Is perfection an issue with you? I mean, does everything you do have to be perfect before you call it done? Or before you can deliver it to a client? Or before you can use it in your business?
I’m not talking about delivering faulty services in lieu. I’m talking about letting your client or your business suffer because you can’t deliver until your end product is absolutely perfect. Delivered flawlessly. Do you honestly think that this is the road to financial success?
Let me make a bold example for you to translate into something you do in your own business that holds back results.
I have some potted plants on my garden window shelf above the kitchen sink. Every time I look at them I think, oh, they need water, but I should really fertilize them, because they need it. The fertilizer is in the garden shed, so I can’t do it now. I’ll get to it later. So, I’ll wait to water them when I can do a perfect job of it.
Guess what? My plants are dying because they aren’t getting what they need. I’m waiting for perfection in the execution of my duty to them. As a result, the plants don’t get watered. They get to die instead.
Truth time. Are you guilty of waiting for the perfect moment, to do the perfect thing in your business before you actually act? What does that cost your business? Do you think you can change that behavior? I mean, sometimes it’s better to act with imperfection than not to act at all. Even an imperfect, yet timely act, can have a positive result.
So, take a lesson. Act before your plant dies. Act before your client feels like you’ve neglected him. Act before you wonder where your business has gone. It may have gone to a competitor who acted instead of waiting for perfection.
I am very fortunate to have a genuine marketing guru as a friend and colleague. I learn so much just by talking with her about online and offline marketing. She works with bricks and mortar businesses to integrate Internet marketing into their marketing plans.
Her knowledge and creativity have helped countless small businesses make the leap from offline marketing to online marketing that increases traffic and revenues. She is helping a lot of small businesses avoid the train wreck of going out of business because they didn’t know how to make their way in this bold, new, technological world.
You would think that her business is booming, that clients are beating down her door to get her working on their problems. Yet that is not the case. Why? Because she is so focused on working with her clients that she doesn’t spend much time marketing herself or her services. So instead of having a steady stream of clients, she has a handful that take up all her time, and when their projects are completed, she scrambles to get another handful of clients. She’s so busy, she forgets to take care of herself. Read more…
Have you noticed that having a flexible schedule can backfire on your productivity? If you are an entrepreneur or you work from home and are totally responsible for your own schedule, there has to be some established routine in your work days. Without set routines, when are you ever going to get anything done?
A very creative colleague of mine has a “flexible” schedule. He gives other people access to him during his work day and doesn’t limit that access. Some weeks he gets a lot of things accomplished and some weeks he doesn’t. The not very productive weeks were increasing to the point where he was falling far behind in his money producing work. He asked me for help, so I took a look. Read more…
Don’t fall into the trap of thinking that you can share your work space at home with other people or other activities. If you don’t have a designated work space at home to be productive, then plan on spending more time to get less done.
Think of all the time it will take to set up your space for work and cleaning up after your work day, every day if you intend to share that space. If it takes you 30 minutes a day to do this, and you work at home 3 days per week, in a year that translates to 75 HOURS of your time! Wasted. If you had done something productive with that 75 hours, what impact would that have had to your business or work? Do you think you could have used that time for a vacation? After all, you didn’t do anything productive for the business, did you? Read more…
If everyone carefully chose what they did in their time, and made choices that were good for their businesses or work, there wouldn’t be this pervading perception that there is a time shortage.
When people tell me they don’t have time, I like to tell them that time is an illusion, albeit a persistent one. What they should be saying is, they don’t do what they need to do with their time. That’s why they never seem to get things done or they have too many things to do, or the things that they do take up too much time.
Seriously, who’s making those choices of what you “need” to do? It’s you, right? Granted, if you work for someone else you are told what has to be accomplished, yet you are still your own personal time manager. You still get to choose what you’re going to do in any given moment. Read more…
