Through careful observation and questioning, I believe that there are two important factors at play:
Firstly, the plan to put in progress appears too big and vague, allowing the business operator to stew over it and procrastinate getting started. The second is to do with the decision due to decision fatigue. Let me elaborate further.
Create an effective to do list
Running a business can often mean that you are stretched in many different directions. The need to have and maintain the bigger picture is important and having these lofty objectives can also mean that you are too distracted to focus on the simplest of tasks. The Buddhists refer to this state as “monkey mind”.
David Allen, author of Getting things done: The Art of Stress-Free Productivity, has an effective way to ensure that you focus on one thing at a time with mindfulness and ultimately get a great deal done without time wasters encroaching on your precious time.
Firstly, create a high-level to-do list. This may include tasks, projects, calls to make, invoices to chase and so forth. Once this is done, decide which of these items you will; do now, delegate, drop, or defer to later.
The next step is to create your personal to-do list. Whilst this sounds easy, and it is, it is not the same as some of the items on the original list.
On this list, you need to ensure that the list now includes the very next specific step to action immediately.
So if your to-do list item is to launch the new product at your targeted consumers, your to-do list might include looking-up the details of a suitable manufacturer, contacting your media agency, analysing the customer relationship system for customers who fit the target profile, book in a briefing meeting with a project manager.
Lastly, folders for each day of the month for every month are created (either electronically or in hard copy).
Here you place anything to do with your to-do list item into the appropriate day that you will address the task.
For instance your plane ticket for Thursday’s flight, goes into the Thursday folder along with your cabcharge, agenda and pre-read document for the plane ride.
There are some clever apps these days, such as Evernote, which allows multimedia items to be saved into these folders so that they are organised and ready when you are.
Learn to minimised the non-automatic decisions made daily. This minimises decision fatigue, a situation which impacts many business operators, CEOs, and even the Prime Minister.
With the number of decisions that need to be made on a constant basis, often based on copious amounts of information and a large cost of getting it wrong, the fatigue can lead to a drop in willpower.
Roy Baumeister’s book on Willpower: rediscovering our greatest strength, reveals how decision fatigue and drops in will power can lead to decisions that unravel a business or bring down a politician’s career overnight.
So it is important to maintain a clear head and limit the number of important decisions made in a day.
In following these methods, you are able to have the ability to focus and unleash your creativity, allowing you to innovate. Now what could be better than that!
Maria Ioia is principal at Market Intelligence Agency. Contact her at maria@marketintelligenceagency.com,au or visit wwwmarketintelligenceagency.com.au
