When I am wearing my corporate employee hat, I am an evangelist for doing radical things like — taking lunch and leaving on time. While that may sound like heresy in today’s corporate treadmill, it is the only way to maintain your well being and be optimally productive. A few jobs ago I worked for a subsidiary of a French owned multi-national. While the French were busy drinking wine at lunch and working 35 hours a week with 6 + weeks of vacation, the American contingent was working 24/7 and growing bags under their eyes that would fit into any horror flick.

That’s why my eyes were drawn to the Fast Company website today when I saw their post entitled “Work Your Proper Hours!”.It seems the British have a holiday on February 24th to mark the day most Britons who do unpaid overtime finish the free days they give their company, and finally start earning for themselves.

My guess is that in the US, that holiday would fall sometime in May or so (what, us? take a holiday? that’s a sign of weakness in our warped society!). But, that’s just my hunch, not a researched and scientific number.

The UK site even has a calculator that you can use to calculate when you finish giving away your time to your employer for free. While it is calculated in British pounds, the math works just the same. Make sure you’re sitting down before getting the results if you’re anything like the “typical” employee or business owner. I plugged in the hours that some of my co-workers who almost never take lunch and refuse to go home at a normal time put in. According to the calculator, they work for free until April 14th of each year. And, that doesn’t even factor in the amount Uncle Sam takes in a myriad of taxes, many which as lesbians in a long term relationship you’ll never see (think: social security for surviving spouse).

You can actually take this little calculation one step further to get the true cost of earning your wage. In the highly recommended book by Joe Dominguez, “Your Money or Your Life” , he talks about a concept called “life-energy-cost”. This calculation takes into account not only the hours you work, but also all the time spent preparing for, traveling to, or thinking (worrying, stressing, complaining, etc.) about work. It also factors in the cost of purchases you make because your job is stressful - anything from special treats you buy to dampen the misery associated with a bad job to extra medical costs incurred because of the toll of a high stress job. After factoring in all these ancillary things, you arrive at what wage you are REALLY earning. For example, you may earn $20/hour in your day job, but by the time you factor all this in, you’re really earning $7/hr. It is a great measure of life energy and allows you to reflect upon your relationship with money from an entirely different, much more conscious perspective.

How much of your life-energy are you giving away for free?

I’d love to hear your comments, even if you prefer to keep them anonymous.

I recently ran a beta-testing group with one of my products, the “Nip Burnout in the Bud” e-Course. The purpose of my test group was to do some research & development so I could make changes to the product for its next release. The overall process had its ups and downs, but it was a fabulous learning experience for me and I know most participants got a great deal of value from the course, based on their feedback thus far. However, what most amazed and amused me was the fact that more than one person either dropped out or did not participate fully because they were either:

• too busy
• too stressed
• didn’t have any time in their schedule

Surely, we’ve all experienced the challenge of being too busy, stressed, or strapped for time. What was most surprising is that these are the same people who just a few weeks prior had volunteered to be in the group. At the outset of the group, I laid out the expectations for participants. So, what happened?

I think the irony was best captured by one participant that dropped out (who happens to be a coaching colleague):

It know it sounds silly, but I’m too burned out and busy to take time to handle my burnout.

Okay then! I have a sneaky suspicion that she is not alone!

The danger with charging full speed ahead without addressing your energy leaks and overwhelm is that at some point you will just run out of steam. It might come in the form of a big breakdown or more subtly as a downward trend of diminishing performance (and satisfaction), but rest assured it will come.

This approach is a lot like being too busy driving your car to stop for gas. It might work for a little while, but at some point the little needle lays down on the far left on the big “E” and you have a most unwanted transformation — into being a pedestrian.

• What do you KNOW needs to be handled in your life or business that you just keep avoiding?
• Do you find yourself too busy to even step back and assess the state of your schedule and priorities?

If so, you probably need to carve out some time to address it now, before your needle approaches empty. If you’re not sure where to start, drop me an e-mail and I’ll help get you started.

I found this fabulous little inspiring resource this morning while reading Molly Gordon’s Blog. It was exactly the break I needed as I was dealing with a co-worker (internal customer) who was taking things terminally seriously. Each time I suggested she breathe, relax, and put it into perspective she yammered on more insistently about how damn important it was.

That’s when I went back to the Eight Irresistable Principles of Fun and watched the movie yet again. Amen to that!

Take five minutes from your busy schedule and watch the movie. You’ll be glad you did.

I love the cards and think I am going to have to buy some to share with others. At the very least I need a set to remind me to have more fun in every moment!

Everyone knows that follow-up and automated systems are crucial to business success. And, let’s face it, you can’t do everything and be everywhere at the same time or you’d be burned out and stressed to the max.

That’s where an autoresponder system for generating and following up with customer prospects comes in handy. I’ve been using AWeber for over a year now and I can say it has made things SO MUCH EASIER.

What is an autoresponder system? It is a way to automatically send e-mails to specified customer leads (or new prospects who sign up for something on your website) at pre-determined time intervals. It is also a way to broadcast e-mails to all or a segment of your customers at one time in a way that maximizes your chance that the e-mail gets to the recipient and is not tossed as SPAM (Nothing is 100%, but AWeber does a good job checking all e-mails against SPAM assasin ratings which indicates the probability a given e-mail will be considered SPAM). It is like having a friend sending follow-up e-mails to your customers and prospects at given intervals while you’re off doing something else.

I use it to capture leads for my Free Report, Newsletter Sign-Up, Product (eCourse) payment and delivery, and broadcasting my eZine monthly. AWeber offers easy to use sign-up forms and a robust administration panel so I could give up struggling with doing it manually and spend that time doing something more productive — from marketing to down-time. I know I don’t even begin to tap some of the power of their features such as split testing and customer segmentation yet either.

Their live chat, e-mail, and telephone support has so far been superb. Pleasant people who care that you get your questions answered and more.

If you’re looking for a way to automate these necessary tasks and communicate with your customers even when you’re not available, take AWeber for a free trial.

Sometimes I could hold a world record for indecision. At times I will go round and round more times than the Ferris wheel at the world’s fair rather than make a decision. I mean, what if I make the WRONG choice? What if I miss out on something else that is good by choosing one thing over another? How do I know for sure what I really want?

At times you would think the fate of humankind rested on me making a decision about something. But the funny thing is, when I finally DO make a decision…well, all is well. No big bang, no Armageddon, zip.

Thankfully, I have gotten much better at making decisions quicker or I’d be insane by now (not to mention those around me). I now do wild things (for me that is) like decide mid week that I am going away for a long weekend that same weekend and just spontaneously decide things along the way. While I wouldn’t leave my major life decisions up to a fleet of whimsy, for the more tame choices, why the hell not just decide? It sure beats struggling and torturing myself. And, again, it’s not like the fate of nations is resting on this choice (I hope!!!).

Basically making a decision boils down to:

• Deciding what you want
• Assessing the options and pros and cons
• Choosing

Now, the only step I’d add in there is that if your choice will significantly impact someone else you really need to be making joint decisions with (say like a business partner or your significant other), you might want to add a “communicate with other(s)” step.

The Nike slogan of Just Do It holds a lot of truth. Even for the really big life decisions, once you’ve done your due diligence and gotten any support you need — let it roll and Just Do It! The relief you feel as the weight of indecision dissipates will be immense.

Having trouble with any of these steps? Perhaps a Spring Cleaning would be the perfect opportunity for you to focus on it and get results.