3 Steps to Avoid Working In Crisis Mode

The other morning, I opened up my email system and had four emails
from a client and every single one of them was marked “Urgent!” I
looked at the time stamp, and they had all come in late at night (around 11:50
PM). My initial fear was that there was a death in the family or she was
extremely sick and in the hospital, all kinds of terrible things were crossing
my mind.

So I opened the first email. Can you guess what it was?

She had some changes to a project we were doing for her. At 11:50
PM, she wanted a simple change done to her websiteright away. Now, I know I
work some late hours as a Micropreneur, but I do NOT check email at midnight.

Well, I checked the other 3 emails, and they were all in the same
vein. A word added here, a change made there, nothing that really couldn’t
wait. They were all just things that she had thought of, and she decided to
email them to me right then and there.

No one had died, no one was in the hospital, and she wasn’t
deathly ill at home stuck in bed. And most importantly, none of them would adversely
affect her business if they didn’t get done at 11:50 PM. And yet, they were all
marked “Urgent!”

So, this begs the question, what really is “Urgent!”
I’m sure to a Micropreneur whose income depends on their business; every little
thing is “Urgent!” And to an extent, when I’m working on my own
business, I sometimes have moments of “Urgent!” feelings.

But what does “Urgent!” really mean?

For me, when I think of “Urgent!” I think of life or
death, and I measure my urgencies by that standard. For example, if my
newsletter doesn’t go out by my promised date, is someone going to die, be
severely injured, or be really put out to the point of tears? Probably not, as
most of you don’t even know that I send them out the same time each month and
probably wouldn’t miss it if I skipped a month. So to me, that is not
“Urgent!” In the same vein, a link on a website that will in no way
increase sales or traffic is not really “Urgent!”

Now I’m not saying to abandon commitments. But there has to come
a point in life where the “Urgency!” stops. If it doesn’t, one,
you’re going to run yourself into the ground, and two, you’re going to become
known as the “Client who cries Urgent!’” And neither is a positive.

So how do we want to qualify an issue that really is “Urgent!”?

An “Urgent!” item is one that will adversely affect
your business if it’s not taken care of immediately. Truly “Urgent!”
items are usually caused when a micropreneur falls into “crisis mode”
or “I’ve gotten so far behind I don’t know what to do next.”

Sound familiar? Don’t worry, it does to me too. But there are
things we can do to avoid both crisis mode and “Urgent!” items.

First, when you have something that you think is really
“Urgent!” ask yourself: “If this does NOT get handled right now,
what will happen to my business?” If the answer is “Not Much,”
then it’s probably not “Urgent!”

If a simple website change is something you consider to be
“Urgent!” then you may already be in crisis mode, and you’re stressed
to the max. Meaning, you’re running around so much working IN your business
that you have no time to work ON your business. You can’t see the forest for
the trees and you need to take some time to get organized.

So how do I start?

1.