Trying to build or run an online business has additional challenges when you also suffer from a chronic health condition.
Like when you feel you WANT to make some progress on it, but yet again pain or exhaustion have arisen and bitten you on the rear-end (or in the joints, neck, fingers etc!)
You genuinely LOVE working on your business, but there are often times when you’re absolutely worn out from life.
Or, a toddler has kept you awake most of the last few nights, climbing into your bed and then fidgeting and poking you about all night!
You don’t have a lot of energy, and to be honest, you should probably just think “F*** it” and go to bed!
But you also want to feel like your day has been a teensy weensy bit productive too (particularly as the aforementioned toddler is at the childminder all day and you don’t want to waste your child-free time doing nothing!).
So here’s a list of ‘easy’ jobs you could do that still enables you to feel like you’re doing something, even when you should probably be doing nothing:
1. Get onto Pinterest or one of the many photo-sharing websites and mindlessly browse for images for your next batch of social media posts.
- Create a board entitled “Inspiration” and pin the heck out of everything that catches your eye, or create a folder on your phone/laptop/tablet and save the images you love and could potentially use in the future.Â
- Even if you’re half-asleep/half-dead whilst doing it, you can’t screw this up, and when you’re feeling more productive, having a look at any patterns in the colours that you subconsciously chose to pin/save might give new insights into some brand colours that could work for you.
2. Open up Canva (it’s FREE, and if you haven’t found it yet, where have you been!) and play around with possibilities.
- Try out new colour and font combinations, browse the elements and backgrounds and try some new ideas.
3. Pretend to yourself that you’re learning something useful!
- Fire up something like one of the free Canva tutorials on graphic design and branding, or one of the 2,000 Udemy courses you’ve signed up to do, then fall asleep in front of it… 😉
4. Open up a new Word document or OneNote page and start making a compilation of quotes.
- Find ones that you love that can be used for your Instagram feed and other social media sharings.
5. Get onto YouTube and watch/delete some of the business-related videos you’ve been adding to your Watch Later playlist.
- You’ve been adding them for the last couple of years but have never made time to actually watch them, and now most of them are obsolete or irrelevant 😀 Time to clear them out!
6. Ditto with all the Facebook groups you’ve signed up to ‘mastermind’ in.
- But have never got round to even introducing yourself….
7. Ditto with about 90% of those eCourses and eBooks you’ve amassed over the years on your hard drive and in your inbox!
- You know the ones I mean, where you got sent an email once from an entrepreneur you followed via a Facebook share that resonated with you, inviting you to buy a bundle of 632 AMAZING business resources for just $99.Â
- And even though you only wanted that one course on branding (and maybe that eBook on building your email list looked useful too) you STILL signed up for every single one of those damn resources!Â
- Because it could ALL be useful in the future and you did have an inkling one time to start podcasting, right?!Â
- And even though you’ve NEVER had any intention of running those luxury yoga retreats in the Bahamas that mumpreneur Karen Bridgenorth and her lycra-clad husband from Texas are offering an ecourse on all about how to set up and profit BIG from!!
8. And yes, I KNOW you’re still signed up to all 632 fricking email lists too!
- So use this time to go through and unsubscribe from the ones that you will NEVER use (with apologies to Karen and your lycra-clad husband for encouraging your list subscribers to decrease…).
9. Go through that umpteen TB stash of PLR resources you have amassed.Â
- Blow the digital dust off your hard drive and finally ditch that How to Create Your Own Digital Ebook video training course that was recorded in Windows 95, that you were always going to add to your offerings on your website or send to your list as a freebie.Â
- Yes, I KNOW it cost you £27 to buy back in 2005 and came with a tonne of bonuses too, but you know what?Â
- You might as well declutter the bonuses too because I’m going to let you in on a little secret; most of them were crap anyway, which is why they were being given away for free! Â
- Believe me, you won’t miss it and you’ll never be able to sell it on your website now, as nobody wants ebooks that are packaged as executable programs any more… 😉
10. Finally, just flipping rest!Â
- You’re a human being and sometimes you just have to accept that you need a damn break.Â
- Studies have shown that resting can actually make us MORE productive, so you’re actually doing your productivity a favour by taking that much-needed time to rest and recuperate.