If you believe that being busy and taking lots of action on a number of items on your TO DO list makes you more productive and helps you achieve your desire faster, think again. In fact, please consider that the opposite is true.
Even if you have been able to successfully juggle a number of tasks on a daily basis, there will come a time when you will burn out- physically, mentally and spiritually. To boot, you will look back and notice that you have still to reach your dearest desires.
What if you feel you have many obligations and you do not have the option to prioritize?
Let’s be very clear, you always have the option to prioritize. You may choose not to, but that is your decision.
If you do decide to prioritize, please choose what is most important to you and then focus on it. Remember importance not the number of activities or size of the goal. Please don’t fall into the trap of multitasking - multitasking makes you a slave to the event.
Focusing on what is important brings all the other pieces together. Please read this again and make sure you understand it. Focusing on what is important brings all the other pieces together.
Let’s look at an example:
Suppose that you are working full time, you started your own business on the side and you want to spend more time with your daughter. When asked which of these 3 is most important in your life, without hesitation, you say that your daughter is.
In reality, you know that it has been a while since you played with your daughter or spent true quality time with her. You rationalize it as ok because you are keeping the family financially secure while building financial freedom and, in the end, you are creating all of this for her.
The problem is, that you feel guilty about missing some precious moments and, far too often, you are purely too exhausted to really do much more with her than provide the basics.
Enter your action plan. Your daughter is most important which means that work and, yes, even the new business will have to be de-prioritized over spending quality time and fully participating in your daughter’s life.
How do you de-prioritize important and vital activities? You de-prioritize them by saying NO. This does not mean you say NO all the time and to all activities related to your work and starting a business. It does mean that when there is an important event taking place for your child you may need to forego an office impromptu meeting or even a business trip. It means that you do not break your commitments to your child for any of the other 2 activities. It may also mean that, for the time being, you spend less hours, or maybe no hours, working on starting or developing your own business.
You may be asking yourself if the title to this article should be “doing less is achieving less”. Let me assure you that it should not. When you prioritize activities around what is most important to you, all the other pieces come together.
The business trip that you choose not to attend, may free you to come up with an innovative, profitable and high profile concept you implement at work. Even though you decide to take the next few weeks off from working on your new business, you discover a company you could outsource certain activities to. Because you no longer need to take these activities on yourself, it frees your mind to think of an even more Unique Service Proposition (USP) for your business. This new USP accelerates earnings, profits etc..
When you decide to focus on what is important to you, and you make a commitment to prioritize activities accordingly, you:
· Have a healthy, rested and contended body, mind and spirit
· Uncover opportunities that otherwise you might have missed
· Find that you often accomplish your secondary goals as well OR
· Have more traction against your secondary goals (more so than if you attempt to prioritize them too)
Please have the courage to do less of what is not your #1 priority. I promise that you will be pleased with the results. Remember the saying “Less Is More.”? It applies here.
Live With Passion!
Joanne Roibu
