This special 7-day online blog event is brought to you by Biba Pedron from Your Business in Style. Today I introduce you to Karin Stewart from DailyMastery.com
As someone who is an introvert, yet spends a significant part of her days with people, either coaching them, networking or otherwise engaging them, I know first-hand the challenges of balancing my business needs with my innate tendency for solitude, and the impact of ignoring it.
When I forget to balance the two, I find myself quickly frazzled, my mood deteriorates (I become quite snappy! Just ask my husband), and I start to get fewer and fewer things done, because I just want to drop everything and go hide in a cave away from everyone. But when I give myself the alone time I need, everyone benefits: my clients, my family, my productivity, and, most importantly, myself.
As a productivity and work-life balance coach, I have met many clients who are like me and need to balance their introversion with an extrovert career or simply living in an extrovert world. Here is what I teach them:
Balancing moments of solitude and calm with moments of interaction is absolutely necessary for everyone. The difference between the introvert and the extrovert is in the amount of time needed. Introvert need a lot more of it. In a extrovert’s career (sales, marketing, representation, etc.), it is particularly difficult to find those moments, since the job requires you to be on representation all day long. However, there are still ways that you can do it, so that you can enjoy your work and balance it with your need for recharging alone time:
– Block in your calendar, every day, alone time. This is not time to focus on your work without interruption, even though you need this too, this time is for recharging your batteries in solitude. It can be time you choose before or after work; it could be lunch taken alone, in a quiet place; time spent going to the local library and read a book in a calm environment; time walking in nature.
– Take advantage of the natural slow moments to do a mini-recharge session. For instance, try to go to a client’s office on your own, as a solitude time. After a meeting with someone, take a couple of minutes alone to recenter.
– When you can’t be away from people, for instance if you work in a cubicle, use relaxation and meditation techniques for a few minutes several times a day, if possible with earphones on your head to drown out the ambient chatter – just make sure to listen to relaxing music or noise such as white noise or the sound of ocean waves rather than rap or hard rock.
– Make sure to sleep enough. Sleep is the most important element to being able to face the more challenging aspects of our lives. Sleep deprivation dramatically reduces our resiliency and makes it much easier for us to have difficulty dealing with the challenges that people around us come to us with. 90% of the population needs between 7.5 and 8.5 hours of sleep. Take them, you will see a dramatic difference within a day or two.
Following those tips will allow you, as an introvert, to engage more fully in the extrovert world – and to be much more productive as well. And if you are an extrovert reading this article? Put those tips in action as well. While you may need less of it, and your recharging activities may be different, you too need regular time to recharge.
Do you want to learn how to truly master your day so that you can have the life you want and enjoy it?
Visit DailyMastery.com to download your three gifts, The 5-Minute Time Management Solution, Daily Mastery’s 10 Top Time Management Mistakes and The Best-Kept Secret for Peak Productivity.
Karin Stewart, Ph.D., is a specialist in time, stress and energy management and work-life balance, and shows service professionals, solopreneurs and working moms how to get more done, in less time, and without the stress every day, so they can fully enjoy their lives. Working both in person and by phone, Karin’s clientele spans the country and the globe and includes individuals as well as organizations.