Readers of this blog will know that I am an avid consumer of books. In my ebook, From Apps to Zen: 26+ Ideas for Building a Business with Balance, the letter 'K' stands for Knowledge and my goal to read a (non-fiction) book a week (which I have managed this year!).

Being a minimalist, I tend not to buy and collect books but prefer to borrow them from the library or friends or pick them up second-hand in charity shops (the Oxfam bookshop in Bloomsbury is excellent). But there are a few key books that I have bought and that I return to again and again, and I wanted to share a few key ways that these books have shifted my perspectives on work and life.

So if you are looking for a little inspiration or a new direction for 2012, get some of these onto your Christmas wish list!

1. Your Brain at Work: Strategies for Overcoming Distraction, Regaining Focus, and Working Smarter All Day Long, David Rock

I first saw David Rock being interviewed at the Wisdom 2.0 conference in February this year. He was speaking about mindfulness and our brains and how we can work with our brain rather than against it to be more effective and productive. I bought this book from Amazon before the interview was even finished (so much for paying attention in the present moment!). Using the characters of a self-employed consultant and a corporate executive, he follows their working day showing on one hand the difficulties of the modern workplace, and on the other how much easier things are when we work with our brain. A fascinating book that will illuminate your working habits in a new way.

Perspective Shift: Our pre-frontal cortex (the thinking brain) doesn't cope well with doing more than one task at a time. To get stuff done, single task don't multitask.

2. Full Catastrophe Living: How to Cope with Stress, Pain and Illness Using Mindfulness Meditation, Dr. Jon Kabat-Zinn

An expert in the area of stress and meditation, Dr. Kabat-Zinn runs the Stress Reduction Clinic at the University of Massachusetts Medical Center. Written over 20 years ago, this book is a practical handbook for anyone who wants to delve deep into the science and practice of mindfulness and how it can be used to deal with stress in our everyday lives. I read this book a year ago during my month in Amsterdam researching mindfulness at work and its key messages have influenced my work today.

Perspective Shift: You only have moments to live. Every moment is a new beginning. We can choose to ruminate in the past or dream about the future, or, choose to live intentionally here in the present, from moment to moment.

3. Making Ideas Happen: Overcoming the Obstacles Between Vision and Reality, Scott Belsky

Scott Belsky is CEO of Behance, one of the most innovative and creative companies in the world. Though his work and his blog, the 99%, he has observed that Edison's statement that genius is 1% inspiration and 99% perspiration is true. Making Ideas Happen is a guidebook to ensuring your creative ideas happen through getting organized, collaborating and leading effectively.

Perspective Shift: Not all projects are created equal. Create an 'energy line' of your current projects in order of the energy they should receive. Use this when prioritising your work.

4. How To Be Free, Tom Hodgkinson

A funny book with a serious message, How To Be Free asks how can we be free of the absurdities of modern life with its focus on working to buy more stuff and to get a bigger house. While I don't aspire to some of the rural bliss that Tom advocates, being too much of a city girl, reading this book was a key driver in my current minimalist lifestyle.

Perspective Shift: Stop working to buy more stuff you don't need to impress people you don't like.

5. Happiness at Work: Be Resilient, Motivated, and Successful - No Matter What, Dr Srikumar S. Rao

Based on his popular courses at top business schools, Dr. Rao poses the question of how we can be happier at work and delivers 35 digestible nuggets of wisdom of how we can get there. A chance find while 'wasting' some time in a bookstore, this book has been a solid companion to me this year.

Perspective Shift: Positive thinking is bad for you. If we stop labelling things that happen to us as 'good' or 'bad' we can start to see that life is just series of moments ebbing and flowing, and that everything, happiness and sadness, passes.

6. Conscious Business: How to Build Value Through Values, Fred Kofman

I came across the work of Fred Kofman and particularly the ideas in this book again in my month in Amsterdam. One of the owners of The Hub also ran a company called Realize! and there was a downloadable summary of this book on their website. A conscious business is one that operates with integrity and creates value for all of its stakeholders, employees and customers. In these interesting times when the Occupy movement are asking for an alternative to capitalism, conscious business with its emphasis on responsibility and authenticity could be the way forward. I wish every business leader would read this book.

