One of the biggest challenges we have today isn’t a dearth of ideas, apps and experts; it’s the ability for a business owner or leader to select a very few things to implement for the biggest impact, and then execute well on those few things. Entrepreneurs do not have unlimited time, money or other resources to spend scattered across too many ideas, so the real challenge is to make time to decide what top three things will move your business forward and master those. Knowledge isn’t power unless you can activate it to achieve your priorities.
If you are feeling scattered and smothered and potentially covered (thank you, Waffle House, for this hash brown metaphor), it’s time to develop a system to create calm, remove distractions and create focus. Here are a few tips to consider:
Making deliberate choices about how you will spend your valuable time and money, and not being distracted by the need to do more will enable you to master the effective few things that will grow your business, and also set you up to be more available to real opportunity that crosses your path. What you choose to do with your time directly impacts what you accomplish by the end of the day. I know. That sounds so obvious. And yet I hear this so often: “Wow, it’s been SOOOO busy today, but I have no idea what I did.” In our world of constant stimulation and distraction, disruptions and complexity, it’s easy to be off-the-chain busy and not accomplish anything that pertains to our priorities.
The constant barrage of emails popping into the inbox, text messages dinging, voice mails blinking, cell phones buzzing and other electronic notifications can feel like an assault on the senses and most definitely on the attention span. While the tools that deliver these messages are necessary to our modern way of doing business, we don’t have to be slaves to them. We can manage them, rather than being managed by them. Building a few habits of how you approach your day can help reduce the busy-ness and increase your focus on your few and most important priorities. Here are several tips to consider:
We all face distractions and those days when we aren’t as productive or focused as we had planned. We also all have conscious choices about how we spend our time, which is a responsibility that needs to be managed. Leaders who are successful model the discipline and the habits of evaluating what’s working or not, and shift their habits to adapt to what works best. |