Hello 17H10 club!

As explained in our last newsletter, our ambition is to analyze in more detail on a range of topics covering women's entrepreneurship, the world of work, everyday life and, of course, tailored looks. ❤️

If our last article was aimed at those who find it hard to switch off while on vacation, this one is for those who have chosen to develop projects this summer.

We all have projects in mind, some quite crazy, others more pragmatic, whether it's starting another business outside work, getting back into sport, learning a new language, starting a new career, or all at once for the overachievers. If you too need to have 45 projects and 610 windows open in your browser to stay stimulated, but can't always manage to stay focused on your plans... 🥶 This article is for you. 😎

Based on an episode of one of our favorite entrepreneurship podcasts, "J'peux pas j'ai business", by Aline from TheBBoost, as well as our own research, we've put together a roundup of tips for you to follow to stay motivated and regular in your personal projects or in your business launched outside of work.

AMBITION FOR THE WIN!

As Aline describes in her podcast episode "How to stay consistent and disciplined in your business",self-discipline is crucial to the achievement of our projects. The entrepreneur gives us her advice on how to stay consistent in what we want to achieve.

In fact, it's difficult to rely solely on motivation, since it fluctuates with time, context and energy.

The first step, according to Aline, is to remember why we undertook this project in the first place. Is it part of a larger goal that will benefit us in the long term?

Knowing why we do a task and putting it into context makes it more plausible to achieve our goals.

So, here are a few tips we've picked up while listening to this episode of TheBBoost podcast to help us stay regular in our projects and achieve our goals successfully.

1. Set simple goals at the outset, then gradually increase the difficulty. Setting unattainable goals and writing lengthy to-do lists is more likely to lead us to abandon the project and procrastinate than if we take things one step at a time, breaking down a big goal into smaller steps.
2. Block a time slot in the diary right away. These days, everyone is always short of time, unless you decide to block off a special moment to take care of it. The best thing to do is to block off your diary in advance, so that you can force yourself to follow up on the project, on the same day or at the same time every time if possible, in order to make it a habit. For example, I set aside 2 slots a week to go to the gym, and I try not to deviate from this habit. As time goes by, I won't even question the possibility of not going to the gym (yes, it's true!).
3. Give yourself a start date and an end date. We're more likely to give up if we can't see our projects through to the end. We need to know when we're going to take stock, to give our brain a framework, and make it want to keep going. To give another example, I want to start learning Italian this summer, and from July to the end of August, I need to be able to know the conjugations of basic verbs, as well as simple vocabulary on the theme of my choice.
4. Have a tracker, a way of keeping track of the project, whether it's a diary or the calendar app on your phone to check off what's been done, keep track of progress, and create reminders if needed. For example, if I want to launch my business on the side, I create a Google calendar or buy a paper diary specifically for this project, so that I can keep track of my progress, and I integrate it concretely into my daily organization.
5. Having an accountability partner to call us to order if we don't keep our commitments. Making a public commitment to someone outside ourselves helps us to be consistent, as we tend to want to honor our reputation.
6. Give ourselves positive rewards at every stage to motivate our brain to keep going, based on the principle of positive and negative reinforcement. Every time we reach our goals, or every time we reach a milestone, remember to reward ourselves, even if this isn't obvious to everyone. And yet, the promise of a gift to ourselves motivates us to work just as hard to achieve our next successes, without becoming demotivated.
7. Pride and personal challenge: If we've come this far, why give up now when we've already put in so much effort? Challenges lead us to push our limits, to learn more about ourselves, and above all to be proud of our personal and professional achievements.

In addition to these 7 points, in the course of our research we've come across a few tips to help you stay focused on your projects.

• Deep work vs shallow work: widely used in America, these terms designate two different states and ways of working, to be fitted into our agenda according to our mood or energy level. Deep work is work that requires a great deal of concentration, such as doing research or making important decisions. So we need to be in a state of flow and focus, at the peak of our energy. Depending on how you organize yourself, it's best to book time at the beginning or middle of the day to accomplish these tasks. Shallow work, on the other hand, requires little concentration. So we book time in our day, especially in the evening, for automatic activities that don't require much effort. 

• Try to multitask less: It's well known that many of us seem to multi-task, leaving 45 windows open and jumping from one task to another, yet our brains are not programmed to handle too much information and too many tasks at once, at the risk of saturating too quickly and no longer making effective progress on each individual task.

• Have visual reminders on a daily basis: put your sneakers outside the door to remind you to go for a run every morning, stick post-its on the wall to remind you to work on your side business every time you come home from work... Or put colored vocabulary cards on the living room table so you can see them every day, all with the aim of notprocrastinating on our progress.

And of course, don't forget to take breaks, so you don't get discouraged in the long run.

We hope you enjoy this second article in the magazine format, and that all your ambitious projects come to fruition with flying colors!