Yowza!

The whole first half of the year has come… And gone…
Bye-bye!
Anyway, the midway point of the calendar year offers the perfect opportunity to evaluate your progress… How far have you made it in your quest to achieve your 2017 benchmarks?
Benchmarks… How about just keep your head above water? Yeah, if you’re like a lot of small business owners, you can probably relate to the struggle of just staying on track from one day to the next…
Why come? Well…

Endless Professional Commitments + Personal Obligations

When you’re running your own business… You often find yourself handling every task from cleaning up the office bathroom to balancing your annual budget, and a whole lot more stop-offs in between.
And at home… Your spouse’s honey-do list is clearly the work of some mysterious sorcery. Because no matter how many items you check off, it just KEEPS GROWING (and growing and growing…). And of course with kids in the mix, there are soccer games, school plays, violin recitals and the like.
It’s relentless for sure.
And circling back to growing your business, marketing simply becomes one more task on your already overflowing to-do list… Another chore you’d just assume sweep under the rug.
But as voluminous as professional + personal demands may be, they aren’t the biggest roadblock to growing your business…

The REAL Productivity Killer? Procrastination…

When you’re FINALLY settling in to do MEANINGFUL work, you’re so often…
== > Distracted by phone calls, emails, texts, etc…
== > Discouraged by the volume of work confronting you…
== > Stymied by the difficulty of the work, especially when it comes to marketing, which is huge challenge for my small business owners…
== > Convinced you’re not making real progress or working quickly or efficiently enough, prompting you to throw in the towel before you really even start…
Whatever the root cause, and there are many, procrastination has foiled even the most dedicated business owners.
But you can, with a little help, defeat procrastination. And in turn, become a productivity MASTER!
Toward that end, here are five anti-procrastination strategies to get you BACK ON TRACK:

Clear Your Physical + Mental Space

Before you start working… Take a short walk to clear your mind. Then have a snack and a glass of water. Maybe even visit the bathroom. The point is to make dawgone SURE you don’t have ANY excuses to derail your activity once you get rolling.
When it’s time to get down to work… Close Outlook, exit your internet browser (or, if you’re like me, all three browsers), put your phone in Airplane mode, and put your desk phone on “do not disturb.”
Now you’re ready to DIG IN!

Break Up the Monolith

‘Member when the “monolith” appeared out of nowhere in that classic ‘70s sci-fi flick, 2001, A Space Odyssey? And all the monkey freaked out and tried to destroy it, and eventually, each other?
The point being, no one likes a monolith. Regardless of whether it’s made from stone or a UUUUUUUUGE chunk of work.
So, break up your workload by building in breaks. Work for 30 minutes and give yourself a 10-minute break. Work for 60 minutes and give yourself a 15-minute break.

Create a Negative Feedback Loop

If you’ve got a dog, no doubt you’re familiar with the Invisible Fence. Sensors buried around the border of your property transmit to a collar around your dog’s neck. When Fido crosses the “invisible” barrier, he gets a nice little electric jolt. And after few zaps! viola, your poochie never ventures beyond your property line. It’s a classic negative feedback loop.
Now, I’m not suggesting shock therapy. But a negative consequence, something that “hurts,” can keep you focused and on-task.
For example, every time you stray from your work, donate $5 to a charity. Or if you have kids, drop a fiver in their piggy bank or add a bonus to their weekly allowance.

Enforce Deadlines (Real or Imagined)

When you leave a project’s completion date up in the air, it’s easy to keep shuffling it to the bottom of the pile… “Oh, I’ll get to that…eventually …one day…”
But by setting a deadline, whether “real” or not, you instantly active the “pressure to complete” trait embedded in your DNA. It’s a subtle modification your parents, schools and various jobs secretly laced into your genetic makeup.
And when activated, “one day” suddenly becomes your self-assigned July 31st HARD deadline.

Aim For Completion, Not Perfection

Of course, quality counts. But it’s easy to get wrapped up in perpetually refining a project. A project you never finish, because it’s never “quite right.” So, you keep tinkering, purportedly “making improvements.” But truthfully, you’re just procrastinating.
Meanwhile, the “good enough” plateau is when it’s time to call it even and move on.

We ALL Procrastinate…

What are some of your biggest “procrastination enablers?” Clearing out your email inbox? Rearranging your sock drawer? Binge watching Friends on Netflix? Swing by my Google+ page and share some of your greatest hits!