Do you need to do more, or to focus on less?

Every month, I meet with dozens of business owners.   Over the last 20 years, I’ve visited with thousands of them.   After a while, obvious patterns begin to emerge.   It has become obvious that owners fall into 2 primary categories—BUSY and PRODUCTIVE.

A significant percentage of the owners I meet live in a constant state of overwhelm.   They never seem to have enough time and feel like they are always “Busy”.   It is relatively easy to spot a Busy Owner.   When you ask them how they are doing, they will often choose to tell you right away how busy they are.   Some try to convey busy-ness as a badge of honor 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 re-prioritize their schedules and activities but find doing so to be an exercise in futility.  The massive influx of productivity tools, social media, and technologies only seem to exacerbate their problem instead of helping.   By adding new priorities and goals each month, some live in 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 CEO, the 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 To-Don’t 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 by a landslide in every imaginable category including growth, profit, valuation, vacation, sleep, happiness and more.

I love entrepreneurs, and it kills me to see some of them waste their time and energy on the Busy-ness Hamster Wheel.  

So if you are a Busy Owner who wants to become a Productive Owner, here are a few steps to get you started..:

1.     DECIDE and DECLARE that you will no longer be Busy.

2.    CHOOSE Productivity over Busy-ness in all things you do for 90 days.   By then, Productivity will become a habit and busy-ness will taste like poison.

3.    BLOCK OUT a minimum of 8 hours each month into your calendar to devote to becoming a Productive Owner.  Don’t tell me you’re too busy.   Do it right now!  

4.     LOCATE an Accountability Partner or Productivity Coach to keep you on track.

5.     JOIN a CEO Peer Group like the Alternative Board to help you make more skillful choices with regard to how to invest your precious time, money, energy and resources.

If you have any questions at all, please email me at joe@zthree.com.  I’m on a mission to eradicate busy-ness from the entrepreneurial community.

I’d love to hear from you.

Joe

Copyright ©   Joe Zente  2018.   All Rights Reserved.