Perspective Shift: The power of Unconditional Responsibility. You have the power to become the main character in your life and choose how you respond to external factors.

7. The 4-Hour Work Week: Escape the 9-5, Live Anywhere and Join the New Rich, Tim Ferriss

I have written many times on this blog about Tim's book and how it shifted my perspective from a structured career path until retirement to design my business to suit my lifestyle. It was instrumental in my move in Spain in 2008 and my current part time location independent lifestyle (I will be writing my final blog post of the year from sunny Lisbon next week!). You can take parts of this book with a pinch of salt but Tim's new perspective on work is worth a read.

Perspective Shift: Parkinson's Law: work expands to fill the time available. Set yourself crazy deadlines to work faster and better.

8. ReWork: Change the Way You Work Forever, Jason Fried and David Heinemeier Hansson

I love this book so much I dedicated the letter 'R' in From Apps to Zen to it. If you are looking to change your perspective on the workplace, then this book is for you. In fact, buy one for every member of your team. With ideas such as Meetings are Toxic, Long Lists Don't Get Done, and Planning is Guessing, ReWork will debunk some of the persistent myths about what it takes to make a successful business.

Perspective Shift: Good Enough is Fine: find a judo solution one that delivers maximum efficiency with minimum effort.

9. Do More Great Work: Stop the Busywork Start the Work That Matters, Michael Bungay Stanier

A little gem, the book inspires us to stop the ‘busywork’ and start the work that matters. With 15 practical exercises or ‘maps’ Michael takes your through step by step how to identify, start and sustain your Great Work. This book was my holiday reading this year in Vietnam and it allowed me to get a fresh perspective on my work and provides daily reminders about how important my Great Work is and how to focus on it.

Perspective Shift: Tap into the power of Role Models – when you are trying to identify what your Great Work is, think about your top 5 role models in your work and life. What are their common or distinct characteristics? What do they tell you about your Great Work?

I hope one or more of these books has captured your imagination so ask Santa if she will bring one : )

Merry Christmas!

On Monday night I braved the streets of Belgravia, getting increasing lost as I found (eventually!) my way to The Star Tavern for An Evening with Emma Jones. Organised by Julie Hall from Women Unlimited, the event was a chance to network with other female entrepreneurs and hear business tips from Emma, herself a serial entrepreneur, founder of Enterprise Nation and Bitsy, a small business market place, CEO of StartUp Britain, and author of many business books including ‘Spare Room Start Up’.

Emma has a refreshing take on business and start-ups which seeks to dismiss the 'high cost/high skill' myth of starting a business and I wanted to share three of her ideas on the blog today and how digital can help facilitate them.

1. Go Niche (or Micro-Niche)

In her years advising and talking to start-up businesses, according to Emma, the one common factor that made a business a success was having a clearly defined niche and sticking to it. She gave the example of NannyNumbers - a payroll service for nannies, a truly niche service. In discussions with the company, Emma told us that they were considering widening their reach to run payroll services for other professions but she cautioned against this. 

With a niche (or micro-niche) business, you can get your opinion out on social media easily. You can become the go-to expert or service provider in your field. With a niche, content creation becomes easier as you have a focus for your efforts. A colleague shared an excellent video with me this week on generating 40 blog post ideas in 5 minutes - easy to do with a niche!

2. Do What You Do Best, Outsource The Rest

Emma is a fan of growing businesses, but suggested an alternative to growing them in the traditional way of hiring lots of staff and paying for office space. We all know the importance of working on your business and not just in the business, but when you are up to your eyes in admin, it's hard to find the mental space to do what you do best.

With the UK in recession, the current government talk a lot about job creation, but unfortunately the red tape and requirements for hiring staff do not make it easy for small businesses to grow. A better way to work and to build and grow a business is to create flexible work for other freelancers which still contributes to the economy without the stress for the business owner.

