As a business owner, you are constantly being pulled in different directions. It comes with the territory- everyone wants a piece of your time.
The problem is not all demands are created equal (see my recent article on the 80/20 rule!), and if you just spent your time doing things other people asked you to do, I guarantee you could fill your days with no problem.
In fact, that is very often what I see a lot of business owners get stuck in the rut of doing. The day starts with checking email, and immediately there are two or three problems to solve right away, and then a few more that aren’t urgent but are going to need to be done.
By the time you’ve got those things handled and officially started your day, there are already more problems that have popped up or just things that have to get done that you need to help with, manage, or actually do yourself.
Check out what else we’ve been up to!
- Matt Reviews: Is the Skittles Vending Machine Worth It? (Short Video)
- Matt Reviews: Is Amazon Wholesale the Best Ecommerce Option? (Short Video)
- Matt Reviews: Will ChatGPT Actually Help You With This Side Hustle? (Short Video)
- Business for Sale, Would I Buy It? | New Car Wash (Short Video)
- Accounting Tips for Startups (Podcast)
Pretty soon, it’s the end of the day, and you made it through and took care of business- except you didn’t ever have time to do any of the things that would actually move the business forward or save you time tomorrow. Things like:
- Create procedures or training for things you should be able to hand off
- Worked on getting new customers and not just helping the ones you have
- Taken time to review your financials and metrics to see how things are going and spot trends before they become trouble or you miss an opportunity
- Take the time to really train someone instead of giving half-baked directions on something in passing you’ll have to go back and fix later
The list could go on and on. But if you never get to any of it, then tomorrow is going to look a lot like today, and five years from now won’t look that different than today either! You will grow until your time is completely filled by stuff to do right now and all further growth will stop because you don’t have any time to work on growing.
I get it- it’s a very easy trap to fall into.
And this doesn’t even account for the days where something happens that you really weren’t ready for at all- a key customer cancels a big order, a critical employee suddenly quits, there is some kind of accident or who knows what else.
So, in the face of all this, how do you still make progress and get to the things you should get to but never seem to?
Here’s what I do.
First, I make two lists. The first one is “all the stuff” that I want to do or would like to get to. It has some big ideas on there, and some smaller ones. It is a very long list. Some things are pretty aspirational.
The second list I generally write on a Post-it note. Not a huge one, the 3×3 size. I never write more than three things. These are things I have every intention of getting done by the end of that day. I usually do, because I make a point of leaving enough time to do so and making it a priority.
These are not meant to be things that I would do anyway, or little throwaway tasks just so I can check the box that I did them!
The items on the list may be small, but they are meant to help move in the direction I want to go. Sometimes they just say “research this” or email that person. Sometimes they are improvements to our project management system, or notes on sharing some new info with the team to help them all learn from something I saw that we could do better.
These items are sometimes things on my big to-do list or more often a part of one of those items, which by itself might be an all-day or even an all week project, but which I can chunk into a twenty minute task and get that done.
The goal behind this and why I adopted this system rather than the old one, where I’d write a daily to do list of ten to fifteen items, get half done, copy three to the next days list and never get to a lot of them ever is because it just works so much better.
With this system, I can almost always get my three things done. And grow a little bit each day. It keeps my expectations in line with reality (leaving most of the day for problem solving and regular stuff) but never dropping the goal of growing some each day. Each day, I can move things a little bit forward. In an amount that I can handle and hold myself accountable to do.
Twelve years ago, I worked by myself. Today we have nearly ninety employees. Back then we had a dozen customers. Today we have well over one thousand clients. It didn’t happen overnight, and I didn’t have it all figured out from the start. I still don’t by any means. But we chip away at it every day, and looking back over time, you can see the progress we’ve made.
Don’t get mad at yourself if you don’t make a ton of progress in business really quickly- that’s very hard to do for a short time and nearly impossible to keep up for a long time. But anyone can commit to making just a little progress every day, especially if you have the right system to make it happen.
And it does add up- I’m the perfect example of that! Give it a try and let me know how it goes for you!