Happy April! Each month we strive to provide you with a variety of helpful resources, tips, and practices to support your continued success, both personally and professionally. Because we work with a diverse demographic of clients, industries, and backgrounds, we aim to provide content equally as diverse. If a particular section doesn't resonate with you, that's okay! Our hope is that everyone can find at least one gold nugget per issue. 

Below, you will find information on this month's article from Crum Consulting, this month's development challenge, as well as general wellness reminders. We have a number of knowledge-forward articles available that explore a variety of professional and personal topics, all of which will challenge your current perspective, and push your continued growth. Each month, we aim to provide you with a new challenge to help facilitate your ongoing growth. These challenges will range in topics and applications, in an effort to focus on a variety of aspects of your life. If you are a recurring client with us, we will be following up on this month's challenge with you in session. If you don't currently have any sessions set up with us, and would like to discuss this challenge and others like it, please feel free to reach out to schedule a session with us! You can reply directly here if we have worked together in the past. If you are a new client, please click here to fill out a consultation form, and we will be in touch to schedule a session with you. We also provide new wellness reminders in the form of our stretch of the month, and wellness tips. Regardless of your background, these reminders will help improve your day to day health and wellness.

April Article: This month's article is: Check Your Mirrors. One of the most well-known “coming of age” milestones happens when we learn to drive for the first time. It is such an exciting and scary moment in life, and is chalk full of new information and motor skills to learn. Before we even start the car, we are educated on safety precautions; seat belt on, seat at an appropriate height and reach, hands at 10 & 2, and to check your mirrors. As with driving, running a business requires us to constantly check the mirrors. If you have any questions surrounding this month's article, or would like to further explore opportunities, please feel free to reach out to schedule a session with us! You can reply directly here if we have worked together in the past. If you are a new client, please click here to fill out a consultation form, and we will be in touch to schedule a session with you.

April Challenge: I challenge you to a Records & Information Audit.
→Determine how long you need to retain records and put a policy in place for disposing of those that are no longer needed.
→Create a system that makes it easy to find the documents and records you need when you need them.
→Be sure the records are handled correctly by training your staff to handle them properly.
→Put a reasonable amount of security in place to keep your records safe; two-factor authentication for digital files, and security measures for hard copies.
→Back up all records on an external hard drive, and hard copies.

Stretch of the month: Head-to-Knee pose - this stretch improves posture and counteracts the effects of prolonged sitting. It can be helpful for recovery after sports and activities that include running. It stretches the back of your body, including your back muscles, and can help relieve low back tightness and low back pain. Also, it can bring calm to the mind and help with depression, anxiety, and fatigue. Click the (external) link to learn more, or simply google "head-to-knee pose"!

Wellness tip of the month: Implement and honor hard cut-off times for your demanding activities. The COVID pandemic, and subsequent shift to remote and work-from-home models, has forever changed our workforce moving forward. In the absence of daily travel time, neverending amounts of meetings, and national business travel, we have come to discover that we have the potential to reach new levels of productivity. While this has been a wonderful transition in regards to productivity and efficiency, over the last year this transition has taken a drastic turn towards inefficiency, and more importantly, burnout. The work-from-home movement did in fact free up a lot of time by alleviating repetitive and time-consuming daily actions. However, instead of the work-from-home workforce applying that gained time towards a better quality of life, they simply added it onto their existing scope of work. So, instead of working 8 hours, workers are now pushing 10-14 hours a day on average. A lot of this comes from their fear of being viewed as unproductive or inefficient in the eyes of their supervisors, because they don't have anyone looking over their shoulders to monitor these metrics anymore. And, historically, management in every industry has been over-scrutinous of work-from-home activities and employees. We have been conditioned to believe that if we don't have someone looking over our shoulder verifying our productivity, then we must be slacking off. It is important, now more than ever, to implement and honor hard cut-off times for your work day; whether you're working, volunteering, going to school, etc. No one knows your capabilities better than you do. If your best structure is the default 8 hour day with lunch, then set a firm start and end time that equals your 8 hours, and stick to it. If you're more progressive, and find that you work best on a 6 hour sprint style day, or even four 10 hour days, then schedule it and adhere to it. The takeaway here is to determine your most efficient working hours and structure, and honor it every working day. That means, if your cut-off is 5PM, then you close and walk away from your computer at 5PM, no excuses. The world will keep spinning, and your tasks will still be there tomorrow. You are responsible for your own boundaries.

"Remember, there's no such thing as an overnight success. Love the process and you’ll love what the process produces." - Jon Gordon

Thank you for being a pivotal part of our journey here at Crum Consulting. We would be nothing without you, and your continued support. Please feel free to share our content with others to pay it forward. We relish in receiving feedback, so if you have any suggestions or if you'd like to share your opinion on any of the content we have provided here, please let us know! If you have any questions about anything we covered here, or if you'd like to explore potential opportunities with Crum Consulting, we are here for you! Reach out anytime!

Until we meet again, take care of yourself, and others. Thank you.