Your taxes are done, you’ve put away the winter boots and you’ve deep cleaned your home. (Hopefully you’ve spring cleaned your time management system too). Now that you’ve tackled the most challenging parts of spring, it’s time to celebrate the season.
Are you feeling spring fever? Everything just feels a little bit easier on a warm, breezy spring day. After months of dark evenings and gray skies and being stuck at home, you can see nature coming back to life all around you—even when you’re just running to the grocery store. It’s energizing to see how things change in spring.
Spring Fever Isn’t In Your Imagination, By The Way…
Researchers have studied how seasonal changes affect mood and have confirmed what we all know anecdotally: people tend to feel happier in warm, sunny weather than in cold winter weather. Spring feels especially good because it’s such a contrast to what came before it. If you live in the Northeast, a 75-degree day in April can feel like a special treat from the universe.
An especially beautiful day might inspire you to make outdoor plans with friends, or start ripping up a garden bed in anticipation of planting new flowers. It feels like coming out of hibernation. You might start going for more walks or bike rides, greeting all the people you pass who are out doing the same thing. It seems like we’ve all been experiencing spring fever even more acutely since the pandemic began. If you mostly stayed at home this winter out of caution, being able to get outdoors and be around other people again can be a huge relief.
There’s just an energy about spring. When your mood is high from enjoying a perfect spring day, it feels like anything is possible. By July, a sunny 75-degree day is just a typical day. It’s nice, but it’s not special or new the way it is in the early days of spring.
What Can You Do With Your Spring Fever Energy?
The mood boost and energy spike that you get in spring is temporary, so you need to harness it while you’re in that moment and before the novelty of the season wears off.
Think of spring fever as a once-a-year launch pad that you can use to move yourself and your business forward. It’s the perfect time to take action in a meaningful way that’s going to help you get closer to living the life you want.
What will that forward-focused action look like for you? Maybe you already know exactly what project you want to tackle with your spring fever energy. Excellent! Make sure you have your time management system set up with enough flexibility so you can give the necessary time to your project without dropping the ball on your other most important tasks.
If you have no idea where to focus your extra spring energy, ask yourself this:
How can I invest in myself, so I can move my business forward this year?
Busy Professionals Often Put Themselves Last On The To-Do List
They focus on running their businesses and making sure they’re taking care of their teams and clients. Outside of work time, they’re caring for kids, spouses, pets and aging parents. They’re checking in on friends. There’s so much to get done every day that they tend to run out of time and energy to spend time on their own deep needs. One day they look up and realize they’ve been running on autopilot for years this way.
Sometimes all it takes is a little extra energy to catapult yourself out of a rut—and that’s what spring fever provides.
This spring, give yourself permission to invest in yourself. It might mean an investment of time, money or both. Take inspiration from the new growth all around you as you think about a way you would like to grow and stretch and learn. And then, go out and do it.
3 Tips for Investing in Yourself
#1: Identify a core issue that’s holding you back from feeling like the best version of yourself.
Maybe you’re ready to really address your time management and productivity challenges so you can create more free time for an important passion project. Maybe you feel like overcoming your fear of public speaking with some coaching could help you pitch bigger and bigger clients. Or maybe you feel self-conscious about your dated or ill-fitting suits, and investing in a new wardrobe would fill you with more confidence. Look for relatively fast changes you can make that will yield dividends in the future.
#2: Get really clear about what resources you can afford to spend.
Investing in yourself and your business nearly always takes both time and money. You might need to spend some time looking through your accounts and crunching numbers to find a budget range that you’re comfortable investing in yourself. Knowing that you can afford any expenditures you make should remove the guilt you feel about putting time and money into self-improvement.
#3: Make yourself accountable.
Tell people in your life about the investment you’re making in yourself. Not only because you should be proud, but also because it’s easier to follow through on a new challenge if you know that people are going to be asking you about it every time they see you.
If you want more support with time management so you can create space to live the life you want, I’m here to help. Jump Start Your Productivity LIVE! Virtual Workshop is a small investment of time and money that will pay you back with more time to focus on those spring projects. If you want to feel like you’re living your most productive and meaningful life and have the time to take care of yourself and your loved ones, I hope it’s an investment you’re willing to make.
We start May 5th—click here for more information and to register!
Enjoy your spring!
Gratefully,
Sarah
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