Follow up Friday: The Bare Essentials -Taking my Laptop and Cell Phone for Sure!

This week’s reflection questions: If you have to pack yourself up and live or work somewhere else for a few days, what would you take with you? What priorities would you focus on and leave the rest for another day or just take off the list?

If I was displaced for a few days, and I could still, or needed to work, I would take my laptop, cell phone and a notebook. As noted, by the picture, staying hydrated is also important!

These are the bare essentials that one needs to work these days. Because of the nature of my business - coaching, training and consulting – I am either on site at clients or on the computer or on the phone. Even though I rely heavily on technology as a tool, I still prefer to do some of my best brainstorming and thinking via hand written notes, thus the journal notebook. But, these are the bare essentials required in terms of tools.

In terms of priorities, the focus would be: client meetings, business development activities and the operations (website, financials, etc.) - in this order. The focus is creating value today, discovering opportunities for tomorrow and making sure everything is running okay. While there are a lot of details in these three items, essentially all activities fall into these three areas. Being a small business owner, if anything falls off in the short-term, it’s the operations. The people relationships are the most important – and yet the operations are the systems and structures that enable everything to run smoothly in the long run, so the operations can’t be neglected for too long.

Ironically after I invited this question in, there was a horrendous storm with 80-100 mile an hour winds that cut through the area two nights ago. The friend I stayed with last weekend when I was displaced had a transformer right outside her house effected. When she looked outside she saw four potentially combustible fires that burned for four hours, into the wee hours of the morning. She called yesterday to tell me her house is roped off like a crime scene with no access to get out of her driveway.

We discussed her walking down the street and me driving as far as I could go to get her and have her come and stay at my house until things are fixed. She has a generator and decided to stay put, and noted how well she is finally getting to know her neighbors after living there for twelve years. Amazing what displacement can do in terms of connecting people!

If my situation was as such that there was no access to electricity or wifi, I’d be forced to let go of all “the stuff” held by, and within, technology for a while. I’d be in conversation with others, be in nature, and be with my own thoughts. When it comes down to it – these are really the bare essentials of what we need to survive and thrive. All the rest are enablers and supports.

What about you? How do you think about the bare essentials of your business or your life?

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