Modest Business Success Habit #2 – Working Too Hard

Posted on April 27, 2009 by Cecilia

In a previous post, I introduced you to the first habit in my series, The 4 Habits of Modestly Successful Entrepreneurs. The goal of this is to help small business owners and solo-preneurs to understand the business practices and even models that may be keeping them in the middle of the pack of entrepreneurs achieving modest levels of business success and exposing them to strategies that will lead to phenomenal success.

Our first habit was selling time for money. We discussed some of the challenges of that business model and the inherent limitations it poses on the maximum amount of revenue your business could earn. This post covers the second habit. Feel free to watch the video for a more thorough explanation of this habit.

Modest Success Habit #2: Working Too Hard

Who would ever think that working too hard is a problem? Aren’t entrepreneurs known to be some of the hardest working people on earth? Doesn’t it take commitment, dedication, and a singular focus to make a business successful?

Yes, is the answer to all of those questions. Yet hard work is something that must be managed. There is a saying that when you want something done, give it to a busy person. That is because most busy people have learned how to manage the work they do effectively. For an entrepreneur though, when things start to pile up, it is easy to slip into the mode of, I’ll just work harder and end up with the habit of working too hard.

Why working too hard is a problem

Here are some of the perils of indulging this habit:

Working on the wrong things – More than likely, people who are working too hard are caught spending most of their time putting out fires and ignoring the important, non-urgent items. This creates a vicious cycle of too much work.
Inefficient performance – You cannot perform your best when you are constantly over-worked
Performance that is not sustainable – Burning the candle at both ends is not something that can be kept up forever. You will pay the price in:
- Health problems (stress, weight issues, heart disease, etc.)
- Degrading relationships (including the support system necessary to keep you successful)
- Loss of passion that can lead to mental drain burnout

Solutions to break this habit

Create a plan that covers both vision and goals

Holistic plan that includes your personal goals as well as your professional goals since, with entrepreneurs, the connection between the two cannot be ignored
Have a strategic plan for your business that includes a long-range strategy and short-term operational plans. Doing this will allow you to feel more in control and have opportunity to spend your time on the things you loved about your business when you started it versus the stress inducing activities that fire fighting causes(There are more benefits of strategic planning that we don’t have time to cover here, but, as a strategist let me say that good strategic planning and execution can propel your business to success in a more efficient manner than just winging it can)
Build into your schedule regular “think time.” While it doesn’t require much movement, thinking is a necessary and productive activity that allows you to pull up from the details periodically to see the big picture and tap into your creative juices.
Build into your schedule time to engage in the things you love to do and that will re-energize you. This may include:
Playing hard (after you work hard)
- Celebrating your victories
- Investing in your continuous self development
- Getting some rest

If you remember that you are running your business for the long-haul, for the marathon versus the sprint, you will understand why consistently working at maximum capacity will reduce the length of time over which you are able to produce results.

Stay tuned for Habit #3.

How to Get Done What You Don’t Want to Do

Posted on March 16, 2009 by Cecilia

There are always going to be a list of things that we decide to do even though we don’t want to. We decide that we will pay our taxes so we don’t get in trouble with the IRS. We decide to follow up on outstanding invoices with our clients/customers so we can get paid. We decide to update the registration on our car so we don’t get a ticket or fine. We make decisions to do things on a regular basis that we would prefer not to be bothered with. Getting them done is another story.

Some of these things are not really that difficult to accomplish, they are just not how we would choose to spend our time (or we have some emotional baggage associated with them – but that’s another story.) So we procrastinate.

If you want to make an easy job seem mighty hard, just keep putting off doing it. ~Olin Miller

The longer we procrastinate, the harder the task seems. In fact, procrastination often does make the job more difficult in reality. Putting off paying taxes can lead to interest on back taxes, garnished wages, or the need to explain past tax problems during Senate confirmations. The longer a customer goes without paying, the less likely they are to pay. This could then lead to the need to use collection agencies or law suits to attempt to get paid. You may also need to find short term financing sources to allow you to manage your cash flow. Not registering your car on time in many states eliminates the option of handling it through the mail or on line and requires you to go to the DMV and stand in lines. Not too efficient a use of time.

There are some very effective tactics to getting tasks done that you really don’t want to do:

Delegate – Now a days, there is very little that cannot be delegated. If you don’t have employees to whom you can delegate tasks, there are business professionals – accountants, bookkeepers, computer specialists, copywriters, web site developers, trainers, etc. – that specialize to doing the tasks that others don’t have the inclination or the skill to do. Additionally, VAs, virtual assistants, can support you in completing both your business and personal tasks.

Automate – Some tasks that we don’t like doing require doing regularly. Use technology to get those things done. Auto-responders, electronic billing, recurring task reminders, and other such tools help minimize the amount of time you need to spend doing the tasks. You do have to make the initial investment of time to set things up though.

Eliminate – Many of the things we choose to do – not necessarily the examples I used above – could, with minimal pain, just never get done. It never hurts to careful evaluate exactly why you chose to do a certain thing in the first place and weight it against the “cost” of not doing it. Some things just need to be taken off your plate.

Just do it – When all else fails, just do it. Do it as soon as you can, as quickly as you can, and with the highest level of quality it requires (no need to re-do something you didn’t want to do in the first place because of shoddy work.)

