Jennifer Elder

Let’s face it- we are all feeling pretty burnt out. Sitting in

front of a computer screen, battling with iffy WiFi connection, is not exactly what we had planned. We are all a little bit out of our element and this can take the productivity out of our work time.

Enter The Pomodoro Technique. This technique has been

around since the 1980’s and has garnered attention for its intuitive time management strategy. Simple but effective, this strategy is based on incremental goals. The steps are as follows:

• Choose a task you would like to get done. What task it is is not important, but it does deserve your undivided attention.
• Set a timer for 25 minutes to work on that task.
• Work for 25 uninterrupted minutes. This 25 minute round is considered one Pomodoro.
• When the timer goes off, put a check mark on your piece of paper to signify completion of your first interval!
• Take a short breather (3-5 mins)! Stretch, grab coffee/tea, use the restroom, get a snack, etc.
• Repeat 3 more times, and after the fourth Pomodoro, take a longer break (20-30 mins). Repeat, repeat, repeat!

The idea behind the breaks in between short intervals of solid work time is that your brain will use this time to assimilate new information and rest before the next round. It is slowly training the brain to stay focused, which increases overall productivity. Instead of looking at time as the enemy, this technique teaches you to maximize time instead of struggling to keep up with it.

Especially given the virtual climate we are living in today, it can be hard to go completely uninterrupted when our phone is buzzing and our computers are dinging every 10 seconds. But The Pomodoro Technique is completely dependent on the continuous and uninterrupted work time – so lock up your electronics if you have to!

Nailing this technique will give you a better work-life balance and help to battle the burnout that we are all feeling! Try it out, and let me know how you like it – jelder@sustainablecfo.com

The LEARN-UNLEARN-RELEARN cycle is one of the best ways to revamp skills and advance our knowledge to stay up with the constantly changing times. Processes by which we conduct business are rapidly changing and if your philosophy is outdated, you will never last.

LEARNING in itself is self-explanatory – we learn everyday, even when we aren’t actively trying to learn. In this cycle, learning is more of a precursor to the process but sets the foundation to unlearn and relearn. Unlearning may seem counterintuitive but in this strategy it is the most important step in achieving the goal.

UNLEARNING is much more than just forgetting something – unlearning is challenging and it forces you to decosntruct the things that are embedded in your memory. This can be biases, tendencies, things you accept as fact, opinions, etc. Often times we choose to unlearn things as a strategic decision and other times, circumstances force us to. Perhaps your company wants to move in a new direction strategically and to do so requires a different approach – that’s when this cycle would come in handy. Or maybe a global pandemic hits and everything requiring human contact is virtual, forcing you to unlearn and relearn how to communicate effectively.

To RELEARN something is to retrain your mind from its normal path of thought – so however you decide to relearn your material, it needs to be in such a way that will survive in the long term or until you repeat the cycle.

This approach can be so impactful because it forces us to really pay attention and be present for our learning process whereas beforehand it may have just been apart of our second nature. Once we appreciate and understand the learning process, it allows us to teach others, which ultimately just teaches the cycle to the people that come after you.

Let’s face it, in some capacity even the people that don’t think they procrastinate, still do. All people tend to procrastinate on the things we aren’t good at or the things we struggle with because the job might be challenging or tedious or maybe even time-consuming. Three words that don’t market themselves well.

If you find yourself struggling with motivation to work on those projects, refer to the tips on page #1. If those still aren’t enough to get the job, then delegate, delegate, delegate!

Delegating can be a beautiful thing, but it can’t be used everytime you procrastinate on something. Half the battle of procrastination is finding the strength to overcome it. Procrastinated projects take forever to finish, but tend to bring the most personal satisfaction. Remember that! Before you decide to delegate, imagine the overwhelming joy you may feel by completing the task yourself. If after that, delegation still wins out, set your delegate up for success with the necessary information and materials to get the job done.

A healthy mix of delegating when you have lots of other things on your plate is a great solution for getting those dreaded projects done, but don’t make it a permanent solution!

Here are 5 Tips to Finishing those Dreaded Projects or Tasks:

1. Don’t think too much, just get going. The more you think about how boring a task is, the harder it will be to convince yourself to start. When the thought of finishing the project pops in your mind, get up right then, and start, before you have a chance to convince yourself not to.
2. Don’t try to get it done in one sitting. Break your project up into sections so once you get past the hurdle of finishing the first section, it’ll be easier to motivate yourself to finish the rest!
3. Incentivize yourself. Promise yourself a treat (ice cream, down time, a drink, etc.) for finishing your task!
4. Change your surroundings. When you find yourself loosing focus or energy, move to another room, outside, or even a local coffee shop!
5. Remind yourself WHY. If the WHAT isn’t enough to get you going, remind yourself why it is that you are doing what you’re doing. How good will you feel when you complete your why?!

When it comes time to evaluate your company mid-year, there is a simple three step approach that allows you to strategically plan for the rest of the year. This approach is called the Stop-Keep-Start approach. It involves three internal business questions:

• What do we need to STOP doing?
• What do we need to KEEP doing?
• What do we need to START doing?

The STOP phase of this approach is where you recognize what strategies are no longer working for the business; maybe these strategies are no longer profitable, or maybe there is no longer a need for the service. Choosing to stop means that the organization recognizes that there are better uses of their resources and this allows them to explore other options!

The KEEP phase represents the evaluation of the things that ARE working in your business, and how to optimize those success factors to be even more successful. The products, processes, and services, that are running smoothly should be analyzed to determine what parts are making it so successful, why it is successful, and how you can leverage that expertise into other areas of your business.

