Hey! Lindsey Higgins, founder of by Niche. I get asked a lot how I get so much done in an hour, a day, a week, a month… Honestly…. A lot of people can! Some moms I know lovingly parent 3 kids, run a business, have a vibrant relationship with the love of their life, lead charity organizations in the community, have active social lives, etc… Some investment bankers I know work in front of a computer screen entering numbers and running models and preparing presentations literally 8am to 2am a few days a week for like 3 years of their lives. Because they have a dream and a vision of where they want to be and how they want to live some day. So many are busy, so many are getting a LOT done in a seemingly miraculous way. So I don’t pretend to be special here!! But since you’re asking, and more specifically, since Samantha Strand (savvy young business mogul on-the-rise and daughter of one of our clients, Jill of Uplift Fitness), with Better You has invited me to write about my life outlook and approach to the business world, I’ve come up with some of the active ingredients that seem to be part of my professional productivity!
1. Stay healthy. You are your secret weapon. But you are only one person. With a body with very real limits. And a mind with very real limits. Be aware of those, honor those. Check your vitals! Are you eating well, sleeping well, exercising, drinking water. Is your home and work space clean, comfortable, inspiring? As a former mental health therapist I noticed that many personal problems could be alleviated by first fixing those things!
2. Focus on the priority of the moment. This is always evolving for me. As business owner of by Niche, I have many roles with many avenues of work vying for my attention. Operations, sales, team training, bookkeeping, our own marketing, business development, networking… the list goes on (and on and on and on). Then with many clients and varying levels of urgencies per task and as well as amount of hours allocated per project, there is a real weighted system which must be kept in mind in order for our business to stay healthy, effective and lucrative. I have to decide – for this hour, I will focus entirely on ___. If something comes up in that hour that needs to suddenly be a priority, I have to quickly evaluate and then decide to give that my attention and energy for ____ amount of time before returning to initial priority. The to-do list is endless. But we can use our best judgment to determine the priority to focus on, and then unapologetically give that our focus.
3. Stay inspired. Learn from those a few steps ahead of you and Find and spend regular time with people whose lives and careers embody where you would like to be in 3, 5, 10, 30 years. I have been lucky enough to encounter incredible, inspiring people at just the right moments in my career who have given me just what I needed in that moment to make it to the next phase or to make a tough business decision. There are people in the world whose life experiences and accrued knowledge make them wise and full of beautiful insights that would have taken us 25 unnecessary mistakes to arrive at. These people are gold to your career. Honor them and support them. Learn from them.
4. Stay grounded. Do not forget about real people, real relationships, and in-person memory-making and moment-collecting! Life, especially in NYC, can whiz by and it’s the richness of shared life experiences that bring meaning and depth to our lives. Do things often and regularly that replenish your core. I noted above some of mine– impressionist art, a good slow jam, white sand beaches, a good quality periodic shoe splurge.
5. Have a mantra. For the year, for the season, for the moment. Literally say it out loud. There are literal entire schools of thought in psychology and highly empirically-supported cognitive explanations to the benefit of audible self-talk. It connects your language production portion of your brain – Broca’s area, in the frontal lobe region- responsible for executive functioning including inhibition-control, planning, attention/focus, physically speaking connects that area to the longer-term memory areas like the hippocampus, meaning you really begin to own and operate under that thought! So so amazing how the brain works and how we really can train ourselves to believe the best in ourselves and be the best version of ourselves. Our brains and bodies will catch on 😉
6. Just do. Go, go, go. Put legs to your dreams. Put walk to your talk and get after it!!
I’ve never been good at keeping things brief. Haha, so if you’ve read all the way through this, consider me impressed and also honored. Thanks for your time. Best wishes on your endeavors, you got this! I hope you’ll follow me and by Niche on Instagram, @byniche and Twitter, @byniche to stay connected!
