Distractions and Your Home Based Business
Distractions occuring in your home business are not a question of ‘if ‘- they are a question of when, how often, how long, etc., etc.
They come in the form of friends dropping by just because they know you’re home. They come the form of phone calls from friends, telemarketers, peers. They come in the form of those little chores that call out for attention. They come in the form of busy work.
Distrations are a major concern because if you don’t learn to control them - they will control you and your ability to get the important work done. By important work I’m refering to the projects that will move your business forward in a meaningful way.
What is ‘meaningful’?
A meaningful task or project carries the kind of significance that would warrent a call home to your spouse to announce. Examples: “The book has been sent to the editor”, “The software is ready to ship”, “The website finished and is up and running”, etc.
Many of the distractions that happen aren’t planned for, so we typically don’t handle them well; which simply means we ‘react’ to them rather than ‘respond’. When we react to anything we are ’shooting from the hip’, and we want to approach business as a sharpshooter instead.
We can do that, and end up working smarter than harder (sniper) by actually planning ahead in order to be as prepared as possible for when the distractions occur.
That might include turning your phone off for a specific period every day in order to concentrate on that key project. It might mean leaving your emails unread until the late afternoon. It might require that you close the door to your office during a scheduled period each day. Think this through.
One of the most important business habits you can adopt is the habit of creating a ‘Top Six’ list for each day. These are the tasks that are most meaningful interms of moving your business forward for the long term.
Practice focusing on achieving those six targets before moving on to putting out fires or handling those distractions.
Once you have raised your awareness to how often and how serious your ‘distrations problem’ is - you’ll be shocked. Shocked about how little of the truly important stuff gets done.
And once you’ve made the decsion to start working smarter ; the temptations to work on the fires and distrations first will come fast and furious. That’s where you need to stick with it and commit to reversing the tide over the long haul.
Firmly demand that people respect your time. For meetings; ask for and stick to specific agendas and promise to do the same for them. Most people would agree that they are already far too busy so they will likely appreciate your methodology once they get the hand of it.
Dr. W.Deming stated a long time ago: “The first responsibility of a business - is to stay in business”. By controling distractions and implementing your ‘Top Six’ daily list you will make a Quantum Leap forward to having a successful home based business.
John T. Kelly ~ ‘The Home Business Evangelist’
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