Emma asked that we focus on what we do best in our business and outsource the rest. From products to services, there is nothing you can't outsource these days with the web. If you sell products online, why not outsource fulfilment and shipping? Instead of struggling with your bookkeeping, outsource this to an online professional. Don't have time to blog, update your Facebook page or your website? Outsource this to my freelance Digital Assistants. Need design or writing services? Try online platforms such as Elance or PeoplePerHour. Use the power of digital to have a remote team working on distinct parts of the business rather than sitting in your office costing you money

3. Go Global Early

"Focus on niche, achieve global reach". Emma Jones

The internet has shrunk the world. We can now connect with potential customers in any country and market our products and services on a global scale.

Having a defined niche or micro-niche, can help us go global faster as we can attract our true fans from a wider pool of people. Social media, Skype and easy payment systems such as PayPal, mean that we can run a global business from our kitchen table. If we start to think about our business in global terms early on, we can create new markets and a more sustainable business in the long term.

Thanks to Emma and Julie for a wonderfully inspiring evening. If you are interested in finding out more about Women Unlimited and their Moxie Business Club, do have a look at their website today.

[image with thanks to fsse8info via CC]

Running your own business can be challenging at the best of times. Being solely reliant on yourself and your ideas to generate a pay check can cause sleepless nights, especially if others rely on you to bring home the bacon.

This week I am interviewing the women who applied for my Digital Assistant Academy pilot project which will enable six low income women in East London to generate additional, flexible income for themselves and their family around their existing commitments. Over an eight week period, the six women in the pilot will learn the necessary skills to become freelance Digital Assistants working from their own home with a laptop computer and broadband.

The women who have applied for the opportunity are diverse. Some of these women have not worked for a long time and have lost their confidence; others are single mums who want more flexible work to fit around their children; others are young women desperately trying to get on the job ladder in a terrible job market. However, they are were really positive about the project. One of the women wrote about the opportunity:

“I am keen to take part in the academy as I want to begin the rest of my life. I aim to become independent of state benefits and support my family whilst being a strong, positive role model for my children. I feel that I will be better equipped to do this if I am working and building a career.”

But I can see some sleepless nights ahead for me. No work is guaranteed, especially for freelancers. Am I setting these women up to fail by encouraging them to work for themselves? I have to admit that at least twice a year I consider packing it all in and getting a ‘real’ job – one where someone else can worry about how to pay my salary.

In these moments of self-doubt and fear, the yogic concept of tapas is a useful one to meditate on. Tapas is translated literally as ‘fire’ or ‘heat’ but it is taken to mean in this context sacrifice, discipline and perseverance.

In our asana practice some of the more challenging poses can create a lot of heat and fire in our body. The immediate reaction is to resist this and move back to a place of comfort. Tapas invites us to go through the heat and accept it. Feel the fear and do it anyway, if you like.

Through asana practice, meditation and self-study, yoga asks us to feel our discomfort and stretch beyond our perceived limitations. Only by going through our fear, not around it, can we begin to transcend it.

We have good and bad days in our yoga practice. Some days the postures come easily; we deeply connect to our breath and the world off the mat melts away. Other days, we cannot concentrate on anything and the simplest of postures frustrate us. This is normal.

What we have to remember is to get back on the mat.

[image with thank to marmotchaser via CC]

 

About 15 years ago I picked up the seminal book by M. Scott Peck called The Road Less Travelled. In the book Dr. Peck suggests ways in which confronting and resolving our problems, and suffering through the changes, can enable us to reach a higher level of self-understanding.

For me the core message of the book was about taking responsibility for your own life rather than blaming external circumstances.

The title of the book was influenced by the poem by Robert Frost – ‘The Road Not Taken’ which has also been a huge influence on the way I live my life. The last three lines of the poem have always resonated with me:

"Two roads diverged in a wood, and I,

 

I took the one less travelled by,

 

And that has made all the difference."