Have a powerful day!

When’s There’s Nothing You Can Do About It, Dont Worry …

Posted on March 12, 2009 by Cecilia

LOS ANGELES - APRIL 20: People walk in the ra...

Image by Getty Images via Daylife

… But when you can do something, ACT and don’t complain.

There are few power busters greater than worrying about the things over which we have no control. This is especially true for, and probably the real definition of, people who have control issues. We spend time trying, in vain, to gain control over situations and people where it is not our place or within our capability to be successful.

If being a “control freak” does not describe you, how about being a “worry wart?” Once we are resigned to the fact that we have no control in a given situation, we often spend needless time worrying about it. The weather is a great example of this. We have a big day planned of outdoor activities and the weather forecast shows a probability of rain. We hope that our plans aren’t ruined and then complain bitterly when the showers come as predicted.

Instead of obsessing about the weather, we can focused on the things over which we have control. There are several decisions that can be made:

Determine that it is okay to proceed in the rain
Figure out a way to hold our activities indoors, away from the rain
Cancel the plans and wait for another clear day

When we acknowledge that we have choices and exercise our power to make those choices, their is no need to then complain. Complaining puts us in victim mode, while exercising choices keeps us powerful.

I used weather to illustrate this, but the same holds true in business. Today, our nation is facing one of the greatest economic storms any but the most senior of us has ever experienced. What are you going to do about it? Should you just sit back and worry? Hope that your plans don’t get ruined? Well, hope is not a strategy. Instead you can review your choices and exercise some options:

Is your business’ economic position healthy enough to sustain itself through a credit crunch and depressed sales?
Do you need to change your strategy and find ways to operate in either a new market or with a different business model?
Is it time to realize that continuing with the current plan is a losing proposition and that it is best to halt operations and relaunch at another time?

These are all decision that you can make regarding your business. They may be easier said than done, but, unlike worrying, hoping, and complaining, making a choice and taking the difficult steps is what will lead you to achieve your desired results.

Have a powerful day!

Innovative Time Saving Tip

Posted on March 11, 2009 by Cecilia

Image representing iPhone as depicted in Crunc...

Image via CrunchBase

I just saw a Tweet (for those of you unfamiliar with Twitter, this is what their micro-blogging posts are called) with a great time saving tip. If you listened to this month’s Forward the Action Call on personal productivity, you heard me discuss the increased demands technology has placed on all of us. People now expect answers to their emails in minutes, not days or even hours. With a crowded email box, the effort of answering emails could take hours daily. This time in not spent forwarding your agenda, so what can you do?

The Tweet I read recommends leveraging another current trend/expectation. If you are responding to an email from your Blackberry or iPhone, people expect much shorter answers. In fact, they are honored that you took the time to respond to them at all since you are clearly away from your office and engaged in some other activity of importance. They know that you sent the message from your phone because the signature line tells them.

So here is the recommendation, change the reply line (you can do this just temporarily) on your desktop to read “Sent from iPhone” or “Sent from Blackberry”. Then you can send much shorter responses – like one sentence or phrase – to all of those emails.

Kind of innovative. What do you think?

New Year’s Resolutions Don’t Work – Time for a New Approach

Posted on December 13, 2008 by Cecilia

: Image via Wikipedia

Each year nearly 100 million Americans make New Years resolutions to lose weight, eat better, exercise, save, invest or earn more money, quit drinking or smoking, strengthen or make new relationships, or a host other things that might otherwise eliminate unnecessary pain or cause joy in their lives. Every year, 97% of the resolutions made are broken. 25% are broken within the first week, close to 40% are broken within the first month, and nearly 60% don’t make it past the six month mark. The next year, the same resolutions are made to do, start, or stop the same things again.

New Year’s resolutions – the way our tradition would have us make them just don’t work. Here are two major reasons why:

Relatively little thought goes into determining the resolutions. Either the last few days of the year or on New Year’s day, a list of things that are top of mind are jotted down as resolutions. The draw backs to this are numerous, but here are a could a major ones:
- All of the bad behaviors and indulgences from the Thanksgiving and Christmas holiday season are on the top of our minds. These do not necessarily reflect the things of most importance for the whole year
- Usually includes a list of things we think we should do regardless of our level of motivation. These are the things we want to do so our commitment to them is relatively low
Resolutions usually focus on completing tasks and not transforming behaviors. A resolution to clean out the garage will usually need to be made the following year because no effort is taken to change the behavior that led to the junkie garage in the first place.

A much better approach is to focus on goals and objectives that are in alignment with both who we are and who it is we desire to become. Doing this will require more work – the kind of work that will increase the odds of the objectives being met. You will therefore be better off reducing the number of goals you set each year and creating a plan for each one. The process might look something like this:

Determine the areas of your life or work in which you have the greatest desire to make a change
Craft a long-term vision for what things would ideally look like in that area
Create a shorter-term goal for the year that will move you closer to that vision
Determine what structures and supports you need to put in place to accomplish the goal – including potentially a coach or accountability group

If you have no commitment to follow through on your resolutions, they do more to rob you of your power than they do to support. This year, try it a different way and create plans to which you are committed and build in accountability. This will increase your odds of having a powerful 2009.

Have a powerful day!
Cecilia

Cecilia Edwards

All Things Strategy – Some of Them Social

Category Archives: Getting Results