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:
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• Even if it’s taken a village to get you to where you are today, working with one coach or mentor at a time allows you to focus. Knowing when to access other points of view is an important distinction when leveraging advice and guidance, and too many ideas muddy your own good decision-making abilities.

• More isn’t always better. More reading, more work on your plate, more projects for your team – more, more, more only leads to more distraction and less execution, which can make you feel overwhelmed and smothered. Those most successful in business actually discipline themselves every day to focus on the important few.

• Accept your limited resources, including time, money and people, and work with what you have. Don’t waste resources on something that isn’t going to give you a return toward your business goals.

• Don’t have goals for your business? Create them and be clear what the return is on any money you are spending, on assignments you are giving to others, and on decisions you are making in the moment. Better yet, don’t make a big decision in the moment. Make time for that decision to see if it fits with your reality of limited resources.

• Know the best way to grow your business. Isolating yourself in your office won’t build business or create revenue. Identify the top three ways for reaching your target audience and be sure that you are working in those three spaces to build business. Here’s a hint: Social media isn’t usually in the top three, but it can support what you are doing face-to-face, building relationships and generating real-time buzz for your products and services.  Even today, people like to connect with others through speaking, meeting and sharing ideas in a live environment.

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:

• Know your top few priorities for the year and keep those close at hand. Confirm those with others you work with to be sure that there is alignment and agreement.

• Make sure you block your time each day for doing the things necessary to achieve those priorities.

• Create time limits for distractions like social media and chatting with friends and co-workers. Spending unplanned time on these types of distractions can be like spending your money on impulse items and wondering where your paycheck went.  

• Learn to say “no” to requests, and help others find their own answers, other resources or some other answer if you are the person they believe always says “yes” to whatever is requested.

• Use the features of your email to decide what you need to address immediately, what can wait until tomorrow, and what, frankly, just needs to be ignored.

• At the end of each day, take a quick look at where you spent your time and how you will adjust for tomorrow and beyond.  Focusing on priorities is a discipline that takes daily attention.

• Celebrate the wins, and learn from what didn’t work as well. Judging yourself isn’t productive; acknowledging and adapting is.

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.