Joined Up Business Leaders are disciplined to ensure that they never waste any resources – time, energy or money. They recognise that when they are disciplined and do what they said they would do, everything in life flows more easily.
Discipline comes from being committed to an activity and seeing it through to the end, no matter what. Far too many people say they are committed to something but when push comes to shove they quit. So why is this? Quite simply whilst they were just interested in achieving something rather than being committed to its success..
Here are three simple actions that you can practice every day to ensure that you stay disciplined and use your resources wisely.
1. Run the day, or it will run you. Some people will be masters of their time, and others will be servants. Joined Up Business Leaders become the masters of their time.
To master your time, you must have clear written goals for each day that you keep with you at all times. It helps to create each day’s list the night before. Prioritize your goals for the day and constantly review them. Enterprising people don’t let the minor activities distract them from the major activities—the ones that hold the keys to their success. Joined Up Leaders are disciplined in how they approach their day and remain pro-active rather than re-active to daily events.
2. Don’t mistake activity for productivity. You probably know some people who always seem to be busy being busy. To be successful, you must be busy being productive. Some people are going, going, going, but they’re not making much progress. Don’t mistake activity for productivity, movement for achievement. Evaluate the hours in your days and see if there is wasted time that you could manage better. You can read more about being a busy fool here.
One of my favourite exercises is to track what you do everyday for a week. I tracked my activities by the hour but you could do it in 15 mins or 30 mins increments. List all the activities that you do during the day, including eating, exercising, sleeping etc. Then at the end of a week calculate how many hours you have spent doing each activity. I was shocked by how much time I was spending on social media and researching what my peers were doing. No wonder time seemed to be slipping past each day. I was in busyness but not really being productive.
3. Focus. The third key is good concentration. You’ve got to zero in on the job at hand and let nothing stand in your way and distract you from the task. It is also important to focus on your highest producing activities first. High income producing activities are those that will immediately yield you income and typically involve connecting with potential clients and prospects. There is no better use of your time than to be investing in activities that leverage your time.
Another way to stay focused is to set a timer and give yourself say 50 mins to complete the task. During this 50 min time make sure that you turn off your phone, email notifications and stop all distractions. There is something very motivating about knowing that you just have a finite amount of time to complete the task at hand. Then at the end of 50 mins you can take a break, re-focus and then start again. I’ve found this strategy to be really successful in helping me get things done.
I’d love to hear what strategies you are using to stay focused so that you can remain disciplined and boost your profits.
Julia Felton (aka The Business Wrangler) is the founder of Business HorsePower. Business leaders, entrepreneurs and executives hire her to accelerate their business performance by harnessing the energy of their people to work more collaboratively together. By aligning purpose with actions the team achieves exponential results as everyone starts pulling in the same direction.
Julia believes that business is a force for good and through designing purpose-driven businesses that leverage the laws of nature, and the herd, you can create businesses founded on the principles of connection, collaboration and community that make a significant impact in the world.
