Many of my clients don’t want to live their life in such a structured way. However, as a highly effective working mum, a routine is vital.

Taking one step at a time, makes a big task easier and each time moving you forward to your end goal. I know it sounds simple but doing the dreaded ironing a couple of times a week, leaves more time on a Sunday afternoon for spending quality time with the kids.

Reality check here…let your standards slip. Choose areas that you can be less strict about, if it doesn’t take you closer to you goal, and it is a hassle, then let it go to a level that is manageable for you. You are then more likely to maintain this!

Top Tip – use your time management plan from Top Tip 1 to devise your routine.

Start by committing to small actions and hold yourself accountable. It may take a couple of weeks to establish but it will make your working day a whole lot easier.

Once you know what your goal is it will act as your compass and guide you through your day.

Assess each activity to ensure that by completing it, it will take you closer to your end goal.

Prioritise your activities into 3 categories:

• Essential – need to be done. Don’t waste your valuable time procrastinating here. Don’t get sucked into distractions ie cup of coffee with neighbour. Get these things done and off your list.
• Life enhancing – concentrate on the relevant activities for you and your family to help you become more productive and successful.
• Hassle – develop steps to remove things that have now slipped into this category. Replace with new things that are based on fun and enjoyment.

Top Tip – allow yourself time to dream. Dream about your ideal week, work, family, finances.

Record your vision for the future. By creating this vision you are creating something to aim for.

Now think, what is the first step that you need to take towards attaining this?

I would love to hear how you get on so do get back to me at kerry@claritycareercoaching.co.uk Or, if you have any top tips on defining your goals, please get in touch and share your secret to success.

Disorganisation is a thief of time! Time spent organising your home and work environment is time well spent. Being disorganised wastes your valuable time.

We all dream of having more hours in the day. Face it…its 24 hours and that aint gonna change any time soon!

Make a list of all your responsibilities and how long each of them will take. Add up the total. You now need to realistically schedule these responsibilities into a manageable timeframe.

Write up your time management plan and stick to it! You will immediately get a sense of satisfaction from this.

Top Tip – set yourself an allocated amount of time to do this (between 15 to 30 mins) should be enough. Then give yourself a treat for completing your time management plan.

Well, recently I read an article in Inc.Com that got me thinking…it suggests that having your email on your Smartphone and constantly checking it makes you less productive. The article talks about an entrepreneur Harj Taggar working at a start-up organisation called Y Combinator. The ability to respond to emails quickly and sort out problems as they come up seems a major plus point for having email on your phone. But in an experiment, Taggar decided that rather than checking email all day when he is on the go, he wanted to wean himself off mobile email and found he actually had more time in the day. Sounds ridiculous?

The article found 2 positive benefits for giving up checking email on your Smartphone:

1. Increase in concentration – I agree with this as when working on a big task sometimes I hit a stumbling block, so what do I do…switch to email and reply to a few emails. Quick hits! But this has created a habit of constantly checking my email and this article suggests that it affects productivity for solving the bigger problems.
2. Increasing time – in essence your perception of time increases. When you are on the go, rather than getting bogged down in email, you have time to take in your surroundings… as a result, more time to think. Which in turn gives you space to think and solve those big problems.

So if this has given you food for thought, why don’t you give it a try? Wean yourself off constant checking of your email. Firstly set up times of the day when you have “email free time” and use this productively to get big chunks of your work done and then take it from there.

I would love to hear how you get on so do get in touch.  Or, if you have successfully managed to say goodbye to phone email and have seen the benefits yourself, please get in touch and share your secret to success.

In fact, the authors Rath and Hartner of the book Wellbeing conducted a study using Gallup across 150 countries and concluded that of the five main elements central to your wellbeing, happiness at work has the biggest impact of your overall wellbeing.

My recent poll on LinkedIn showed that doing work that you enjoy is the most important element to being happy at work followed by getting on with your colleagues and pay and benefits after that.

Ok, so is it possible to make yourself happy at work?

The short answer is “Yes” if you follow my three simple straightforward steps below.

1. Write Down Your Current Rules
• Think about “What are the rules that make you happy” and What are the rules that make you unhappy” You will be amazed when you start thinking about this and see how hard you make it for you to be happy and how easy you made it to be unhappy.
• One of the happiest people at work that I have met has a simple rule.  What makes me unhappy is when I know someone close to me who dies.  For this person almost every day makes them happy. Sounds simple?
2. Create a better set of rules
• Now you can change your rules, that’s the beauty of this.  Now you are aware that you created your happy/unhappy rules, you can change them to whatever you want.  As long as you believe in them that is all that matters
3. Place then where you can see them
• To make your new rules something you use every day, print them off and place them in a place that you can see them every day.  Gradually overtime, as you see them, and more importantly use your new rules you really will become happier.

