Leadership Requires FOCUS:
The Five Steps to Focus on Your Business, Not Busyness
Leaders just like you often get caught doing busy work that has little to do with their top priorities and find that they are not making the progress they want. How often do you find yourself falling into the busy zone?
You know, that place where you do things like responding to countless emails, trapped on social media, exploring around the internet, or being sent on wild goose chases deemed “emergencies” by others? You could take up an entire day, week, month….as long as you let it happen, doing everything else--rather than what you need to do to make a big impact. Then, all of a sudden, you panic. You have to write that chapter for your book or write a proposal for your client, get that long-range forecast to your boss, or whatever that important thing you had to do was…and now you’ve run out of time. Looks like another late night—no dinner with the family—no leisure time—work, work, work. Sigh…
The high value activity that your business could’ve benefitted from has been once again pushed aside. Now that it’s later in the day, you're run down and your brain isn't at its best thinking capacity. The task becomes so much harder now than it would have been if you would've just knocked it out first thing.
How did we get here? And why do we keep returning and get continually stuck in this rut?
You are focusing on “busywork” instead of “business work”.
Here’s the thing: You’ve got aspirations and big goals you want to deliver on. There are tasks that are obviously of high urgency like the high-stakes presentation to a new prospect, completing the assignment for the boss well, and the fires that need to be put out. These items need to take precedence. There’s also this; the small and continuous investments you make in you and the longer term important objectives for your business will pay big dividends—yet this is the important work that gets sidelined and pushed off consistently.
What could the next year look like in your business—what would need to change in order to achieve better results—how could you be working incrementally to make progress? There is no greater investment you can make than investing in yourself. Reading a great business or personal development book, taking a course on a new skill you need to learn or a new concept or trend you want to embrace, or anything for your self-improvement. Done regularly, this investment will pay you back BIG. It doesn’t have to be monumental for it to pay off; I have the page a day 7 Habits of Highly Effective People calendar by Steven Covey. Today’s page was about discipline from Habit #3 of Putting First Things First® and the importance of leading a disciplined life focused on what matters—leading a life of leverage and influence—rather than avoiding responsibility and taking initiative. It makes me consider how this shows up in my life and how I could improve by applying this idea.
The Busyness Trap
Yet, when you get wrapped up in being perpetually busy, it’s hard to tell the difference between business work and busywork. Many times we feel like we’re ‘slacking off’ if we’re not “doing” something. The busy stuff is easy, but not a priority and is an insidious killer of time and true productivity. Busywork has a way of eating away the hours, preventing us from ever getting to what matters most.
When you recognize the difference between important business and busyness in the moment, you can make a choice-- which path is worth your focus first and which one is not. Having an outside perspective can be helpful to help you become more self-aware and discerning about your priorities.
Abraham Lincoln said, “Give me six hours to chop down a tree and I'll spend the first four sharpening my axe." Smart, right?! Intellectually it makes sense to us, but our actions don’t always match what we know to be best. Many will start swinging that axe right away. I catch myself doing this at times, particularly when I haven’t taken the time to step back and prioritize. This often leads to going down the wrong path. What if instead, we focused on sharpening our axes first? If we spent our days prioritizing and planning it would only make sense for us to begin with the highest value work first. For even one hour a day, if we would focus on our top priorities—we would make progress. Over time, that daily progress will add up and could lead to significant results. These results have the potential to elevate your business and your life to new heights.
Who is in charge here?
First, recognize that you can choose to be in control. The best laid plans can go awry, even when you plan ahead. When your day doesn’t start off the way you had intended, you can begin again-- at any time. Start the day over—right then and where you recognize things are off track. Put work on YOUR terms.
If ifs and buts were candy and nuts
When you constantly allow yourself to be taken by the current vs. taking control, you might hear yourself say, “I’ll get to my priorities once I have these tasks completed—or I’ll just knock out these few emails and then I do what’s important.” This chasm between the present and that idealistic future drains you when you don’t feel that you are making progress. The future continually is pushed out further and further until it feels like it will never happen. You are drowning in excuses and rationalization and are exhausted.
However, if we look at the root cause of why this is happening, you might be surprised to discover that, not only are you responsible for your behavior, but that it’s easier to take control and close the gap than you may expect.
The 5 Steps to Take to You from Busyness to Business
When we think strategically about our business and managing our time—it’s often very clear to many business leaders where they should be spending their time, they just aren’t sure how to get there. Here’s the 5-Step Process to get you there:
1. Block time on your calendar to focus on your priorities—this is sacred time and you should work hard to protect it.
2. Make your list of what needs to get done and prioritize it by what matters most—Important (most impactful long term) goes to the top of the list, Urgent (time bound, must be addressed now) comes next, and finally non important (not important, nor urgent) comes last.
3. Focus in on your top 3 most important priorities each day—work on them single mindedly. Priority #1 gets your focus and attention until complete. Then move onto #2 and stay with it until completed. Finally, it is #3’s turn and then you are done.
4. Celebrate your success! And keep going if there is time, start working on #4 and beyond.
5. Momentum is created by the completion of what matters most. It’s energizing and often propels you to the finish line even faster because you are doing the work that matters most. When all is going well—keep up the discipline—it will continue to pay dividends as long as you do it.
The final question is this: Should YOU really be doing all of these tasks that are showing up on your list? Apply the process improvement framework of ADE, automate, eliminate or delegate:
ADE: Automate, Delegate, Eliminate
Automate: Is there a way to simplify the process and make it automatic? If the process is repetitive, there is likely a way to use a program, template, or script to enable you to get this busywork off your plate.
Delegate: Is this work in your zone of genius (meaning no one can do it better than you) If the answer is no—then who could do this work instead of you? Someone on your team currently, or perhaps you need to hire an employee, or outsource to a 3rd party. Our time is our most valuable resource, use it wisely.
Eliminate: Does this work really need to get done? Does it fall into the category of “this is the way we’ve always done it” and it continues without any real value? Be ruthless—say no—this is what the most productive and highly successful people do. And since you are on your path to greatness, so should you.
Your challenge is this: DO IT. Don’t just read this article and think to yourself—this is a challenge for me, these ideas are really good and maybe I’ll try them out sometime soon. The time is NOW. You owe it to yourself and the people you lead to do and give your best. It begins with focusing your time, talent, and attention on the right things, consistently. This is what the highly successful do to achieve. You can do it too—and please remember us little people when you are crushing it, breaking the records, winning all of the awards, and signing autographs! So take action: Put a reminder in your calendar to do the 5 steps at the beginning of every week. Wishing you all the best!
Transforming BOLD leaders and their teams into excuse-proof and goal-crushing is our mission. Are you ready to take the leap to achieve more success than you ever thought possible and never look back? Connect with us today!