Busy vs Productive
Do you need to do more, or to focus on less?
Every month, I meet with many business owners. After a while, obvious patterns begin to emerge. It has become obvious that owners fall into 2 primary categories—BUSY and PRODUCTIVE.
Most of the owners that I meet live in a constant state of being overwhelmed. They never seem to have enough time and feel like they are always “Busy”. When you ask them how they are doing, they will often choose to tell you how busy they are. It’s almost like a badge of honour – as if it is a good thing. Perhaps they actually think it is, but their results prove otherwise.
Busy Owners constantly struggle to prioritize and constantly re-prioritize their schedules and activities. By adding new priorities and tasks, they move to a constant state of over-commitment. It is not uncommon for these owners to drop balls, become forgetful, miss appointments, lose trust, and damage their personal and company reputations. They fall short on most of their goals due to lack of focus. Many Busy Owners haven’t taken a real vacation in years and when they do, they are unable to peel away from their emails, texts, and voicemails. They are truly busy, but mostly ineffective and unproductive.
An interesting thing about Busy Owners is that their busy-ness usually leads to more busy-ness. For them, being busy is like pumping more wood into a fire. The fire may temporarily get larger and feel like progress, but the end result is simply a larger pile of ash.
Conversely, the most successful owners focus intensely upon productivity. Productive Owners rarely seem to be busy. Although all businesses have occasional issues that may require additional attention from the owner, this Productive Owner is typically relaxed, thoughtful, curious, and balanced. They appear to have a great deal of control over their words, thoughts, calendars, and decisions. They keep appointments and are proactive instead of reactive. Rather than adding more goals, strategies, and activities, which tend to disperse focus, these successful owners invest an appropriate portion of their business and personal planning deciding what NOT to do (the most challenging, but important part of planning). Productive Owners can always find time to focus ON (versus in) their businesses and their lives.
The Busy Owner “never has the time” to do this. There is just too much “important stuff” to get done.
The most successful entrepreneurs understand that there is no more powerful force than focused energy. So instead of investing exorbitant time creating and trying to execute their To-Do list, Productive Owners devote extra effort to creating and managing their “Don’t Do, Delegate” lists. Doing so helps them to invest their limited, valuable time, energy, and resources in the most effective way possible and to focus only on those activities at or above their pay grade. Instead of striving to be busy, these owners strive to be productive.
Productive Owners outperform Busy Owners in every imaginable category including growth, profit, valuation, vacation, sleep, happiness and more.
So if you are a Busy Owner who wants to become a Productive Owner, here are a few steps to get you started..:
- CHOOSE to not be busy. This is about your mind set.
- Write your “to do” list, and then move the busy activities to the bottom of the list.
- Form the new habit. CHOOSE Productivity as your priority for 90 days. By then, Productivity will become a habit and busy-ness will taste like poison.
- For every BUSY task that you do take on – think why? Think about how to avoid doing this yourself next time.
- LOCATE an Accountability Coach or Productivity Coach to keep you on track. A short period of accountability coaching will help form the new habits.
- Test your BUSINESS MODEL – how do you get to afford to pay others to do the busy work for you…
