I Could Complete My To-Do-List if Only There Were 28 Hours in a Day!

For a great many of the business owners I meet they are working really long hours, sometimes more than 60 and yet they still find it a real struggle to complete everything they need to do. This inability to get all their work done tends to lead to an imbalance with other areas suffering, whether it be family, health, fitness, or fun.

When you first start a business it can be hard work and that will almost certainly involve long hours. The challenge is that this becomes the norm and years after starting the business a great many owners still find themselves working way too many hours and the promises they have made to their families, friends and themselves, that someday it would get easier just don’t seem to evolve.

It is possible that what’s happened here is the owner has confused business with busyness.

What can be a problem for all human beings is that we are in fact driven by our reptilian brains. Back in the day when leaving our caves was a really dangerous event our brains came with a ready to use fight or flight response centre. So at the first hint of danger our brains released chemicals that drove us to either stand and fight or run for our lives.

In the past this mechanism served us really well but now in modern days, where once it was your servant it may now have become your master seeing danger everywhere and having you operate in a fear fuelled reactive state instead of a proactive state.

Imagine if your sales are down a little, you receive customer complaint, a supplier puts their prices up, a team member hands their notice in, a job is late or you have to  do some rework the list goes on, during each of these events you will get a blast of the fight or flight chemical cortisol. The hairs on the back on your neck stand on end and you are primed again to react. Your brain is telling you to keep on running and it is no wonder that a great deal of owners get themselves into running a busyness.

What is needed is a change in thinking. Instead of cramming everything you have to do into the number of hours you have in your day, instead, remove from your day the hours you spend doing work you just shouldn’t be doing.

So how do you do that?

                                                                                   

In his brilliant book The 7 Habits of Highly Successful People Stephen Covey introduced us to the idea that we decide how to use our time based on two factors either importance or urgency or a combination of the two. At any moment of the day we will find ourselves working in one of four areas:

1.    Important and urgent this is a Demand on our time.

2.    Important and not urgent – here you find yourself in the Zone your most effective work will be done here.

3.    Not important but urgent – in this area we may become Delusional that we are making progress

4.    Not important and not urgent – these tasks are normally classed as Distractions.

To make the most of this model you will need to identify what is important in your business. The only way I know how to do this is to have a really clear vision of where you are taking your business and that vision has been transformed into a clear plan further broken down into time bound goals.

Once you are clear what is important for your business success you just need to review on a daily basis everything you are doing and asking yourself the question! “is this helping me achieve my goals?”

The aim here is to either stop or delegate anything that falls under the heading of a distraction. Delusional work is where you are spending your time dealing with other people’s important work and the key here is to learn to say NO and encourage people to solve their own problems. There will always be demands on your time, but if you discover patterns forming or the same issues repeating time after time, it may be time to create some systems that solve the issue before they become urgent.

If you do the above what you will find is that you will now have more time to invest doing the important work of your business, and by doing this you will be far more effective.

So the key to taking control of your time is to get really clear about what is important for the success of your business and making that a priority in your diary.

If you would like help identifying what is important in your business, setting goals, developing action plans, or systemising your business, just give us a call. 

Begin With The End in Mind…. What Will Your Business Look Like When it’s Finished?

It’s just a couple of weeks since we welcomed in 2016 and a lot of people will be working really hard at achieving their New Year’s Resolutions.  For others, their resolution was nothing more than a dream or good idea that now finds itself neatly tucked into the deep recesses of their minds, until the day it surfaces as an uncomfortable feeling to prick their conscience.

One of the challenges with most resolutions is that they are nothing more than good ideas and very little time is actually invested in thinking and planning them through and, as you are no doubt aware, every great plan begins with the end in mind.

It is more likely that the people who stick resolutely to their resolutions have probably taken the time out to mentally place themselves in the future, at a time when they have achieved what they set out to do. They will have asked themselves some better questions:

-What will I feel like when I am a non-smoker or I am fit and healthy or I have that better job?

-What will achieving this enable me to do that I am not able to do at the moment?

-What will my perfect day look like when I have achieved this?

The pictures that these people dream up in their minds will provide the brain with a ‘towards pull’ or motivation and, at the same time, provide the body with the feel good factor. When we are rewarded with a good feeling, we are more likely to do the necessary actions that are needed to reproduce those feelings.

Resolutions or goals can sometimes be tough.  If they weren’t, we wouldn’t need them; we would already have everything we want. It is in these tough moments that beginning with end in mind really helps.

As an example, if your resolution was to quit smoking, when you get that urge to have the cigarette imagine the picture you have created of how much better life will be when you are a non-smoker.

Whilst struggling to do those press-ups, how much better do you picture you will feel when you are fit and healthy.

Picking the phone up to deal with that troublesome customer, how much better you will feel when the cash is flowing through your business.

You may be asking this is all well and good, but what has all this to do with what will your business look like when it’s finished?

For some of you may be thinking “my business will never be finished” there will always be more to do, people to meet, markets to tap into, bigger and better opportunities etc., etc.

Firstly, let me explain what I mean by finished…..

A finished business is one that is able to be sold for a value that is a true reflection of it’s worth and potential.

If you were to sell a finished business, you would attract the right type of buyers, who are more prepared to pay top market valuation for a great investment.

For some, you may be thinking, ‘I have no intention of selling my business and all this sounds too good to be true.’ I am not suggesting you should sell your business, what I am asking you to consider is what would your business need to look like to be sold for the top market valuation?

To do that, you would have to start thinking from the end in mind perspective.

Ask yourself, “If you were in the market to purchase a top market value business what exactly would you be looking for?”

By stepping into the shoes of a potential purchaser you might ask questions like:

-What do I want?

-What needs to be in place for me to feel safe about this investment?

-What concerns have I got?

By asking questions like these you will now have is a clearer picture of what your business needs to be, do and have for it to become an attractive enough proposition for top investors to be interested in it.

You also have the start of a picture for a compelling future business that is fulfilling its true function; to serve your future ideal lifestyle.

Just imagine what it would mean to you if your business was finished? What lifestyle would you be able to have as a result?

The truth is a finished business will give you freedom.

Starting today, ask yourself “What will my business look like when it is finished?” The clearer the picture, the clearer the path to freedom.

If you would like learn more about this subject and the ‘how’ of growing a business that will sell for the top market valuation, take a look here.

Thoughts:

“Everybody has goals, aspirations or whatever, and everybody has been at a point in life where nobody believed in them”…Eminem

“The biggest adventure you can take is to live the life of your dreams”…Oprah Winfrey

“Nothing happens unless first we dream”…Carl Sandburg

“I think when you move past your fear and you go after your dreams wholeheartedly, you become free”…LL Cool J