One Task at a Time: Why Focusing on the Very Next Step is the Key
Ever look up the long winding path in front of you and think to yourself, “I will NEVER in a million years reach the top”? And yet, if you continue to take one step at a time, soon enough you will be looking back at that long winding path and think, “Wow, look at how far I’ve come in what seems like no time at all.”
In business (and in life), typically when you start out on a long and winding path, you can’t see the top or even the entire route ahead of you. Perhaps all you can see if the daunting rock wall straight ahead, the one the guidebooks assure you leads to a false summit. The only thing you can do is set a direction and take one step at a time.
Why Focusing on the Very Next Step is the Key
It’s ridiculous to imagine that you would start off from the trail head and in a single leap, jump to the top of the mountain. Or that you could take all 50,892 steps at once. And yet that’s often how we approach our businesses, expecting to get there in a single leap or by tackling all the steps at once.
Thinking that it’s simply a matter of leaping ahead and skipping all the steps is at best naïve and at worst, a grave shortcut that will cost you more steps than you save. Trying to tackle all the steps at once often leads to overwhelm and leaves you with the same amount of unfinished tasks. Both equal no forward momentum at all.
Taking It One Task at a Time While Focusing on the End Goal
Keep your chin up and focus on where you want to end up, but set your foot down right in front of you. That means tackling the one task that needs to be done to keep things moving along. Sometimes that means halting your forward progress to train an assistant or address technical challenges that are ultimately slowing you down.
Start at the beginning. Entrepreneurs are notorious for racing ahead in steps and trying to tackle the tasks that are fun and exciting and leaving the foundational steps for later. A good start is better than trying to rush ahead only to have to retrace and redo missed steps.
Finish each step before taking the next one! It’s a mistake to think that momentum means jumping quickly from task to task. Firmly plant each footstep before taking another so you don’t backslide on a misplaced footstep. Rushing ahead often costs more time on going back and redoing tasks that weren’t fully completed.
Check your compass! It’s easy to get lost in the woods, especially when you are lowdown in the valleys and can’t see above the trees. Continually check your course against your goals and make sure that each step you make it on track!
Remember, when building a sustainable business, what you do along the way matters. Choose your steps carefully and you will create a foundation that will serve you for years to come! Rush ahead too fast and you will be retracing your steps to find the path you should have taken to begin with.
Momentum Monday: Wish You Could Hit the Pause Button? Why You Need to Focus on One Step at a Time
Ever wish you could just put your world on hold for a day to catch up on everything that needs to get done? That by hitting some magical pause button all your day-to-day commitments would just freeze in suspended animation so you could focus?
It’s easy to get overwhelmed when you look way far ahead and see the to-do list stretch to be 8 miles long instead of looking down at your feet and simply taking one step at a time. Sometimes exactly what you need to do to get your momentum going is take it one…step…at…a…time.
The idea is that by shrinking your to-do list down to one single step, you eliminate the distractions of all the other steps you need to take in the future. Instead of seeing the never-ending road stretching out ahead of you, all you see is the next step. And the next step. And the next until you get there.
How to Focus on Taking It One Step at a Time
#1: Simplify Your Load – The desire to hit the pause button is a sure sign that you are overloaded. Offload anything and everything that is unnecessary. Clearing space to get stuff done means saying no to the extracurricular commitments until you catch up!
#2: Avoid Task Overwhelm – Sometimes looking too far down the road (or up the mountain) only serves to overwhelm. Tackle those big daunting tasks by mapping out the smaller steps and making each step a milestone goal.
#3: Focus on your Feet – Narrow your view so all that you see is the step you are about to take (and nothing else)! Think of it as putting the big map away and only focusing on the steps it takes to get to the next corner. That may mean removing any visual clutter that distracts you from the task at hand.
#4: Slow Down – The temptation when facing a long trek is to rush ahead, but often that leads to running out of energy or taking a wrong turn and ending up lost. Instead slow down and take each step s-l-o-w-l-y.
#5: Get to the Next Step (and Take It) – The purpose of taking it one step at a time is to build momentum and keep stepping! Don’t step and stop, step and stop because each time you stop, you need to burn extra energy to get moving again. Take one step, and then another and another, focusing each time on that one step in front of you!
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Momentum Monday: Find Your Amazing – Why It’s Critical to Focus on Your Strengths and Delegate Your Weaknesses
It only takes a few minutes of watching one of those embarrassing talent shows to realize that everyone (and I mean, EVERYONE) has something ‘special’ they can do.
Assuming your something special is a little more practical than riding a unicycle while simultaneously yodeling and juggling fire or the ability to stick foreign objects into one of your orifices without the subsequent trip to the ER, you need to find your amazing and share that talent with the world.
Why You Need to Focus on Your Strengths
The adage “Just because you can doesn’t mean you should” applies to business as much as it applies to life. Just because you can do everything in your business doesn’t mean you should.
From a purely logistics perspective, doing what you do best takes far less time and effort than dragging your heels doing something you aren’t good at or even worse, hate doing. And focusing on what you are the best at means your business benefits from that unique talent.
How to Delegate Your Weaknesses
It’s important to note that there’s a big difference between ‘delegating’ and ‘dumping’. Delegating is the systematic approach to handing off projects and responsibilities. Dumping is the blind assignment of tasks in the hope that they never return to your desk again.
Ironically, dumping usually results in exactly that – the prompt and unwanted return of the hated task. When done properly, delegation means responsibilities can be transferred between members of your team without your involvement in the process.
#1: Make the Yucky List – Create a list of all the tasks you dread doing or that take you an extraordinary amount of time to accomplish. The Yucky List can include anything that steals your time away from focusing on your strengths, like folding laundry or sorting receipts to file expense reports.
#2: Systematize Tasks – Map out a basic system for accomplishing everything on the Yucky List you wish to delegate. Even the most menial tasks need a basic system so you don’t need to waste time correcting or fixing errors down the road.
#3: Simplify or Automate – Evaluate what can first be simplified or automated before delegating it. Simplifying and automating the tasks you wish to delegate will save you both time and money because you won’t be handing off an unnecessarily complex task.
#4: Hire or Outsource – Create a job description and qualifications based on what you need to delegate. In some instances, you may need to outsource to multiple people in order to benefit from specialized knowledge. Because you invested the time in documenting and systematizing what you are outsourcing, the transition will be much easier.
#5: Evaluate and Readjust – One of the biggest mistakes entrepreneurs make is handing off tasks and never checking in. Develop core metrics to determine if a system is successful. An example of a useful metric is how much time it takes your team member to complete a particular task. If it’s taking too long, that’s a sign you need to readjust.
The One Exception to the Weakness Rule: If one of your weaknesses falls into the category of core entrepreneurial skills, like marketing or finance, you cannot simply delegate and forget. It is essential that you get to a minimum level of competence so you can work with the experts in those areas. For example, you need a base level of marketing knowledge in order to evaluate the campaign suggestions from your marketing team.
Momentum Monday – Why Monday Matters: How to Use Monday to Set the Tone for Your Week
Ever have one of those days that just starts frazzled and after that, absolutely everything (and I mean EVERYTHING) just goes wrong? It’s called momentum – and it applies to your mojo as much as it does to your productivity.
Think about it – you are in a hurry and you hustle to rush through a task, which causes you to miss an important step, which causes something to go wrong, which forces you to go back and not only redo, but fixes whatever problem the error caused.
And in your frustration, you move onto the next task feeling flustered and overwhelmed because now you are in an even bigger rush because you need to make up the lost time.
That’s exactly how Monday sets the tone for your week. Start focused and productive and you feel ahead of the game and in charge. Start by fighting fires, or rushing to catch-up, you end up feeling frazzled which throws off your focus.
