Get These Two Things Right and the Rest Follows

Imagine playing the same game every day for your income and (1) not know the rules, and (2) the rules keep changing.

Choosing to own your own business, or being responsible for your income generation, can feel a bit like that – plus it continually puts you in high pressure situations.  If you don’t have clear strategies in place it can feel like you:

• Are playing a game where you don’t know the rules and are condemned to random results
• Are wasting time with distractions disguised those opportunities
• Feel like a best kept secret
• Constantly hoisting your S.O.S. flag into flight
• Living on a revenue roller coaster

Hopefully you already have a few strategies in place like a prospecting strategy, a networking strategy, a sales strategy, and a marketing strategy.  If you do – that’s great!

Yet the biggest strategy that is overlooked for business success is controlling 2 things:

Your To Do List

Where you spend your time

Let’s face it – a to do list never ends…  ever!

Which can be deflating as well as suck your time away from the activities that ultimately produce bottom line results and the lifestyle you desire.

Staying busy keeps you in reaction mode.  Being strategic allows you to be productive and align your time, energy, and actions to your desired outcomes.

“Tactics without strategy is the noise before defeat.” – Sun Tzu

Implementing a strategy to handle these two ever present constants is vital.  Let’s tackle the To Do List first.

Instead of having 50 or 100 items on a single list comprised of a mix from the unimportant-non-urgent with the high-priority-income-producing activities, break it into several lists that can each be tackled individually, completed, and eliminated. A long list of unimportant tasks is just burdensome.

Be sure to divide and separate personal from the business list.

Still overwhelming – right?

To Do’s seem to pile on top of each other more and more each day. Even as you mark things off! Ultimately it is a question of prioritizing. Take each list and divide it again into:

Now      Next      Later     Someday

This helps you prioritize what is important and urgent, and have Peace of Mind that the other items won’t be forgotten. For each item or task be sure to not just write down the “to do” but add the result it will produce.  Tasks are a torturous chore if they aren’t meaningful

This keeps you focused on the intent and ultimate positive outcome from doing the individual thing, it keeps you focused on the reward and the result for completing the task.

The NOW and NEXT categories require 100% of your focus and effort when you are working on them:  these tasks are where your concentration of time should be – put these items into the following formula:

Verb – Noun – Date – Result

If you spend no time on these two lists you won’t have sales, you won’t have leads, and you won’t have the income to do the things on your SOMEDAY list. You will simply be a busy-best-kept-secret handcuffed to your business and not living the life you desire.

But I get it… it is sometimes hard to find the time to devote to the NOW and NEXT categories because they are often harder or more uncomfortable to do. Here are a few ideas to get you started and focused:

Theme your days and chunk your time

There is no such thing as multitasking, there’s only task switching. Switching from marketing to delivery to sales and back again is not only ineffective it is exhausting, inefficient, and prevents you from doing your best work. So just STOP!

Create a calendar where you can focus on one thing at a time, complete it, and take comfort in knowing that the other items have an appropriate time allotted on your calendar for completion.

Sprint then rest in a distraction free environment

Be sure to set a time limit and then take a break before you get back to it. This helps get you into a state of flow, it also helps you hustle to complete a task because you know there is a time restraint on you.

Being in a distraction free environment provides clarity and focus.

Getting distracted or switching tasks back and forth and back and forth divides your focus and will only give you divided results.

Don’t react to temporary circumstances – unless it is a TRUE emergency it can probably wait.

Don’t distribute your resource too thin

When it comes to your time and your energy – these are finite resources.  Make sure you’re spending them wisely. If you dedicate all your time to things that are not income producing you won’t have the time or the energy to focus on things that are income producing.

Ignore your LATER and SOMEDAY tasks and do the ‘shoulds’ before you do the ‘coulds’.

Growth is messy and can cost you money. Either on the front side or on the back side. Your time and money can work for you or against you and your growth. So spend wisely.

Know what it costs to not get training, or invest in your business or yourself to get the knowledge, help, and resources that you need. Not spending money costs you your time, which in turn costs you money, and it stunts your growth. That makes it a double whammy!

Know your numbers – and don’t scale your lifestyle at the same pace as your income. Be sure to build up monthly reoccurring base revenue before you scale your lifestyle. Don’t be satisfied and live in a world of “just enough” – that makes your business a hobby and not a business.

Don’t beat yourself up trying to balance life and work there is no such thing – it is all life! Especially if you are a solopreneur, entrepreneur, or small business owner. Balance is 50/50 – that’s just average …YOU are more than average!

Now you have a controllable list, that is created around extraordinary results.  Have fun acting!