Pause.

One of the things that really resonate with me during our Cyber Security Training session at our company last week was.

“Pause”.

“One of the easiest way to escape from digital threat is, pause before taking action. Should I click this link now? Should I fill this form now? Have I ensure the safety of this actions?”

Well, it looks simple, but sometimes we just can’t seem to do it. And it’s not just about protecting ourselves from digital threat, but probably about a lot of decision making that we need to do in our lives.

When we need to make a decision, there’s always a drive to make decision quickly (and correctly!). The pressure(?) might came from different things.

You sell a product and your prospective client negotiate your offering price. Will you accept?

You might start thinking, “Should I accept?”, “Will they go to other vendor if I don’t accept now?”, etc.

But, have you calculate your profit properly? Have you set up a buffer budget should anything goes wrong? Have you checked with finance team whether the terms of payment proposed are still OK for the negotiated price? How will that impact your business cashflow?

Your company got an RFQ to do an urgent project with a super-short timeframe, but the pay is above average.

You might think that this is a good chance to earn money, and you have a desire to make an offer quickly so you got a head start from the competition.

Have you confirm with the team whether they are able to do the project? Have you checked with other sales or PM whether are there any other project with similar timeframe and deadlines?

The nature of communication I believe also contribute to the different sense of pressures. Communicate via WhatsApp or Telegram tend to make you feel you should reply as quickly as possible. It’s even worse when you’re pushed to make decision during phone call.

And yes, that’s why upgrade offer from your internet provider are done mostly via phone call, and saying it’s a one-time special offer for our esteemed subscribers yadda yadda

Similar things might happen daily. It happened to me, so maybe it also happened to a lot of people.

And thankfully, I’ve got a gentle reminder that, more often than not, I have enough time to rethink about the choice I should make. Just take a pause.

It’s okay to ask for some time before providing an answer.

It’s okay to step back for a moment from your phone, tablet or laptop, and talk to other people that you think would be best to advise you in making decision, before replying to the other parties.

What if you’re ended up losing the deal? I’d say, that means the deal just didn’t fit for you or your company.

Of course there’s always a chance you’ll regret it later, but there’s also chance that you got the deal but it hurts your business, and you’ll also regret it later.

The what if questions will always there, but what you can do is learn how to prepare yourself for the next crossroad to make a better decision faster.

I would like to share 2 pause experience that I’m glad I did it.

Education Path for My Children

I’m glad wifey and me didn’t rush into choosing a school for my daughter (the older one), as we ended up took a slightly unusual route for her academics.

“What kind of learning experience that she’d most enjoy?” was our most important question back then. And after taking a step back, took our time (and my daughter’s) to experiment different things, we were happy to see she enjoyed her school immensely. 🙂

Review Business Continuation

Well, this would usually happened annually, and come in 2 phases:

1. Discussion with my family
2. Discussion with my partners

These things are important because it’ll decide the future of both for the next year, and making sure you have enough focus and energy to follow through with your decision.

The main question will be: “Should I continue doing this business next year?”

Maybe your business is doing really well, you have exponential growth, and you (and your team) always give 120% for the growth of the company. You do overtime 4 days a week, and hiring new people weekly to push more growth.

Of maybe your business isn’t doing really well, you’re on the red for quite some time, and you can see the runway isn’t that far away. You don’t have exact idea on how to turn things around, so you do overtime 4 days a week, to do more and more experiments.

Pause. Take a step back. Hear from other people.

• Will continuing this business can help you feed your family?
• How’s your health, are you feeling healthy enough, body and mind?
• When is the last time you spent your time with family and not be bothered thinking about what would you do next Monday at the office?
• How’s your partner(s) health, are they healthy and keep their spirit up? How’s their family doing?
• What’s your goal when you setup the company? Are you still true to that goal? Does the company’s vision still aligned with yours?

No matter if you’re a solo entrepreneur, running a business with your friend, or doing corporate jobs, I think spending some time to think about your current and your future will help.

It’s been more than a decades since we run Tees.co.id (and now also OfficeBee), and we always ended up deciding with continuing every year. End of year is approaching though, and we’re for sure will have this discussion (again) in the coming weeks.

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Time is precious. Making time to release yourself from the burden of professional work is important.

So take care of yourself. Take care of your family.

Don’t forget to pause.

Originally posted on my Medium