5 Tips to Stay Focused at Work During a Personal Crisis

5 Tips to Stay Focused at Work During a Personal Crisis

 A personal crisis could strike any person at any time, and it doesn’t matter how stable or happy your life might otherwise be – the effects can be devastating. A personal crisis will be on your mind almost constantly, no matter how much you might want a break from it. You are also likely to take the problem to work with you no matter how hard you try to put on a brave face.

No matter how hard you might try to get your work done, it can be all but impossible to prevent other thoughts from creeping in and harming your productivity. Your performance at work can begin to suffer as you lose focus, potentially causing harm to your professional life. It’s a fairly common issue, and around 47% of employees say their performance at work is sometimes affected by their personal commitments.

If your professional life also takes a hit, then things will only get worse for you, making it essential for you to remain focused at work as much as possible. You can take steps to help you maintain your productivity at work as much as possible. 

Create a Schedule

 If you’re working without a specific goal in mind, it can be easy for your thoughts to distract you. Creating a schedule will help you keep focused on your work, helping you to work towards a goal rather than just working through the motions. 

To help keep your productivity on target, consider using time tracking software like the one from PK4 Tech to monitor your time. Time tracking software will help make it easier to tell when you are being productive and help you avoid wasting time. Knowing that you’re monitoring yourself can also help you focus on your work. 

Speak With Other People

Anybody going through a personal crisis should speak with other people. Meet up with somebody close to you and explain the situation and how it affects you. Also, listen for their feedback and advice and be prepared to hear some things you may not like.

However, this doesn’t mean you should speak with everybody about your problems. When at work, it’s best to limit what you say to other people. For one thing, telling colleagues about your situation keeps your head in the issue instead of giving you a chance to focus on something else.

Treat Going to Work as an Escape

When things are difficult in your personal life, going to work can be the ideal escape. Even the journey to and from work can help give your mind a break from what is upsetting you, and your mind will become even more occupied when you have a job to do.

There is also a social aspect to working with other people, making your job a convenient getaway. You can get involved with discussions not related to your personal commitments, whether they’re work-related or not. It can also be great to arrange a social outing with work colleagues although you should be careful not to overdo it, especially if you must work the following day.

Don’t Push Yourself Hard

You’re only human, so don’t put too much work pressure on yourself if you struggle sometimes. Instead, give yourself some space occasionally and don’t be hard on yourself if your productivity does take a hit.

It may take you a bit longer than usual to perform tasks, and things won’t improve for you overnight. However, beating yourself up about it won’t improve the situation and can make matters worse. Things will likely improve after a while, but you just have to let them through your system naturally. 

Limit Personal Contact

With a personal crisis going on, some people will likely want to call you regularly to get updates. Instead, it’s a good idea to set some limits and let people know that you’re at work and need to focus on your job.

Having people call you regularly to talk about your problem will cause you to keep thinking about it and perhaps even remind you about it when your mind has taken a break for a while. Unfortunately, it will also distract you from your work, potentially upsetting management and colleagues and increasing work pressure.

Try to limit calls to urgent matters only and, if needed, limit who has access to your number. You might need to turn your mobile phone off if the calls you’re receiving is harming your productivity.

Summary

Although most people will recover in time, there is no way to take away the pain and anguish of a personal crisis. In the meantime, it is essential to look after yourself, including looking after your professional prospects.

When going through a personal crisis, it’s important to focus on your work so your job is not adversely affected to the point where work pressure also becomes difficult to cope with. But, on the other hand, you will also need to acknowledge that you’re going through a difficult time and that you should not expect yourself to be firing on all cylinders.

Give yourself breathing space and time, use time tracking software, create a schedule, and set limitations on disturbances to help keep you focused. By focusing on your work, you’re helping to ensure you’re still in great condition when your crisis finally subsides.

Photo by Ethan Sykes on Unsplash

Measuring Nonprofit Impact and Outcomes – data is key!

Measuring Nonprofit Impact and Outcomes – data is key!

Your organization, your nonprofit’s impact, perhaps it’s very existence is based upon the outcome it has on your community and stakeholders. Underlying everything that you do are some key questions that you should be able to answer:

  • Do our programs make a real difference to the people that we serve?
  • What evidence of impact can we show to our funders and other stakeholders?
  • Given that our resources are finite, what programs should we focus on?

Answering these questions means that you need to have the data to back it up. Unfortunately, there’s no magic wand that you can wave to bring all the data together. It means putting in place systems and technology to gather the data in as easy a manner as possible.

In this article, we talk about nonprofits that focus on after-school programs, summer camps, sports programs, music, dance and art programs. Especially ones that deal with children and youth. In the time that we’ve worked in this area, we found that there are three basic  pillars that you need for success.

  1. Automate manual tasks (get more face time with the kids)
  2. Build your systems for scale (do it right and you will grow)
  3. Track the right data (prove your impact and secure more funding)

Automate Manual Tasks

Class Attendance Tracking

 

Class Attendance Tracking

Software can help to automate tedious, manual processes. One example of this is attendance tracking for your programs. Instead of spending time, manually completing this task with clipboard and paper or a spreadsheet, use a mobile app to automate this process. It not only saves you time on the front-end, but lets you gather additional data that you can use later to review for county / state compliance requirements and to review individual student attendance. If you use Salesforce’s Nonprofit Success Pack (NPSP) and Volunteers for Salesforce (V4S), you already have the basic building blocks in place. It’s simple to configure V4S’s Jobs and Shifts structure to track course and class enrollment and attendance. Most importantly, this automation puts time back in the hands of your staff members or volunteers handling the classes. Time that can be spent interacting with the students face-to-face, giving them more hands-on help.

So automate those mundane tasks quickly, and give the children the attention they need to get the most out of your programs.

Build your systems for scale

With the education and crime problems that youth are facing in our society, nonprofits that work with youth need to step up and have a bigger impact to help with the problems. Research indicates that nonprofit organizations that grow, prepare systematically for growth. This means that you need to put in place plans and priorities. You need to have in place systems and processes that will help you scale to the next level. Fortunately, if you are already using Salesforce NPSP, you already have in place a system that will grow with you and scale infinitely with you. What you need to do is ensure that you put in place the right criteria for your programs and make sure that they are properly tracked in Salesforce.

Track the right data

Track relevant outcome data

 

Track relevant outcome data

You need to track the data that will help move your nonprofit’s mission forward. So decide what those outcomes should be. Outcomes could range form improving grade-level reading or math skills for elementary school students to improving standardized test scores for high school students. With Salesforce, you get the breadth and depth of platform to collect any amount of data for any size population very easily. And with the wealth of reports and dashboards, you can analyze the outcomes you want accurately and precisely. You can communicate easily with student stakeholders, giving them updates about individual students. With the ability to prove your impact to funders and grant makers, the more likely you are to receive additional funding.

So train your staff and volunteers to properly use your software for data collection. Show them the big picture and convince them that collecting data is worthwhile. After all, it’s measuring the outcomes of your efforts that matter. And that’s possible only with the right data.