Are you so stressed out at work that it’s starting to affect your health? Working for yourself might be the answer to reduce stress as it was for Anna Jhaveri.
She had such bad back pain from working 10 hours a day as a software engineer, she quit her job to go work for herself.
She’s the owner of SoHo Dragon India, a Microsoft enterprise consultancy and development firm.She’s been working for herself for the past 2 years.
If you are a regularly listener you might remember I interviewed her business partner, Peter Ward, the owner of SoHo Dragon based in New York City.
A few lessons worth noting from our conversation include:
- Designing a work schedule to accommodate the needs of your health.
- How taking time off between working full-time and freelancing gave Anna time to self-reflect and better understand how she really wanted to work.
- How she built her current business partnership incrementally.
- Fostering remote relationships through great communication and trust.
Life Skills That Matter In This Episode
- Managing your energy.
- Self-awareness to understand the best ways you work.
- Figure out how to reduce stress.
How Anna Works and Thinks
- Wake up time: 7:00am
- Core work activities + habits: 1) Communicate project and task statuses. 2) Getting the office’s bills paid. 3) Calibrating and connecting with the team.
- Ideal work environment: With her laptop, a good internet connection, and minimal noise; Anna can work just about anywhere.
- Favorite productivity tool: Microsoft OneNote
- 90-day goal: Add one or more people to the team. Move away from daily tasks to focus on future strategy.
Inspirational Quotes
“In order to realize what skill or area you are good at, analyze what you do every day.”
“If it’s something I don’t know, I need to learn it then apply it to my work.”
“My work is my passion.”
Coaching Advice
Self-employment is often an effective path to follow when dealing with frustration at work and Anna gave this advice when preparing to leave a job for self-employment:
1) Identify your core skills. This will give you confidence that you can do something on your own in that area.
2) Analyze what you do every day. By thinking about the tasks you perform daily, you can decide what you do and don’t like to do which can help you zero in on your core skills.
Resources + Bonus Materials
Here’s a video interview with Anna about leadership and how she manages her business.
SWAT analysis graph Anna referred to in our conversation:
