Give it a rest!
Stuart Clark
Helping ambitious business owners to understand their numbers and take home more of what they earn by meeting with them regularly and planning ahead | Xero | Proactive decision making | Tax planning
The last month has resulted in a battle every night when putting Jessica to bed. No matter what time we start, or how tired she appeared, she wouldn’t get to bed until 10ish and to get to this stage involved a few fights and arguments.
As we’ve been on holiday the last two weeks we decided that it wasn’t worth the hassle of fighting with her and we just let her stay up until 10 and then go to bed. It was less painful but still took a bit of work.
We then spoke to my cousin, who’s a school nurse and has worked with sleep consultants before, to see if she had a magic wand.
Just discussing it with her in the first place helped to get an outsiders perspective and she challenged things that now seem so obvious - but prior to this we couldn’t see the wood for the trees.
If she was going to bed at 10 each night maybe this was her natural time to fall asleep. She wasn’t tired the next day, but it was our belief that she should be going to bed earlier that was causing us to continue battling with her.
It also helped us to put in place a routine, which Jessica also helped to determine, for this new bedtime to ensure we do the same each night and after a couple of weeks we can then bring the routine forward 15 minutes. We might not ever get to a half 7 bedtime but even to half 8 or 9, and with less involvement from us would be great.
Almost a week in and fingers crossed it’s going well. No screaming either night and she’s fallen asleep without us in the room (hopefully this isn't a commentators curse! ??)
But what does this have to do with running a business.....
- The importance of an external advisor as a sounding board
- The importance of systems / routine
- Small tweaks / changes have a bigger impact overall
- It’s not one size fits all in a company and different people have different needs
- Employee buy in will improve your end results
We can help with all these things as your external advisor. If you want to define and achieve what freedom looks like for you then we can help.
#whatdoesfreedomlooklikeforyou
#adifferentconversation
Helping brilliant technical leaders to be equally excellent leading people, to improve the whole organisation, through outdoor coaching and the GC Index | Creator of Navigating Your Leadership Journey | Author | Speaker
5 年I like the analogy to business but I must? confess I read it looking for some tips on parenting as well - Rebekkah is also starting to prove troublesome. Maybe a sleep consultant is called for. But first I need to ditch the ' how hard can it be' attitude - people have been parenting/running a business (delete as appropriate) for hundreds of years so I should be able to work it out'. Spot the mistake
Director at Agility Bookkeeping Limited
5 年Absolutely agree that having an external advisor makes a big difference. We have been working with Ewan Menzies of Castle Strategy (using Concord) for several years now and definitely wouldn't be where we are without his help.
Director of McKellar Accountancy
5 年Great analogy! Oh, I've got all this to look forward to. 8 weeks to go!
Director at Cuillin Ltd, Non - Executive Chairman, Director and Master Business Coach.
5 年Good Post Stuart. Must ask your Mum if you were like that????
Nice one Stuart, I had a child like that, I never related it to work though other than the need to power nap to catch up on sleep