Focused Work First

Being a small business owner means navigating a never-ending list of obligations and deciding what deserves your attention at any moment. It is tempting to give your focus to the activity or person that makes the most noise. While that may work in the short-term, it rarely serves your long-range goals.

Most of the tasks that demand our attention as urgent in the moment are hardly that. They are simply tasks, some of which don’t deserve any of our time and attention.

How do we move from the “everything’s on fire” mindset to intentional, focused action?

FIRST, recognize that not everything is your problem. Yes, business owners bear the responsibility of ensuring the business continues to operate and grow. However, that doesn’t mean that every problem is your problem.

Ask yourself, is this something that requires my time in order to advance the business and move us toward our long-range goals?

NEXT, choose to ignore the low priority tasks as they pop up throughout the day. Develop a singular focus by working on one activity at a time. Try closing all tabs and other documents and only keep open the single item deserving of your focus. Purpose not to check emails or answer calls while you are focused on the activity that you have decided is deserving of your time. If you are attending a networking event, be fully present. Resist the urge to check your messages or step out to take calls. As a solo entrepreneur this may be more difficult, but there are lower cost solutions to help remove some of the distractions. Consider utilizing an answering service during those hours that you know you need to stay focused. Explore hiring a virtual assistant to handle certain administrative tasks that are easy distractors.

THEN, model the behavior for your team. The only things that should distract you from your focused work is an urgent, important matter. Unless you are an emergency room doctor or EMT, urgent and important is not the bulk of the items we focus on. We are often distracted by far less important matters.

FINALLY, accept that resisting the urge to bounce from one task to the next or to try to manage multiple tasks at the same time is a learned behavior that can be replaced with new behaviors that are more supportive of your ultimate goal—to run a profitable, growing business for years to come.

Here’s to more business birthdays!