By Lani Pauli, Deane & Co

Yep, you read that right! While it seems counterintuitive, working less and finding more balance in your life can actually have a positive impact on your business.

Thanks to social media and the fact that in this digital age you can work almost anywhere at any hour, there can be limitless opportunity to work and a never-ending supply of tasks to do. But that doesn’t mean you should just work-work-work!

Not least because an overstimulated, perpetually busy mind is not the place where the best ideas, clearest decisions, or brilliant strategy come from.

As part of our consulting work, we often talk with clients about how to get more balance in their lives, and how it’s not indulgent, but can really pay off for their business.

You only have to look at business power players Tim Ferriss, Ariana Huffington and Bill Gates – all advocates of scheduling dedicated time off – to see how working less can help you more.

If you are finding you are always ‘on’ and spending the bulk of your precious time working on business, take a moment to stop and recalibrate.

Here are 5 ways to consider bringing more balance to your life, calming your mind and running your business, so that it doesn’t run you.

#1 Take Holidays!

Having time off is one of the most sure-fire ways to be more productive. Breaks, down time, having fun and thinking about things outside work is one of the best investments you can make in yourself. Travel allows you to learn new things, get new perspectives, and come at problems in different ways. If you haven’t had a holiday in ages, it can be as easy as taking a long weekend away or getting to the beach for a couple of days.

#2 Clear Boundaries

Make clear boundaries and stick to them. Leave work on time, take a proper lunch break each day, don’t reply to emails or calls outside of hours.  Some of our clients at Deane & Co now put in strict boundaries and openly take one day off a week. On this day they don’t reply to emails (unless the situation is urgent) and their success continues. If anything, this client argues (and we’re inclined to agree) that it enhances their ability to be successful as they’re giving themselves adequate time to recharge and restore.

#3 Switch Off

The best way to be a winner in business and in life is to rejuvenate body and mind, which means a good nights’ sleep. And vital to good sleep if switch off technology, social media, the laptop and cleansing the bedroom of all electronic gear. Consider social media-free weekends: Tim Ferriss switches off his phone every Saturday unapologetically.

#4 Prioritise

Take a cold hard look at how you’re spending your precious time across the different categories that matter to you, whether that’s Family, Eating Well, Exercising, Down Time, or Being Social. If you’re finding that all your time is caught up in business and busyness consider where your main priorities truly lie. Upping your wellbeing only help performance, so spending time on them is an investment in business too.

#5 Delegate

To work less you need to do less, so think strategically about how you can get things off your plate. If your business is like your baby, at some stage you need to let it grow and develop. Trust and work with others. Invest time in good people and then delegate to free up your own time and do the things you truly love and are good at. If you suck at accounting or graphic design, it’s time to hand those things over to people who excel at them so you can have the bandwidth to do what you do best.

By Sejal Jamnadas

An attempt to use design thinking could be likened to experiencing the peak of your professional imposter syndrome. I mean surely, somebody will eventually figure out that you have no idea what the final outcome will be of the session. All you have is some butchers’ paper, post-it notes, the people sitting in the room and a hope that the session won’t fall completely off the rails.

The reality is, using design thinking (rather than just reading about it) is messy and awkward. In fact, it can be a huge risk; but it pays to work through the initial awkward mess and focus on clear intended outcomes rather than worrying about the reactions of participants.

The hardest part of the process is usually convincing the team to congregate for 1 hour during the week to discuss how they might ‘align priorities’ and ‘build a roadmap going forward’ — of course, with the intention of using design thinking methods. On my most recent project, I knew the client would not immediately be receptive of a “design thinking session” where “everybody gets to write on post-it-notes”. I could only imagine the reaction would be disappointing and awkward at the very least.

Undoubtedly, it was going to take a lot more than just the promise of a colourful room filled with post-it notes and ‘innovative ideas’ to convince the client to participate in a design thinking session.

To help you relate or empathise, I’ve illustrated the key 5 awkward phases that goes through the mind of a ‘facilitator’ planning to run a design thinking session.

STAGE 1: THE REALISATION

You’re at a critical point of the project. You’ve found the ideal moment where you know the team could benefit from brainstorming their ideas, understanding the problem and context, or gathering feedback to come to a shared understanding. I like to think of this as the problem or ‘tension’ for which Design Thinking methods can be incredibly useful.

STAGE 2: THE ‘DREADED ASK’

Now you need to muster up the courage to tell the client that you’re intending to gather everyone in a room to try some ‘methods’…

STAGE 3: THE ‘WHAT WAS I THINKING’ MOMENT

You’ve sent the meeting invite to the team with a standard agenda which no makes no reference to Design Thinking. Nobody knows that you’re frantically sifting through 10–15 Design Thinking methods to construct the best recipe for the session to achieve its outcomes. You suddenly hate yourself for organising the session in the first place and end up drafting back-up slides in case it fails. You start to have dreams of the client team giving you disgusted looks when you explain to them “you can only write one idea per post-it-note with a black sharpie”.

STAGE 4: THE COMPROMISE

You think you’ve found the perfect recipe at least twice. But of course, you’re bound to wake up in the middle of the night and realise the recipe is shit, scrapping the recipe and starting again. The session is tomorrow so you settle for some ‘safe’ options — you think to yourself, a bit of rose-thorn-bud and affinity mapping is not overly time-consuming and not outrageously ‘creative’, so you decide that’s the bare minimum you’ll do. Of course, you know there’s a lot of other great tools you’ll have up your sleeve which you plan to use spontaneously if the session goes relatively smoothly. Although at this stage, you’ll be happy if the client doesn’t fire you on the spot.

STAGE 5: THE AWKWARD INTRODUCTION

You’ve finally made it to the session and you’re excited. You truly believe the tools you’ve prepared will help the team understand the situation better and come to a shared sense of clarity for an approach going forward. Only thing, the team is visibly confused when they come in with their laptops and notepads to a room full of post-notes and sharpies. Deep breath. You tell them what you’ll plan to do today, doing your best to ignore mixed their expressions of excitement, boredom…and of course, a heavy air of awkwardness and scepticism.

So now we’ve established the REAL emotional journey of design thinking in its 5 phases, here are my few simple tips on helping to overcome the inherent awkwardness of it all.

1. Have a clear intention and vision of the outcome: Understand what stage of the project you’re in and what outcome is desired. Then find the methods which will help to achieve the outcome and communicate this intent to the participants.
2. Know your methods, and practice it alone or with colleagues: Do the training, speak to experts, watch videos and tutorials.
3. Avoid using the word ‘Design’ or ‘Design Thinking’: Unless the client reads the Harvard Business Review or Forbes, its generally a fairly vague buzz word which a lot of people don’t really respect. People who believe in it respect it, but unfortunately, you can’t assume everybody trusts the idea of design thinking. Best to avoid freaking people out.
4. Have faith in the methods: If you doubt the methods, so will the client or the audience that is participating in the session. Be enthusiastic and engage everyone in the room so they all feel included in the process.