I write this with a heavy heart. Late last week, we lost six of our eight chickens.
Things were going so well. The chickens had picked up on the remodeling vibe and asked that we provide them with some additional outdoor living space. So, we expanded beyond their 10-by-10-foot chicken run into a 20-by-30-foot outdoor space with a play structure and a covering to protect them from flying predators. We also invested in an automatic chicken door that protected them at night. The hens were laying, the roosters were crowing (though our youngest rooster, Sven, seemed to sound more like a choking frog) and I was really getting into the groove of being a chicken mama.
But last Friday morning, that all changed. I will spare you the details, partly because they are so depressing, but also because I was out of town and missed it all. When I arrived home on Friday evening, we were down to two chickens. And Oden, our aggressive rooster, had lost all his tail feathers and was resting in the nesting box. He was so traumatized that he even let Mike pet him.
It is so hard for me to go up to the coop now. There are feathers all over the run, and it is so quiet with just two (traumatized) chickens. I know I need to keep moving toward achieving my goal but right now, I have lost my energy and focus for being a chicken mama.
I wonder how many business owners have dealt with those same emotions over this past year. Sales are down, employees are sick, uncertainty is all around. Please don’t think that I’m equating the loss of chickens to what many people have experienced in the past year. I can’t even imagine those losses. But loss is something we will all face at some point, and we’ll have to make the decision to move past it.
Still, moving forward takes energy and focus, and at times, that can be hard to muster up. For me, as I looked at my path forward, I fell back on what I know: process, or more specifically, the EOS tool on Compartmentalizing.
This tool helped me set my one-year goal (not buying eggs from the store) followed by my priorities for the next 90 days, then set my activities for the next seven days. As I did this, I realized I had issues that needed to be addressed in the short term (getting more chickens so I won’t have an oversexed hen) and the long term (building a coop to separate newly hatched chicks from the full-grown chickens). By using this tool, I created a plan to move forward that feels achievable.
This is a powerful tool that can help anyone stay focused on reaching their goals. In fact, I used it last month with a CEO who is in the process of expanding his business into a higher-margin, more technical industry. Once we completed this EOS document, he started to get clarity on what he needed to work on for the next 90 days. He was able to prioritize his issues by relative urgency. As he faced problems throughout the day, he was able to filter them with this tool. He would ask himself, “Does this need to be addressed in the next 90 days?” If the answer was yes, he would add it to the Short-Term Issue List. If not, he would add it to the Long-Term Issue list and then go back to working on his top priorities. Even after a week, he shared that he had regained focus and energy that had been missing from his business for quite a while.
That is what I appreciate about EOS and what it does for my clients. Simple tools properly applied will get you amazing results. If you feel like you have lost your mojo, let’s talk. Together, we can regain it and bring you increased focus, accelerated growth and boosted profitability.