I was reminded of my core belief when I stumbled upon a guest blog post the other day on lifestyle designer Cody McKibben’s blog Thrilling Heroics entitled The Road ‘Most’ Travelled is Fricken’ Dangerous Man. 

The author Jonny warns of the dangers of the road ‘most’ travelled in one hilarious sentence:

“School – Work - Eat Some Strawberry Pie – Die.”

Yikes.

For many people the road most travelled is education (school then university or college) followed by a steady climb up the career ladder. The addictive pull of a regular salary check (I remember what that was like!) keeps us in jobs that we hate because we have mortgages to pay and new shoes to buy. Time and time again when I speak to my friends about their jobs, they sound frustrated and trapped but the alternative i.e. taking the road less travelled is too scary for most.

So what does the road less travelled look like for me:

Having a flexible, fulfilling and sustainable working life that enables me to live my whole life to the fullest.

For example this year my flexible working life has enabled me to:

• Work from anywhere I like, whether that’s the comfort of my front room, the park on a sunny day or a co-working space or coffee shop for company.
• Not count how many days of annual leave I have left – instead I take time off when I want to.
• Pick and choose projects I want to work on and people I want to work with.
• Spend a month at co-working space The Hub in Amsterdam researching and writing about mindfulness at work.
• If the sun is shining (it does sometimes!), to take the afternoon off now and again and go hang out.
• Plan a six week trip to India in the winter to escape the cold (woohoo!).
• If I am tired and unfocussed to have the flexibility to go take a nap, grab a yoga class or go for a walk on the canal.
• Have the time to take on pro-bono work for social enterprises doing amazing work.
• Have a go at planting my front and back terraces with leafy veg and herbs to provide some of our weekly food (thanks to Mark at Vertical Veg for all his advice!).
• Take the whole month of August off to write my new book The Business Yogi: How the Science of Yoga Can Help You Be More Productive, Happy and Healthy at Work (watch this space).

Interested?

Here are some ideas on how you can start to build flexibility into your working life:

• Keep your business overheads low to zero. Work at home or join one of the low cost shared workspaces in your area. Use outsourcers rather than permanent staff members to keep your fixed costs down. Not having fixed overheads means that all the money coming into the business is profit.
• Combine work trips with play by extending your trip by a few days.
• Rent your property when you are away – we rent our gorgeous flat in central London through AirBnB when we go away (which tends to cover most of the trip!). 
• Live a minimalist lifestyle – I gave up buying new clothes and shoes about five or six years ago and have never looked back. I use charity stores and clothing swaps to keep my wardrobe updated for a fractional of the price. For minimal living ideas and inspiration check out the mnmlst or Rowdy Kittens blogs or Leo Babauta's ebook The Simple Guide to a Minimalist Life.
• Use a simple cash flow forecast spreadsheet to predict when money is coming into the business so you can forward plan.

The road less travelled can be a scary place with uneven surfaces, unknown bends up ahead and strange noises from the bushes. But it’s a real way of living your life to its fullest.

The road will still be there if you need to get back on that path. Why not take a look at a different way?

[image with thanks to Nicholas_T via CC]

 

This is a guest post by Lucy Kyle. Lucy is a coach and consultant that helps small business owners uncover their 'gold' and use it to build the livelihood they want. You can read more about Lucy at her website.

I work with people who want to make a living doing what they love, using their creativity to build a business and passion to drive it forward. Although my clients do many different things from fashion to film, they tend to have two things in common.

1. They often believe they don’t have enough money, clients or time.
2. They are unaware they could be sitting on a goldmine of untapped resources.

This problem of scarcity is rife in both life and business – especially with the current state of the economy, but if we spend all our time focusing on what is lacking we are actually in danger of missing out on potential treasures.

Luckily there are some simple steps you can take to help shift your focus so you can start to make the most of everything you’ve got.

Focus on what you want

The first step is to focus on what you actually want, rather than what you haven’t got.  How much is enough?  How much money, how many clients or how much more time is going to make the difference?  This is a question I always ask my clients and the answer I usually get is that they don’t know.

