Sure, you’ve got plenty of time to sit at your computer and check out last night’s baseball scores or what you’re going to cook for that dinner party this weekend. But those boxes aren’t going to unpack themselves … [level-members]
As ridiculous as that sounds, plenty of us do spend more time than we should wasting time. What’s worse, is how easy it is to mistake being busy for being productive. In other words, you’re probably not going to leave a stack of unopened boxes blocking the aisles in your shop for very long, but once you’ve got that done, well, maybe then you’ll check Facebook to see what your friends are up to.
That’s bad. If you expend all the energy you have doing the urgent but unimportant, you don’t focus on the important but less time-sensitive tasks. Like marketing. Because nobody is going to trip over your marketing if you don’t do it now, the way they will trip over those boxes. So it’s easy to push it aside.
Unfortunately, it means you’ll be tripping over your poor marketing soon enough. And it’s not just marketing but other business strategy and planning that you might be letting slide. Insurance reviews, energy audits, shop maintenance. It all needs to be done, and it should be prioritized in a way that it can’t be pushed aside or left until the end of the day when you’re bone tired.
Pay attention to the stuff that’s knocking around in the back of your mind. It’s bugging you for a reason. [/level-members]