*** IN THIS ISSUE ***

– Balancing Work and Life Away from the Computer
– Back Track to Issue 1.5!
– Notes from PaintChip

Balancing Work and Life Away from the Computer

Wendy Piercall an entrepreneur and mom wrote a two-part article about balance work and home life . In the first half of her article she talks about peoples misunderstanding of the time spent working by home workers.

When you mention to people that you are an entrepreneur and work from home in a digi-scrapping business - what’s the response you get? Sometimes people react with envy over the flexibility and freedom they think entrepreneurs enjoy. Well most folks who actually have this lifestyle, know that it can be very difficult to balance between work and non-work time, maybe even more than it is for work-away-from-home employees do. No doubt this is a challenge for many, many people whether they work from home or not. That’s no different for digi-scrap careerists either.

The evidence is strong that the self-employed work longer hours than employees; this has been the case since at least 1987. Statistics state that 33% of self-employed persons work over 50 hours compared with only 5% of employees.

According to the SBA (Small Business Association) 50% of small businesses fail in the first year and 95% fail in the first 5 years. That’s some pretty scary numbers, my friend! Common reasons include not enough capital, lack of knowledge, poor planning and insufficient cash flow. Another factor that plays into these numbers is burnout.

Burnout is just as lethal to your business as lack of cash or knowledge. The question isn’t always one of numbers though. Working 50 hours a week isn’t always what causes burnout. It’s really the lack of balance. It a matter of managing our time and energies so we aren’t experiencing exhaustion over and over again.

Finding a happy medium in our lives.

Check out Wendy’s second article for 20 tips to keep from overworking yourself.

I’m like many of you - I work fulltime outside of my home and run my digi-scrap business as well. So I’m an employee and an entrepreneur. You can bet I’ve come up against the problem of burnout. As the saying does… “been there, done that, and got the T-shirt”… and learn my lessons from it too!

There’s no sure fire fix or easy formula that works for everyone. I think that sometimes the only way to know how to balance work and life is to know when you’re unbalanced. To recognize the signs - which again, may be different for you than they are for me. For me one of the first signs is lack of patience. I find myself getting easily agitated with myself and the people around me. Experiencing that “short fuse” syndrome. Another sign is when I’m feeling tired
even after a good night of sleep. If it’s taking me longer to get ready for my day than usual and I have to “push” myself into action - I know that I’m nearing that burnout point.

It’s when I see these traits in myself that I must remind myself to listen to my body and my mind. It’s telling me important information. Mainly that I need to pull myself away from the silly computer, take more time for myself, and put things back into balance. Listening to the voice in my head is the best way to keep from experiencing burnout.

I know this from experience and I’d say you have probably experienced the same in one way or another. Are you listening to your inner voice and taking the breaks you need to avoid burnout?  I sincerely hope you are listening.

Back Track to the 1.5 Issue!

I sneaked an extra business report into my auto-responder series.  If your sign-up time clashed with my update, you may not have received the notification.  If you missed Issue #1.5 you can go back and catch it online.  Included in that issue was information about RSS and why you should offer it project! Check it out now.

Notes from Paint Chip

We are still moving forward at top-speed on preparing to launch the official DSD-Pro Business Association website. The community forums will be an integral part of the association and it’s what we are working on now. It’s where we will be hosting our business tutorials, providing peer coaching, and more services, products and information directed at digital scrapbooking professionals. For more information about our progress, just bounce over to our pre-launch blog:

We’ll make sure you stay in the loop on our progress through this blog. Consider subscribing to the RSS feed if you never want to miss an announcement about the association!

UPDATE: You can now join our forum through the Business Association membership at http://dsd-pro.com/association. I do hope you’ll join us!

That’s it for our 3rd business reports briefing. I do hope this issue gave you something new to think about for your scrappy business!

Very Respectfully,
Cindy Angiel (aka - Paint Chip)
paintchip[at]dsd-professionals[dot]com