Habits, Goal Setting, Self Care, Weight Lifting, Singing and Mindfulness with Faye Watts of FUSE Accountants LLP. What We Recommended: Tools & Apps Salesforce, a CRM and Sales Platform – “In the office we use a thing called Salesforce, which is an on-line platform. All of our software is on-line based, web based, so that we can have access anywhere. That means that it gives me and the rest of the staff the opportunity to work from home or elsewhere at any time with instant access.” Rightmove – for inspiration “is my other favourite app because that gives me the inspiration. I love property and I love architecture and it just gives me the inspiration to want to achieve more and get a bigger house. It helps me focus … It’s almost like looking at my dream houses and that helps wire me and gets me working towards goals.” Books More Balls Than Most by Lara Morgan Lean In by Sheryl Sandberg Music Country Music – “For me, I’d rather turn the music up loud in my downtime. I like country music so I turn that up as loud as I can and just get into my zone.” Tips Really important to stick to a routine “Well, I have to stick to a routine because I’m rubbish otherwise. If I don’t, I don’t keep my day on track. I schedule everything I do. I have a routine in the mornings, I catch up on emails. Then, I always make sure before lunch I work on one job to get it out the door. That might be a client’s tax return, some accounting, some advice, whatever that might be.” Schedule telephone calls including with clients – “I tend to schedule phone calls with clients for half an hour, an hour, if I know that they want to discuss something in detail rather than get into the habit of allowing phone calls to interrupt the day and then you lose momentum.” Minimise distractions, especially when working at home – “I don’t like distractions in terms of when I’m at work. I think when you’re working it’s important not to use the time to put washing on in between or decide to do an hour of ironing. I think it’s key that when you’re working you’re working, no matter what environment you’re in, that you still have dedicated time slots.” Being clear about what’s work and what isn’t and how to switch between the two – “When I go home I go home. That’s it. Time out. I have a personal trainer that I train with twice a week and I do that within working hours. I have a 9am on a Friday morning and a 5pm on a Monday evening. The point of that is they’re in working hours because they really are a disciplined time of my day. They’re an appointment that I can’t reschedule so that my evening time is my evening time. I have a very clear line between what is work and what is life.” Planning and goal setting is essential – “I diarise everything wherever I can and I’ve got to-do lists in every part of my life. I’ve got to-do lists personally. I even have a list of all the restaurants I want to go to, and all the things I want to do, and the countries I want to go to, and the hotel I want to stay in. Also, from a daily point of view, I break my task list down into today’s to-do list and maybe this month’s or this year’s so I have clear goals. Though using the word ‘to-do list’ I think is a little bit harsh and it can be a bit draining. You think, “I’ve got to do that.” Whereas, perhaps having a year’s goal list or a goal plan or having today’s priorities, try and avoid the to-do list because I think that’s really onerous.” Self Care is key to business success – “ I looked at my health, my diet, my weight, managed to lose some weight, and really focused this year on mindfulness and stepping back from work and saying, ‘Okay, my health is just as important as my work because it effectively has a knock on effect on what I do and how I work.’ My job’s very taxing, for want of a better cliché.” Eating healthily is really important and it’s about working out what works for you – “Mentally, I used to suffer with a lot of brain fog and confusion if my diet was poor. I found that if I changed my way of eating, and my patterns of eating, my diet, and my whole exercise routine, that I managed to eliminate the negatives of that. I’m a bit of a low carb girl, a bit of a high protein and veg. I know what works for me. I know what doesn’t work for me and my weakness right now is coffee gelato. Then, I’m in real trouble. Work on improving your habits – “You lose habits really quickly if you have the right mindset. It’s just forming habits. I think you just have to be really conscious of habits that you’ve formed and the ones that make you feel positive and the ones that make you feel negative. It’s strange to me to have such discipline, but it’s discipline that forms a habit and then once you’ve got the habit it just becomes part of your life.” Comment from Jo “I was reading something the other day. I think it’s from the book, “The One Thing.” It was talking about how habits are formed through little pockets of self-discipline. People think that successful people are really disciplined 24/7 sort of thing. It was making the point that that isn’t necessarily the case. It’s just about having enough discipline to do that one thing and to do that one thing on a regular basis to the point it then becomes a habit. Then, you don’t need the self-discipline because you just do it. Then, you use that discipline for something else, which I thought was really interesting.” Doing meditative things for mindfulness Faye is improving her weight dead lifting “it’s also really amazing on your mind because you cannot think of anything else. You’re in the zone where you’re just pushing your body to its limit. Even though it’s not physically relaxing, it’s mentally relaxing because your brain can’t think about anything else and you just switch off”. And Faye also sings “There’s a lot of focus, and you’re thinking about the words, you’re thinking about the sounds, you’re thinking about the vowels, and everything when you’re singing. Again, there’s no place to think of anything else. Also, it’s so deeply relaxing and enjoyable if you make a nice sound.” I want to learn anything new. I like the idea of stretching my brain, not in terms of more education, but more knowledge and power and more … I think it helps you improve strength of character and your own emotional intelligence. That’s probably more important. Turning your phone off – “when I do get home the phone goes upside down on the hall room table. I mean, I check it occasionally because my work and my personal phone are the same. I couldn’t deal with two phones. I do just come and look at it, but I won’t look at my emails because my emails will only ever be work related, but I’ll check my texts or whatever.” Pets – “I’ve also got a kitten so I love to come home to my little kitten. He gives me a lot of pleasure.” “I have certain rules. I won’t put my mobile phone on charge in my bedroom and I don’t have a TV in my bedroom because I think the bedroom and sleeping is … It’s for two things, the bedroom. We’ll leave it at that. I like that to be a zen. It’s a very, very neutral zen.” Websites Pinterest – “I love Pinterest. It’s my obsession actually because I create a mood board and all the things that inspire me. Actually, I learn from that as well. Visually I’m learning things. I think everything you learn from if you just open your mind to it.” To Contact Faye Twitter @taxandtea FUSE Accountants FayeWatts.com LinkedIn The post Faye Watts: Habits, Goal Setting, Self Care, Weight Lifting, Singing and Mindfulness first appeared on POWER to Live More.
