Have you been experiencing overwhelm due to new projects or just that this is the first part of the New Year? Are you having problems staying focused on your projects or plans for the New Year? The New Year has started and like many, I have “new plans” for the “New Year”. Along with the new plan can come a lot of expectation to have successful and rewarding projects.

One thing that I have built into my plans for the New Year is “me time” so that I don’t get overwhelmed. If you have been experiencing “overwhelm”, I want to share a few tips to help you “overcome the overwhelm of the New Year”.

• Plan “me time” into your week where you take time to concentrate on pampering yourself.
• Use project planning software to manage your many projects. This will help you to manage your resources, staff technology, and project.
• Be open and flexible, especially if you have new projects that you have started.
• Keep in mind that you can delegate tasks to a virtual team member to alleviate some of the pressure off of you.
• Monitor your progress so that you will be able to look back to see what you have accomplished as the year proceeds.

As you overcome the overwhelm of the New Year, celebrate your successes and keep encouraging yourself. I would love to hear what you have to share on how you deal with “the overwhelm” feeling that you can get as a business owner when dealing with the New Year.

On a day when I am discussing “Me” time, I actually started my day off with “me” time. It is a Saturday morning and I decided to sleep in an extra couple of hours. I enjoyed the extra rest and being able to take my time on a day where I might busily run around doing errands.

“Me” time should be very important to business owners because it allows you to rejuvenate and refresh. Although I spoken about “me” time briefly in this series, I decided that it would be a good idea to expand on it today.

If you are constantly going and not breaking for “me” time you can stress yourself and maybe have a negative impact on your business. I say this from personal experience because I learned the hard way when I crashed and burned during an important time with my business a few years ago.

It was growing tremedously fast and I was trying to be super woman by taking on too many projects. I was burning the candle at both ends of the candle (going to bed late and rising early to work on projects). After doing this for an extended time, I literally started making mistakes and getting fuzzy about project details which wasn’t good at all. I ended up having to take a break from my business so that I could recuperate thoroughly.

If I had been working smart, I would have spaced out my projects better and allowed myself more “me” time. Some of the things I learned from this experience are the following:

• “Me” time is not only important for me personally but for my business also.
• Space out projects so that I don’t get overwhelmed.
• Outsource to contractors those tasks that someone else can handle so that I can manage my projects better.
• Plan my project on a schedule so that I’m not overwhelmed.

I encourage all business owners to remember to take “me” time so that you and your business can stay healthy. Do you have special things that you do during your “me” time so that you don’t become overwhelmed? Please feel free to share.