They say that the quality of an answer depends on the quality of the question – and it’s true. If you tell your brain you need more money, the usual response is panic!  But, if you can get more specific your brain has something to work with and starts looking for solutions.  Try it yourself, you might be surprised at how little you need.  For example if you want two more projects where could you get them from?  It could be as simple as asking existing clients for a bit more work.

Focus on what’s working

The 80/20 rule was created in the 19th century by Pareto an Italian economist but is surprisingly still very relevant today. It states that just 20% of what we do has 80% of the total impact and this applies to every area of our life.

We might have a cupboard full of food but eat the same 20% of items 80% of the time by having cereal for breakfast and a sandwich for lunch everyday.  Or have a wardrobe full of clothes but wear our favourite jeans most of the time.  In business it means that as a rule of thumb 80% of sales could come from just 20% of your customers or products.

The key is to focus the majority of your time and resources on the 20% - not waste them on areas that aren’t working.  Most successful businesses are niche – they offer a high level of expertise in a specific area and are very clear about who their customers are and what they offer them.  As the American comedian Bill Crosby puts it ‘I don't know the key to success, but the key to failure is trying to please everybody’

Focus on what you’ve got

In this digital age having loads of friends is de rigour. We are more connected than ever meaning that it should be easier to get our message out or ask for help.  However, how many of your friends, contacts and colleagues actually know what you do?  Let alone how they could help you grow your business?  Based on my client’s experiences – not a lot.

Often the tendency to look for new business focuses on trying to convince complete strangers to buy your products and services.  As word of mouth is the most effective form of marketing this isn’t always a great strategy.

If you've got hundreds of friends, acquaintances and clients then maybe you could consider applying the 80/20 rule to identify the key people to start talking to.

I have suggested this process to hundreds of clients and without fail they have suddenly remembered someone who could give them what they need, be it the person who works for a blue chip company they want sponsorship from, or a friend who could help them get their online profile up.

By undertaking the first two steps and focusing on what you want and what’s working you should have a much better idea of what you still need, if anything at all.  Once you know – get it out there, tell everyone in your network about your exciting plans and what you want and you could be amazed at how quickly you get it.

This is one of my favourite videos of the year so far.

Chade-Meng Tan, Jolly Good Fellow at Google (that is his actual job title!) talks about how compassion in the workplace is good for people and great for the bottom line.

A compelling business case for more compassion in the workplace. Chade-Meng - I salute you!

I have been a big fan and follower of Tim Ferriss since I read his best selling book The Four Hour Work Week in 2008. This book and his ideas spawned an entire 'lifestyle design' and location independent lifestyle that many around the world, including me, are working to achieve.

His talk at the 2009 Do Lectures in Wales talks about the art of thinking, and doing, big.

An inspiring video which will make you think how you can accomplish the impossible.

This is a question that was going through my head repeatedly yesterday at the inspiring and thought-provoking Comment Conference organised by Editorial Intelligence at the Cass Business School and Lloyds Banking Group in London.

The conference brought together opinion formers, industry leaders and entrepreneurs to discuss the future of Enterprise in the UK. Panels debated The Skills Agenda, Women in Enterprise, and Entrepreneurship.

An interview with Charlie Mayfield, Chairman of the John Lewis partnership, one of the largest co-operatives in the UK illustrated a radical approach to good business. John Lewis are owned by their employees whom are called 'partners' and the management team, whether at local or national level, are accountable to their employees, not the other way around. In fact, the mission of John Lewis is to 'create the happiness of their members' through meaningful employment and great working conditions. In this they recognise that organisations are essentially collections of people and without the buy-in of their people they would not be as an effective business. Financially John Lewis have a goal of making 'sufficient' profit for their partners instead of maximising profit for a few shareholders possibly at the expense of the planet or other people. This is where 'greed' gives way to 'enough' - a lesson for many businesses.

