As a business owner, do you get easily distracted? Like a little kid in center field mesmerized by a butterfly? Or a kid hearing the seductive music of an approaching ice cream truck? If so, you are not alone. Most entrepreneurs have an attraction to distractions.
What are the flavors of your favorite distractions? The buzzing of a Blackberry? The ring of a cell phone? The ding of a new email? Employees knocking on your office door with "got-a-minute" interruptions? Surfing the internet? Putting out daily fires you didn't even start? Doing your employees' jobs and tasks for them? Writing down your next "million dollar idea" even though you haven't had the time or focus to implement the last hundred ideas?
If this resembles you, welcome to the club of the easily distracted -- the highly creative, multi-tasking, attention-deficient business owner. While busyness and denial are two of your greatest enemies (we already addressed in a previous blog), now add distractions as the third enemy. In a given work day, most owners let numerous things get in their way and divert their attention. They don't stay focused long enough to achieve their most important priorities. Like kids playing, they jump from one toy or task to another.
Let's look at the results of this attraction to distractions. You end up doing the wrong work! If you are helping to do everyone else's job, you aren't doing your job. If you aren't doing your job (leading, planning, holding others accountable, strategic marketing, etc.), no one is doing it -- your business ends up drifting aimlessly like a ship without a captain and charted course. Furthermore, if you are chasing too many ideas, opportunities, problems, tasks, calls, emails, etc., you are dissipating your talents and energy. You are spreading yourself too thin and not accomplishing many important goals, if any. When you try to do all things and be all things, you achieve very few things.
The solution -- FOCUS, FOCUS, FOCUS. Write down your priorities and stick to them. Instead of chasing the trivial many, focus on the vital few things that will make a huge difference in your business. Want to get more important and meaningful things done? Then before you leave work today, simply jot down the 3 most important tasks you need to accomplish tomorrow. Even put the three items in order of importance just in case you can only get to the first one or two. If you accomplish only those 3 critical tasks, the return (greater revenue, happier employees or customers, reduced costs, higher productivity, better focus, less stress, etc.) will be significant. Heck, even if you only accomplished the most important goal, it is better than achieving a dozen unimportant goals.
Each day, take out your TOP 3 List and go to work only on item #1. I don't care if it takes one hour or all day long. Do not get distracted. Once you complete item #1, then and only then move to item #2, and then to #3. Do NOT do anything else in the work day until you accomplish your TOP 3 List. Do not answer phones, check email, have employees interrupt you, put out fires, play with paperwork, do others' tasks, daydream, roam the halls, surf the internet, etc. Close your door, put your head down and go about tackling your TOP 3 tasks. If you accomplish your vital few tasks each and every day, instead of the trivial many, you will have greater success and balance in your life.
To improve the overall productivity of your company, make each employee develop a Top 3 List each and every day.
Daniel Murphy
The Growth Coach
Business Coaching Franchise System