Getting your Monday Mojo going
#1: Start Sunday – Millions of Boy Scouts can’t possibly be wrong – it’s always better to be prepared! Set aside 30 minutes on Sunday to review your calendar, prepare and start seeding for the coming week!
#2: Turn off ALL Distractions – Start with that focus work that makes you feel on top of your game! Remember: you are setting the tone for your ENTIRE week – don’t sabotage your mojo first thing!
#3: Get your Groove going EARLY – Start tackling tasks. If you need a boost, start with something simple that gets you in your groove early and then move onto the tough stuff.
#4: Set yourself up for SUCCESS – Success begets more success so focus on tasks that you can finish!
MOMeo Momentum Monday Challenge: Start your week off with a bang and tackle a BIG LOOMING project!
Productivity Buster: mistaking activity for accomplishment
A former client recently contacted me about working together again. In asking a few questions about what she’s been up to, etc., I realized that for all the work she’s been doing (and she works a lot), she hasn’t been “done-ing” anything.
Now while “done-ing” certainly isn’t a word (yet), it does speak to the difference between working on a project so that you’re forever “doing” it and actually getting it “done.”
As small business owners and entrepreneurs dedicated to making our businesses a success, we need to be focused a lot more on the “done-ing” than the doing.
I was discussing this concept with a team member the other day and described it as the difference between “activity” and “accomplishment”.
Activity is where you’re busily doing things all day, doing, doing, doing, busy as a bee, flitting from one project to another.
Accomplishment, however, is where you’re laser-focused on a task or project either until it’s done or until you’ve spent your allotted time on it for that day (as in writing a book where it’s not your intent to finish it in one day).
You see “activity” everywhere in the corporate world: meetings, for example, are a hive of activity.
“Accomplishment” is a little rarer — those who accomplish stand head and shoulders above the crowd. In the world of small businesses, to put it frankly, those who accomplish succeed.
Those who work a lot in their businesses and yet never seem to finish anything are destined for failure or, at best, mediocrity.
Even worse, what truly makes my heart break, are those who are trying and actually accomplishing things, but are done-ing the wrong things at the wrong time and so see no forward momentum, no increase in profits in their business.
Make It Real: My Request to You
While “done-ing” sounds as simple as “doing”, it actually takes several support mechanisms to keep it happening again and again.
Here are a few things I do to ensure more “done-ing” (and of the right things) and less continuous doing (which is essentially a version of procrastination):
1. Create a strategic marketing plan designed to take me to my goal. Do this in the timeframe which makes sense for you — for me, it’s an annual goal, broken into quarterly mini-goals, broken into monthly objectives, broken into weekly targets, broken into daily success actions.
2. Select a few items (actual number depends on size of the project/task) and put them on my “Success Action List” for the day, then schedule a time to do them on my calendar. This allows for coaching calls and other appointments and ensures I don’t over schedule myself.
3. At the end of each day, prepare for the next day and review what actually got done versus what was planned to be completed. I run around 85% of plan depending on the day.
4. Each month, compare the number of “Done” items with the previous month and then compare the profit for both months. An increase in the “Dones” usually results in an increase in the profit.
For those who think, “I don’t have time to do this” . . . the truth is you don’t have time to NOT do it. The success of your business is at stake. What’s it worth to you?
Have you ever written a list of goals, felt great about them and then wondered “How will I ever get this all done?” and felt overwhelmed or started on a project and then felt your mind wander to something else time and time again, only to find that things just aren’t getting done as quickly as they should, if ever?
These are symptoms of the Entrepreneurial Dilemma and Sandra Martini has made it her life’s work to solve them.
By meeting clients where they’re at, Sandy has an amazing ability to look at a situation and see the quickest path to where they want to go, and then get them there as shown by the fact that 91% of Sandy’s clients stay with her for at least a year.