Stephan Chambers, Director of the MBA at the Said Business School and Chairman of the Skoll Centre for Social Entrepreneurship spoke of his belief, that I share, that business can change the world. He said that governments and NGOs have been unable to solve some of the world's most endemic problems such as climate change, poverty and food security, problems that are going to radically change the world we live in. If these organisations have failed, perhaps business can step up to the challenge and create radical and sustainable solutions to these pressing problems.

Corporations simply going about doing business as usual is quickly becoming untenable in today's climate. More and more businesses are beginning to realise that doing the 'right thing' can be good for the planet, their people and the bottom line. Ian Chesire, CEO of DIY chain Kingfisher/B&Q called for a radical reappraisal of capitalism in the Guardian in March moving from a maximum linear growth model to one of 'maximal well-being for minimal planetary impact'. If only all companies were so forward thinking.

In one of the Thoughts for the Day, Giles Gibbons, founder and CEO of Good Business made a plea for getting away from unhelpful labels like 'social enterprise' and instead working towards helping more businesses be social and more third sector organisations be entrepreneurial.

I think he's right. My vision is of a world where all business is social, that doing the right thing is demanded by employees and consumers and that there is nowhere for the dinosaurs of the 20th century to hide.

So yes, I think that all businesses can be social. And soon, they will have to be.

 

 

 

Sir Ken Robinson is a leader in the development of creativity, innovation and human resources. He is also a fantastic story-teller and speaker and I was thrilled to come across his School of Life Sunday Sermon on Passion recorded at Conway Hall in London a few weeks ago.

It's an entertaining talk but one with a serious message. He talks about a crisis of human resources to equal the crisis of natural resources that we are experiencing. What he means by that is we only get one go at this very short life so we might as well make the most of it. Let's not squander it by doing things we hate or by being mediocre.

His theory is that most people have no idea what they're capable of. In his 2009 bestseller The Element: How Finding Your Passion Changes Everything, being in your element is when aptitude combines with passion i.e. is not enough to just be good at something, to be in your element you have to be passionate about it too. The book outlines how you can find your 'passion' and it is well worth a read.

I hope you enjoy this talk as much as I did.

This blog post is part of The Business Yogi series – inspiration and thoughts for business based on the philosophy, principles and practices of yoga.

Do you consider yourself a perfectionist? Do you find it hard to decide when a piece of work is done - when it is 'good enough'?

If so, then you are not alone. Many entrepreneurs have a strong perfectionist trait. In a sense this is a good quality to have. You want others to value your work and want your clients to be happy. But perfectionism has a tricky side too. The side that keeps you working long into the night when no-one but you would notice the extra work you have done. The side that neglects social commitments because you 'need' to do that seventh re-write of the report. The side that uses perfectionism to avoid doing work you find difficult such as calling a potential client or sorting out your finances.

At a recent CUBELUNCH at co-working and innovation space THECUBE, Nathalie Nahai from web design and psychology company We Make Them Click talked about a strong link between how our parents viewed perfectionism and our own. Many perfectionists had a perfect parent that they learnt from and subconsciously are trying to emulate and please. Others had a chaotic parent and being perfect is a way of distancing themselves from this. Either way it is clear that our relationship with perfectionism is a complicated one.

In yoga, we look at the idea of perfectionism in a slightly different way. In Anusara Yoga, the type of yoga I practice, we focus a lot on 'perfect' alignment as it gives a solid foundation in poses allowing protection from injury and flow and energy in our practice. But 'perfection' in asanas or poses is not something to fight for or struggle against your body. The Sanskrit word for perfection is purnatva.  Literally translated this means ‘fullness in the moment’. Perfection is a yogic sense therefore means doing the very best you can do whatever your mental or physical state at that moment, on that day.

Purnatva means that each moment, even the ones when we seem to be failing, is perfect as long as we are being as full as we can be in that moment. Some days are harder than others and the joy of purnatva is that it teaches us to be OK with 'imperfection' while still striving to be the best we can be.

Namaste.