It really is that simple.  If you don’t believe me try it for a month and get in touch with me to let me know how you are getting on.

• Set clear rules/guidelines about the split between work/family life and stick to them.
• No one else is going to protect your family life but you, so you need to. In Sheryl Sandbergs case this is family dinners, it could be family evenings when children are older etc.
• Set up your vision of what this is and stick to it.

Be 100% responsible for your life

Its a hard truth to accept, but the only person that is responsible for the quality of the life that you live is yourself. If you want to be successful then you need to give up complaining and blaming others.  You need to take charge of your life and that means be accountable for the successes and the failures that you have created. Albeit this is a colossal shift for some people, but once you take accountability for your outcomes, and do less of what’s not working and more of what is, then you create more of what you want.

Believe in yourself

Essentially this is about you giving up the phrase “I can’t” I find my children inspiring and all the things they have accomplished in their 3 or 4 short years.  I rarely hear them say I cant…stand, walk, run, feed myself etc.  Its the opposite, they want to learn all the time.  We have conditioned ourselves to say “I cant” and to be truly successful you need to find that belief in yourself again. Call it self esteem, self confidence whatever but you need to find that core belief in yourself, your talents and your abilities.

JDIN – just do it now!

Once you know what it is that you want to do, the key is to get started.  A mistake a lot of people make is to sit about and wait until they are perfectly ready to..start a new business, change job, improve your finances etc.  Qualifications are important, so if you need more training go and get it but don’t let this put you off starting on your path to achieve your goal.  You need to make a start, small steps at first and you will see your confidence grow as you achieve more and learn more by doing what you want to do. No one else can do it for you, you need to get on and just do it now!

So in summary then, once you decide what you want to do, believe that you can do it and then go after your goal.  You will be amazed at what you can achieve.

If you have any recent success stories, please get in touch with me, I would love to hear from you.

Below you will find my top tips for job seeking in the current market conditions.

• Make a plan
• If you are looking for a new job have a plan. Set aside dedicated time for job seeking and decide when and how much time you will spend on each activity from on-line applications to sending off speculative CV’s. This will keep you focused on your job search.
• Be flexible
• You need to be prepared to move from your dream job, especially in the current climate.  You need to be flexible on what you want.  E.g. consider a side-ways move, either same job in a different industry or a different job in the same industry you currently work in.  Remember, it’s easier to be inside than knocking on the door.
• Use LinkedIn
• Network, network, network…and the best way at the moment is LinkedIn. Create a profile, upload your CV and join groups and take part in discussions that are relevant to your industry. You can also connect with companies that interest you.
• Tailor your CV 
• Tweak your application to each job making it relevant to the position you have applied to.  Ensure you present your achievements clearly but keep it to 2 pages otherwise hiring managers won’t read it.

For further hints and tips about the above, please don’t hesitate to get in touch with me.

Good luck with your job search!

When we are moving away from something we have known for a long time, for example changing jobs, we are moving outside our comfort zone.  We often feel fear (can also be labelled as anxiousness or nervousness) and this fear can be paralysing, hence we stick with our lot.

You may already be familiar with Susan Jeffers book, “Feel the Fear and Do It Anyway,” an excellent read (maybe if you are at a loose end over the Christmas holidays…) as it gives you ways of dealing with this fear.

Below I have very briefly summarised five truths about fear to help you overcome your fears.

• Truth 1: As you continue to do new things in your life, you will always experience fear.
• Fear is part and parcel of doing new things.  If you are sitting about and waiting until the fear has gone, you will wait a long time. Disappointing I know, fear will always be there but you need to learn to let go of getting rid of it.
• Truth 2: To get rid of fear you need to go out and do whatever it is you are afraid of!
• “Doing it” comes before the fear goes away i.e. once you have faced the unknown and survived, the fear passes.  And, your confidence of doing new things grows.
• Truth 3: “Doing it” is the only way you will feel better about yourself.
• When you have mastered something the fear goes and your confidence grows. You will feel good and, maybe even decide to something else too!
• Truth 4: Not only are you afraid when facing the unknown, so is everyone else!
• This should be a relief. You are not the only one out there feeling fear. Everyone feels fear when taking a step into the unknown. Yes, all those people who have succeeded in doing what they have wanted to do in life have felt the fear – and did it anyway. So can you!
• Truth 5: Overcoming the fear is less frightening than living with the fear that comes from a feeling of helpless!
• This is difficult to accept but when you push through the fear, you will feel such a sense of relief as your feeling of helplessness subsides. You will become more and more aware that you can truly handle anything that life hands you.

In summary, you can’t escape the fear of doing something new. It’s a normal feeling.  People who don’t take risks in life live with a feeling of dread that keeps them standing still.  This is far worse than if they were to take the risks needed to make them less helpless.