Her background with start-up organizations such as AmeriCorps and national satellite television combined with her years in Peace Corps, managing White House Presidential events and voracious appetite for learning have created a skill set unlike any other – the perfect balance between marketing savvy, intuition and results-driven systemic implementation.
Through a combination of coaching, mentoring and “Done 4 You” programs, Sandy has been making entrepreneurs’ dreams real since 2003.
You can learn more about Sandy and get her “5 Simple & Easy Steps to Putting Your Marketing on Autopilot” at www.SandraMartini.com
Momentum Mondays: Pick ME! Pick ME!
One of my all-time favorite inspiring movie moments is from Legally Blonde (yes, inspiration does come in the most unexpected places).
The heroine, Elle, is an underdog. She steps up and sets her sights on achieving the one thing no one thinks she is capable of: success. The competition is intense for a coveted internship. The second the list announcing the winners is posted, everyone crowds around to read it.
The students read the list, down to the last name: Elle Wood (and that’s my favorite part). She reads the list and says the words that give me chills: “ME!”
What I love about it is the energy and hunger she puts into it! ME! As in PICK ME! I want to win, I want to be included, I deserve this – it’s MINE! (And if you listen really closely, you can hear the “damn it” in her tone).
The PICK ME! Mantra
Often we shy away from our brilliance – out of fear, self-doubt or just plain ignorance of our true worth. We sit quietly in the corner when opportunity is dancing around the room, unwilling to stand up and say PICK ME!
Starting today, I want you to step up and say it like Elle says it: PICK ME!
Say it even if the question hasn’t been asked yet, say it when you know it’s something you want, say it because saying PICK ME! will open doors and create opportunity.
Say it even when you don’t even know what it is you want IN on!
It all starts with I WANT IN and everything else will unfold from there. But nothing (and I mean, zero, zilch, nada) will happen if you don’t say those magical words.
Does it guarantee you success? No. But you will find that you fail a lot less often than you think. And the surest way to guarantee failure is to never step up and ask to be in the game to begin with.
MOMeo Dare: Step up and say PICK ME! Not tomorrow or next week…TODAY!
Got questions about building momentum? Share them in the comments below!
Momentum Monday Baby Steps: A Lesson in the Art and Importance of MOMENTUM
Remember your child’s first steps?
Not the accomplished steps of a veteran walker, but the tentative first steps of a toddler giggling and reeling between their beaming parents’ outstretched arms.
Far from a study in the art of balance, it’s a shining example of the benefit of momentum. Start moving…step-step-step. Don’t stop, because if you do, KERPLOP – you land square on your diaper-clad bottom!
What is momentum anyway?
The technical definition: the fundamental force of motion; the power that exists in a moving object; mass times velocity; vrrrroooooommm.
The entrepreneurial definition: the ability to move ideas forward with speed, efficiency and effortlessness; to use one step forward to propel yourself onto the next, the next and the next.
Step-Step-Step = Momentum!
The secret to momentum is taking step after step after step. No matter how tentative, awkward, or scary. The key is taking that first step!
#1: Focus on the FIRST step – Stay out of overwhelm by focusing on taking that first step. One step. Not two hundred and one. Not even five. One simple, but critical step forward.
#2: Fix your sights on a near target – There’s a reason they call them “Baby Steps.” Start by focusing on simple, achievable short-term goals. The giant leaps will come later.
#3: Don’t stop moving – Stop and you lose all your momentum. So don’t.
#4: Use steps to power your next steps – Success leads to more success, but only if you leverage that success to power your next moves. Build on your momentum by focusing on following up on your last step.
#5: Practice stepping – Momentum is a habit – one that requires daily practice. Set yourself daily goals and achieve them – from start to finish.
Remember: The journey of a thousand miles starts with a single step – so take that step today.
MOMeo Momentum Monday Challenge: Take one step toward your big audacious goal TODAY. Follow that step with another tomorrow, and the next day, and the next. That’s momentum.