The last phase is the START phase which represents the future of your organization. Based on performance in the first half of the year, trends in the market, competitive analysis, and research, decide what you want to add to your business model to make it more successful. Invent new products and services, venture into new areas, develop new strategies, or start a new division! Whatever it is that you start, ask yourself, will this reach the stop phase in 1 year? 2 years? How can you keep it in the keep phase?

So, if you don’t have the time and money to invest in a formal strategic planning process, I urge you to try this 3-step approach! It encourages you to evaluate your strengths and weaknesses, while also allowing room for growth! Happy planning!

Every organization uses a planning method; whether it is feasible or not is a different story but there has to be some sort of a plan to run a business. When it comes to strategic planning of a business, there are four main approaches. The approaches are as follows:

• Inactive planning: this follows the assumption that the way things are currently is the best they are going to be – any changes will make the future worse.
• Reactive planning: this is an active attempt to undo what has been done – something happens and then a business reacts to the situation.
• Proactive planning: this involves picking what your goals for the future are and inventing ways to reach those goals. The business proactively plans for all scenarios instead of reacting to the scenarios that arise.
• Preactive planning: the business is predicting outcomes of the future – this can be achieved by tracking trends and organizing in such a a way that allows the business to adapt to changes happening around them in a timely manner.

The most reasonable planning strategy to implement a steady growth rate today is preactive planning. Dr. Daniel Burrus touches on the need to identify trends of the future and explains that being proactive is simply not enough to succeed anymore. He says, “Being proactive is agile; being preactive is being anticipatory. If you are only now becoming agile, you are already too late because you are still reacting or pro-acting instead of preacting. We need to be predictably pre-active in a reactive world and to get there at a sustainable pace.”

It’s imperative to have a “future view” during the strategic planning process – the world around us is changing every second of every day, and if we fail to account for that, we will fail all together. You can hone a future view by tracking trends in the world, watching the news daily, monitoring the market, talking to your customers, and keeping an eye on your competitors.

As we enter the halfway point of 2021 and move towards post-pandemic life, how can you preactively plan for the future? Are your customers more sensitive now? Did the market for your industry get bigger or smaller? Can your business adapt to a world where remote work is preferred? How is what you see in today’s current events impacting your business’ tomorrow? If another pandemic hit tomorrow, what would your plan be?

Giving your employees room for growth and professional development is crucial to not only employee satisfaction but employee retention. No one will stay at a job that feels like a dead end or at a job where they don’t feel supported by their employers. Offering employee growth opportunities becomes especially important when morale is low (like it was in 2020), to provide a sense of stability and comfort to your employees.

There are many ways to make room for employee development in your business. An obvious first step is providing your employees with opportunities to advance in their positions in general. If there is no opportunity, then there will be no growth. Then you’ll be able to implement professional training programs, encourage cross-departmental collaborations, learn about their personal lives, and sharpen their skills that will allow them to succeed.

As we move into the back half of 2021, there are actually exceptional opportunities for employee growth despite the hectic last year. With all things of the last year considered, adaptability has moved to the top of the soft skills list on employee resumes and this allows employers to use this adaptability as part of their development plans going forward. A Covid-19 silver lining!

What will you do to leverage the events of 2020 towards sound employee growth?

Nowadays, a seamless and professional virtual presence is practically a necessity. In the past year, it has come to be what establishes our credibility when presenting to an audience.

There are certain things that are non-negotiables when it comes to looking at how we can improve our virtual image…

Your camera should always be set up as close to eye-level as possible. The problem with sitting up tall with a computer on a table is that by human nature, the speaker is looking down to the computer with their screen angled up. Although this may seem miniscule, this often makes the audience feel as though they are being talked down to. A better setup would be positioning your laptop on a higher platform that sits at shoulder height so that the

camera is directly in line with your eyes. This inhibits a more comfortable presentation.

There is nothing more annoying than muted microphones and scratchy sounds in the middle of a presentation (especially when they are serious or sensitive topics). Obviously we cannot always help if and when these sound barriers come and go, but what we can do is check our sound system before each meeting and ensure that our microphones are working properly. It takes two minutes!

Most people created a makeshift home office in quarantine that allows for some sort of professional background when giving presentations, but sometimes even these people make it too hard on themselves.

The easiest thing to do if you don’t have the resources to create some elaborately professional background, is to keep it simple! A blank wall will do just fine! Being in an open space opens up the possibility of people walking in and out of your screen, doors opening and closing, pets coming in and out, etc. This can be extremely distracting to your audience when they should be focused on you, not everything around you. It’s best to be up against a wall so it eliminates these distractions.

There are also a few things that we can do in general to make our presentation a bit more captivating…

On the front end of our presentation, we can eliminate a lot of “zoom fatigue” by creating a captivating title. The title of the meeting ultimately sets the tone for the rest of the presentation. A title such as “Business Strategy For Finance Professionals During Covid-19” is not going to get an audience excited to join a meeting. It’s boring! But a title such as, “Calling All Finance Professionals! Be Strategically Different In a Covid-19 World.” This title adds a little more voice to the topic, and lets the audience know there is a person behind the presenter.

Perhaps the most important reminder is to SMILE! Such an easy fix, yet so hard for some people to remember! In a virtual world, we rely more on facial expressions to communicate our engagement because body language is far less visible to the audience. Let your audience know that you are HAPPY to be there by smiling when eyes are on you!