Most of us are overworked, whether we are a slave to our employer or a small business owner trying to survive… and if you are like me, you are working 10 – 12 hours a day, six to seven days a week. And, so we look forward to some time off – even a couple days would be good. Actually, I hadn’t had a couple of days off (technically vacation time) for over 5 years.
So I got some time off May 19th – 21st with my husband, sister and brother-in-law to celebrate my birthday and our anniversary.
Actually I spent half of the first day getting ready to leave town, then a couple of hours getting to a resort, a couple hours having a great (and relaxing) meal, and then about an hour shopping for food once we got to the resort. Finally by about 7pm it was time to start slowing down to enjoy time off.
That was Sunday night and it was hard to sleep in an unfamiliar bed (it was hard like a rock) with the door shut and the room had no ventilation. So I don’t think I got to sleep ‘til about 3am.
On Monday morning I got up and fixed breakfast for family and then we went for a walk around the golf course… We spent the rest of the day shopping in the little California towns of Murphys and Angels Camp. We did a little wine tasting, antique hunting, cupcake sampling and eating a great meal at a small restaurant.
Since my favorite thing is the world is to share iced tea (served by a waitress and keep it coming) with family and friends and then eat a really good meal (also served by a waitress), I was in heaven!
Tuesday, after a good nights sleep and breakfast served by another family member, we walked for an hour around the golf course, packed up and left the resort to travel home making several stops along the way (to further extend the time off), reaching home by about 5pm.
Wednesday at 4am, my husband and I got up to travel the UCSF for his dental appointment… that’s 3 hours of intense traffic from Modesto to San Francisco. After his appointment we traveled back over the bridge to shop and have lunch at IKEA in Emeryville. Again, after some intense traffic we arrived home at about 5pm – exhausted – ready to fall into bed at about 8pm
On Thursday morning, “Fuzzy Brain Syndrome’ kicked in. I had a presentation scheduled in Turlock (which I spent a couple of hours preparing for the night before) and I was running late. I arrived right on time… but then nothing I did seemed to work.
First, when I got there I couldn’t find a parking space in the offices’ lot – so I had to park on the street. Then I couldn’t get the computer set up and had to go back out to the car for an extension cord.
When I set up the computer to communicate with the overhead projector, my computer screen was blank – however, you could see access to my computer at the screen on the wall. Sounds good except that I was supposed to give access to the presentation to a remote office using a screen sharing program – and I needed to be able to see my computer screen.
No problem… go to plan B. I pulled out my second computer and I was able to get it to show up on my computer screen and projector screen at the same time, however, I didn’t have access to the internet… no problem – I pulled out my hot spot.
Finally, 15 minutes later, I was able to get my presentation going with access on the projector screen and remote access at the other office. And, I was still fighting ‘fuzzy brain syndrome’. On a scale of 1 – 10, I would give that presentation about a 3.
The purpose of this presentation was to train Realtors how to create marketing materials using the company CRM (an email marketing program) and when I tried to show my audience how to edit the fliers – the program informed me that I had to upload Microsoft Silverlight. So I uploaded the program twice and still got the message that I needed to upload the program before I could edit the marketing materials. I just tried to talk my way around that one… not successfully, but I tried.
When it was all said and done (about 30 minutes later) I stayed in that conference room until I could make the presentation show up on both my computer and the projector screen at the same time… and uploaded Microsoft Silverlight to my 2nd computer so that I could edit in the CRM program.
Finally ready to move onto the next part of my day – I was overwhelmed with ‘fuzzy brain syndrome’ again. It felt like I was trying to move through quicksand. After a few minutes of trying to decide what to do next I focused on my emails.
At the end of the day I started to feel better… like I was finally getting something done – and I had caught up on my emails.
The next day, Friday, the day before the Memorial Day weekend, I worked a 14 hour day getting caught up, so that I could finally feel like I was back in control and on track.
Here is what I did:
- Made a list of weekly and monthly marketing activities
- Made time on my calendar to complete those marketing activities
- Completed the activities scheduled for Fridays on my calendar.
With everything written down and time carved out on my calendar to complete each task, not only did I feel like I was cured from ‘fuzzy brain syndrome’, I also went home and enjoyed my 3 day weekend.
On Tuesday, July 2nd 2013 I will be presenting Habit #7~Set up a content calendar and start publishing fresh new content weekly; blogs, videos, images, etc.
Also, just in case you didn’t know already, I set out on January 1st 2013 to create 365 Internet Marketing Tips. Currently I have churned out over 200 Tips and I am in the process adding them to the 365 Internet Marketing Tips.
Feel free to let me know if you have an internet marketing subject (or tool) that you would like more information on and I will be happy to provide Internet Marketing Tips on that subject. Email me at lynn.albro@gmail.com.
By the way, please join me at Facebook/InternetMarketingCoach365, and would love it if you would circle me at Google+. I provide internet marketing news links, inspirational quotes and images on a daily basis.
To your success,
Lynn