Got questions about building momentum? Share them in the comments below!
MOMentum Mondays: Want to Get More Done? Ditch the Distractions
Want to get more done? Ditch the distractions!
Email, voicemail, instant messenger, texting…even tidying up your office is a distraction in disguise.
What is it disguised as? Productivity.
Fingers moving, talk-talking, chaos miraculously transformed into the height of productive neatness. More items checked off your 8-mile long to-do list.
The problem? Most of it is unimportant busy work.
Why would we fill our days with useless busy work when the stuff that would move us forward gets left undone?
Sabotage? Who me?
Yep!
Read my Original Post from Escaping Mediocrity: 30 Days to Change your Game
Sabotage? Who ME?
Ever catch yourself in the single most dangerous lie game-changers face? It goes something like this: I am ready (and willing) to step into my success (or own my true potential…yadda, yadda, yadda).
<INSERT YOUR VERSION OF THE LIE HERE>
Whenever I am ready to take a huge step forward in my business, or in my personal life, that little inner voice starts with the quiet whispers:
“Who do you think you are to be doing this?”
“What are you doing, you have absolutely no idea how to do that?”
“Boy are you going to look like an idiot when you fail!”
Who invited this JERK into your headspace anyway?
Um…that would be you!
And you better believe that as soon as I start down that path, that voice gets louder and the whisper becomes a scream! I want to sleep in, clean my office, get sick, run over by a bus…anything to not face what I fear the most: success.
Huh?
It shocked me to the core when I learned that people fear raving success as much as they fear dismal failure. Put another way: we’re most comfortable right in the middle – not too happy, not too sad, but just right.
Mediocrity.
We get too close to the bottom, we pull up our socks and get back to that happy middle ground. But get too close to the top and we call in sick, check out, sabotage. The worst part is the closer to the top, the greater the resistance.
Whatever you do, DON’T LOOK DOWN!
Everyone has what I call their Holy Shit moment. Even if you’ve played it pretty safe, there’s that one time when for some reason or another you did something way out of your comfort zone.
For me, it was the first double black diamond run I attempted on telemark skis (as a so-so blue run skier).
Friends suggested it saying it would have a hidden pocket of powder because getting to it required a long traverse. The assurances that “It will be no problem” quickly faded to an “Oh, this is steeper than I remember.”
HOLY SHIT! How did I get here and how am I going to get out of it?
Note: The thing about Holy Shit moments is there is only one way out: straight down! That’s what makes it a true Holy Shit moment.
Conquering your Inner Critic
#1: Breathe (and for god sakes don’t look down)!
#2: Focus – Channel your inner Zen master and seek the one thing that will move you forward.
#3: Think back to your Holy Shit moment and know that you have the power to do ANYTHING (even if it scares the shit out of you)!
#4: ACT – Even if you feel like kicking and screaming, take one step forward. (Not a cheat step where you spend a day feigning work “organizing your office” or other busy work, but an actual step forward!)
The Game Changer Rule: if you aren’t feeling the urge to flee, you are sandbagging. Try harder.
Game Changer Challenge
Think about your Holy Shit moment. If you have a bunch, pick one – you daredevil. Write down what you can take from the moment – important lessons, realizations about yourself, core values…anything you think will give you strength for what lies ahead.
Bonus points for picking one task off your game changer list that scares the shit out of you and doing it THIS week.
Want to get in on the discussion? Go to the original post at Escaping-Mediocrity: 30 Days to Change your Game and read the comments (and my replies)!
Oh…and if you’re worried about Building and Maintaining your MOMentum, tune in for our new feature column Momentum Mondays every (you guessed it) Monday!
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- I love that @AlyPain tells it like it is --> STOP Blaming Your Children - Why YOUR Failure Isn't THEIR Fault - http://t.co/LPo51mgI
- Pretend that every single person you meet has a sign around his or her neck that says, "Make me feel important." ~Mary Kay Ash
