Feeling Brain Dead But Still Have to Make Decisions?

When you feel like you are running on empty but still have to go one, there’s a reserve of energy to be found somewhere in your body. You know it’s true. Otherwise no business owner could ever survive.

Logic? Maybe not. But if you look back, you will see that it has been the case for you many times during your life as an entrepreneur.

How can you prepare for those times so that no one will ever know how difficult it was for you to be present and perform on one of your down days? Here are four things that almost always work for me.

Start. Whatever you need to do – talk to your bank manager, attend a meeting, produce a report, return phone calls, revise your business plan, respond to a tax audit – just get started. It creates some momentum on which you can build as you see things happening as a result of your actions.

Set An Alarm: Block off sufficient time to make headway on your task or project, and have your alarm alert you when you’ve served your term. Working in twenty minute blocks can be your best strategy on busy or stressful days.

Take a Nap: In my publishing business, we had a couch and a quiet corner where any of our staff, including me, could take a cat nap when that 2 o’clock malaise struck. Better to exit your desk for 15 minutes, than to do, redo, redo, check and redo your work because you were half asleep on the job. Learning to cat nap should be rated one of the ten most important skills of any productive person.

Remind Yourself Of Your Power: Think back to other times when you thought you just couldn’t take one more step, but managed to walk another mile before resting, figuratively speaking. The Little Engine That Could is the perfect image at such times. “I think I can. I think I can. I think I can.”

And now, I’m taking a quick nap before I get on the road to my next adventure. My twenty minutes is up.