One of the main areas of professional self-improvement I’m focusing on right now is developing, refining, and, perhaps most importantly, trusting a routine.
In theory, everything that comes across my transom should be able to be handled in a consistent and predictable way. I’ve found, however, it really hard to nail that down. I think I just have to start somewhere, identify what doesn’t fit with the system, and refine as I go.
As I work towards that, I thought I’d share some things that have so far defied my attempts at systems:
- A request from a friend to help me find sponsors for her conference. She’s a good friend, so I want to help her, but I’m not sure how to allocate time to reach out to potential sponsors for her. It seems like a painful task, so I’m not sure where or how to slot it in.
- A friend of a friend who’s looking for a job. I’m getting a sense that this, and other things, could be batched together into a single, let’s say weekly, digest of things I post to NWC’s group and maybe my blog. It wouldn’t be much work if I focused on it for a solid hour or so once a week. I’m going to start a “Batch Favors” label as an incremental step for this.
- A member who wanted to introduce me to someone who might want to add coworking to their space. I have some pretty good systems in place for this. I have a primer I send to people who ask my advice, which includes a compilation of questions I’ve answered in interviews and similar correspondence, and an appointment system I can direct people to for office hours-like meetings. I think, for now, this is largely a matter of trusting the systems I already have in place.
…HOWEVER, I can’t help but feel like more can be done to better gather even just the NYC-area coworking organizers I encounter. I don’t want to obligate myself to organizing Another Thing, but… something. Another puzzle piece.
- Friends sharing ideas for projects I’d love to do, but have no space to tackle.
- A program for helping people get on their feet working for themselves (establishing an LLC, bank account, basic routines, etc).
- A Welcome Center program where we create little brochures introducing people to the core communities and resources available to them in NYC (and then partnering with like-minded coworking spaces to have them offer the brochures as well.) Maybe also a paid consulting service for people who want to sit down with someone who will work with them to get them properly acquainted.
- Lots of possible accountability / shared structure groups
This is a partial list I put together just from spending an hour going through things in my backlog. Perhaps I’ll add to it as I identify more.
Do you have a consistent way of handling things like these in a non-painful way? Help me out!
