Friday, March 18, 2016

Focus: The Most Important Standard Operating Procedure

My latest SOP video is posted. It's about the subject of Focusing on what you need to do. Focusing on what you need to focus on, really.

Focus and execution go hand in hand. The most important SOP you have can have is the habit of focusing every day on the single most important thing you have to do - and then doing it.

Too many people fall down on this score. First, they don't set their intention for the day. Doing this is not hard: But you have to set aside five or ten or fifteen minutes and DO IT!

Why is it critically important to focus on the one single most important thing you need to day today? Because it forces you to sort through the clutter and prioritize. You can't pick 100 "most important" things. You can't pick 50. You need to figure out the one thing.


And, to be honest, you should figure out the one thing in your business, the one thing in your family, and the one thing in your personal life. Not ten of each. ONE. One of each.

If you don't go through this practice, you end up making excuses because you're overwhelmed. You have a hundred things on your list and you don't know where to start. So you clean the filing cabinet instead! I don't know how important it is to clean the filing cabinet, but I guarantee it's not the most important thing you need to do. You let yourself become overwhelmed and then you do something that's not even on any list!

You've heard the phrase "Writers write." It's true for everyone. Consultants consult. Business advisers advise.Salesmen sell. Teachers teach.

What they DO is FOCUS 100% on what they do. Every day. NOT make excuses, straighten the office, wait until the time is right, hire someone, fire someone, get a new computer, make sure the offering is perfect, and a billion other forms of procrastination.

When you set too many tasks to do - and don't prioritize them - then you just work and work and work trying to make some progress somewhere. You're not organized and you're not efficient. You're just working.

Focus helps you to work on the most important things first. When you do that, it's amazing how quickly everything else falls into place. You begin to make much faster progress on everything.

Some people never excel at anything except excuses. Excuses for why they can't make sales calls. Excuses for why they don't do the things they need to do. 100% of everyone I've ever given advice to already knew what they needed to do. They didn't know where to start.

Start somewhere. Start anywhere. Once 100% of your focus is on the DOING instead of on the excuses, you will make progress. Even if you start in the "wrong" place, you'll plow through that and move to the next thing, the next thing, and the next thing. You'll be moving instead of standing. Once you're moving you can make course corrections.

You can do anything. But you have to stop wasting your time on all the little crap that does nothing to advance your goals.

. . .

Oh yeah. This is kind of a tough love video. But it's short.

:-)

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