My friend Gary Furr has a mantra when helping business owners succeed in growing their business: Gain clarity then focus.
Clarity means being able to clearly identify the goal and seeing yourself accomplishing the goal. Brendon Burchard of High Performance Academy affirmed this by saying: If it isn’t real in your mind, it won’t happen.
Clarity
Combine two things to gain clarity about what you want to do:
- Productivity begins in our minds – know what you want to accomplish with specific detail
- Visualize your future self in the roles and with the accomplishments the results will deliver
Decide what tasks will get you to your goal and focus on the high-priority tasks that move you towards the goals.
Our minds are constantly distracted and will veer off course. Our habits of allowing distractions and trying to multitask will de-rail our brain’s ability to focus.
Focus
Turn off notifications, additional devices and focus on one task only.
Set short commitments for deep work for 10-15 minutes and set a timer.
Honor your commitment.
Be realistic about what you can accomplish in a day, hour or ten minutes. We chronically over-estimate our speed of completion and under-estimate the time it really takes to complete a task. Setting short timeframes will help make the time you set aside per task more realistic.
Start
Doubts about our skills, excuses about not being ready and the urge to learn more before we start are what one author calls structured procrastination. We are very good at doing this if there seem to be valid reasons for not getting things done.
Delaying the beginning of a task will never get it done. Being distracted, allowing our psychological barriers interfere are all avoidance behaviors. If that is happening to you take the time to really look at why you do not want to get this job done. Now, block off 5 minutes and make a start.
Another favorite saying Gary uses is: Success isn’t about perfection, it’s about progress.
Get started.