Madeline sat in the doctor’s office with a stunned look on her face. She had always known that diabetes was a possibility – it ran in her family. But she really didn’t think that she’d get it.
As shocking as this was, finding out was the first step to getting better.
Madeline was able to start working on her diet and exercise routine and actually reversed the majority of her diabetes symptoms. Which was awesome.
Even though it was shocking, the doctor did Madeline a HUGE favor.
Because…
You can’t fix what you don’t know about.
It’s just as true in business as it is in the world of health. And from my experience, many entrepreneurs suffer from one or two illnesses that really hold them back from great success.
You may have one of these and not even know it.
The first one I’ll call “flexibility syndrome” and the second one is “juggleitis”.
Both of these conditions can cause you absolute misery as you start up your business or seek to keep it growing.
Today I’m going to show you exactly what both of these conditions are and what you can do to overcome them if they are affecting your ability to produce growth in your business.
Flexibility Syndrome
While you need to be able to change modes if things aren’t working in your business, Flexibility Syndrome means that you are changing modes ALL THE TIME – before you give anything a chance to work, and before you have any real idea of results.
You might hear this referred to as “bright shiny object syndrome”. And it’s made worse by marketers who package their systems as being the latest and greatest thing to get more traffic, increase your ROI, or make your emails magically work.
So before you buy your next product ask yourself – “have I executed on what I already know?” and “Does this really fit into my business model.”
Here’s how I avoid bright shiny object syndrome in my business.
Juggleitis
This is a disorder which is mainly shown in the attempt to do too many things at once. While it’s important to have a broad base of knowledge in any business, specializing can bring great rewards.
When you master something really well, then you can get results that the people who don’t bother to master anything can never dream of achieving.
Now that we know what the two most common entrepreneurial setbacks are, let’s look at how to deal with them so that they stop holding you back.
There are several techniques that work really well and inoculate you against Flexibility Syndrome and Juggleitis and it really comes down to understanding how your brain works so that you can focus on your goals and move towards them with the least amount of distraction.
3 Building Blocks to Getting Things Done in Your Business
1. Planning
For many entrepreneurs, planning is a difficult task. Things change so frequently at the starting stage of business that it’s hard to plan out exactly what you want to do a year from now. But it is possible to use long-term goal setting to move the ball forward.
What I recommend is that you look at the next year what you want to achieve, and then write that down.
Once you do that you can start working backwards and figure out what your next chunk of steps needs to be. And that brings us to our next point.
2. Chunking down tasks
Your brain is a weird place, for most people in order to stay focused they have to define something that is achievable to focus on. If you have a big grand goal for what you can accomplish a year from now, but don’t give your brain smart manageable tasks to focus on, then your goal will probably not be achieved.
So as you look at your goal for the next year, then what you need to do is to break down what needs to be accomplished on a broad level every month to meet that goal and what needs to be accomplished in the next few weeks to meet that goal.
Don’t worry if this action map isn’t exactly perfect. The important thing is to chunk your action down into small doable steps, and start doing.
You can adjust as you go.
3. Time blocking
One of the biggest challenges of being an entrepreneur is that there is nobody to tell you what to do and when to do it. Because of this many entrepreneurs make to do lists (based on their goals) that are mile-long and then never get anything done or feel terrible about themselves or what they’re able to accomplish in a day.
There is a great solution to this problem, and it’s called time blocking.
What time blocking means is that you list out your top 3 to 5 tasks for the day, and you fill in the blocks to do them first in your schedule. By identifying the most important tasks, and scheduling blocks of time to get them done, you will accomplish more than most entrepreneurs do in a week.
Like most other things in life, being a successful entrepreneur is a skill set. It’s not magic or something you’re born with, it’s just a bunch of skills that you need to put together and learn how to consistently execute over time.
When you do that, you can become a huge powerhouse, and you can move your business forward with a speed that you will be amazed at.