Reality Check

“I’d love to quit my job and work for myself. No annoying coworkers, no commute, and no crazy boss.”

Folks, my boss is still crazy.* Perhaps worse, the crazy lady boss is me.

One of my guiding tenets of this blog is to maintain honesty about the thrills and challenges of my new pathway. And the truth is this is hard sometimes.

Some Issues

There are no deadlines

It’s soooooo easy to “just do it tomorrow.” I’ll add X, Y, or Z to my website today. Or maybe tomorrow. Or maybe next week.

Mornings are wishy-washy

There is no set time when I have to be up most days. Unless I’ve made a coffee date with a business acquaintance, I can just lay there in a warm bed a little longer. Or a lot longer.

Sometimes I’d rather do housework

Yes, mom and dad, you read that correctly.

If I’m running up and down the stairs carrying clean laundry I feel productive. When I scrub my kitchen, it’s sparkling and pretty. The lack of tangible outcomes in starting a coaching business is tough some days.

Speaking of procrastination

Apparently common forms of procrastination are a symptom of an impulsivity problem. I know what I need to work on. But the rest of the internet is RIGHT THERE!

What now?

Accountability

The deadline problem is really an accountability problem. Just like therapists often have their own therapists, many life coaches have life coaches. One specializing in building your business would probably be great for me. So I’m looking into that.

Mornings are terrible productive

HabitNest has a book/journal to help you start your day more productively. There are a million goal and habit-tracker journals out there. This one only lasts 66 days. The year-long journals seem like tempting the God of Lost Things and Forgotten Aspirations, etc. I can make a 66 day commitment. Not coincidentally, research says it takes 66 days to create a new habit.

Gold stars for grown ups

The idea of a daily tracker/planner does not appeal to me. I’m not realistically going to carry around a book and record things by hand and in my Google calendar. If a solution that doesn’t work for you, it doesn’t work.

So I got a wall calendar and pretty sticky notes. The stickies are for (weekly, not daily) tasks and such and go on my lovely new wall calendar. When they are finished, I add them to a stack of completed items. By the end of the year I should have a nice track record of what I’ve accomplished.

Internet, go away for a bit

Yes, it’s good to check the news websites and be informed. It’s not so good to follow links down a 90-minute rabbit-hole. So I’ve installed StayFocused, a free Chrome plugin that lets you set a limit to how much time you can spend on CNN, Facebook, Instagram, etc.

The good news

The good news here is I’m building something I will be proud of. And I am honestly intellectually interested in life coaching, career advising, and helping people. So even with these challenges, I always wonder back to the task, goal, or reading material I need to attend to. But there’s always room for improvement!

*In all fairness, most of my bosses were excellent humans and great leaders. I would not be where I am without Lewis, Shawn, and Heather (and many others).

Coaching, Goals