opposed to cooking dinner, mowing the lawn, or schlepping the kids back and forth in the afternoon. But if cooking gives you pleasure, it's an activity that stays.

Anything. Not everything.

You cannot do it all yourself - however you can accomplish anything you want. By hiring help (in my case home and admin help) I had the confidence I wouldn't fritter all the time away. Putting it to use, I was positive I would earn more than the outlay for the help.

Do you have confidence in yourself? If you do, than you know the outlay for assistance will be covered by your productivity. Wouldn't it be nice to spend more quality time with the family rather than doing chores?

Written by international speaker and bestselling author Debbie Mayo-Smith. For more tips, over 500 how-to articles visit Debbie's article webpage.