Our lives as small business owners are chaotic, plain and simple. If you’re anything like me, on any given day you’ve got a slew of tasks to complete and distractions pulling you in a million different directions.
For us as small business owners, staying focused can be one of our biggest daily challenges. We’ve got many things to do and little time in which to do it. Staying focusing is critically important to our success. What is the secret to staying focused and getting the things we need to complete on time?
Here are 3 valuable tips that, in my experience, when followed, can help keep you on track and improve your productivity:
- Realize the Importance of Focus – It’s easy in our age of overwhelming multi-taskers to lose focus completely. We have become so accustomed to the idea of trying to do several things at once that we often don’t remember how much more effective it can be to focus on one thing at a time. We can more efficiently focus when we learn to recognize the value of ‘focus’ itself.
- Create non-negotiable blocks of time – There are tasks that we must complete as small business owners that are non-negotiable. Whatever those tasks are in your business, they simply must be done. These tasks can’t go undone for any length of time without your systems and processes falling apart. Treat your time associated with these tasks accordingly. Block non-negotiable time out of your schedule daily, or with whatever frequency your tasks demand, where those duties are your focus.
- Create goals with tight deadlines – Having too much time to get something done is the enemy of getting it done efficiently and with high quality. Procrastination is a self-defeating habit that plagues many small business owners. Procrastination leads to poor quality and creates unnecessary stress. The best solution to beat procrastination is to create deadlines that force you to get started and make progress right away. By playing this little trick on yourself, you can force yourself to take the most difficult step toward completing your task – getting started – much sooner. Getting the ball rolling is the hardest step. Once started, we often find that the task will not require as much work as we anticipated.
All of these factors can lead to better concentration and staying focused on the task at hand.
Make it a goal today to get started on a task that is currently demanding your attention, but that you’ve been putting off.