Rem Oculee is the founder and CEO of 9Q Ventures and Confidence Wealth Management. He also wrote the upcoming book, The Exit Mindset.
As a business owner, you have an overwhelming number of things you need to do. Often, the result of that is you spend your days frantically jumping from one project to another in a desperate bid to get everything done.
When you take this approach, you might get a lot accomplished; however, when you step back and evaluate everything you’ve done, you may find—as so many owners do—that despite your frenetic activity, you haven’t moved the needle forward on what’s most important: Growing and scaling your business.
Don’t misunderstand me. I’m not suggesting the things you are doing are anything less than high priority. They probably are. But, if they aren’t helping you move significantly closer to reaching your goals, it may be time to reassess how you are prioritizing your time. When you do, you can maximize your return on work—and the rewards of that can be tremendous.
Shift Your Approach
Return on work is the yield you get from the time and effort you spend on a specific job, project or task. The first step to increasing your return on work is to shift how you allocate your time. Rather than creating a to-do list of the important things you need to do and trying to tackle all of them, consider each task in the context of an important question: “What is the output (or goal) I want to achieve and will accomplishing this task move me closer to achieving that goal?”
Don’t consider each task in a vacuum, either. Go through your list and prioritize the items on it in terms of the specific output you want to achieve. To successfully do this, it’s important to get really clear on where you want to be in a day, a week, a month, a quarter, a year or even in five or 10 years. Then, you can decide which tasks will move you closer to those time-period goals.
When you compare your list with your goals, it’s likely you will find lots of items that, although seemingly important at the moment, don’t get you closer to your ultimate goals. I recommend moving those tasks to the bottom of your list and focusing on ones that will lead to a higher rate of return instead.
Disciplining yourself to work in this way can help you avoid simply reacting to what’s in front of you. Instead, you will cultivate an exit mindset, which is key to ensuring your company grows and thrives, both now and in the future.
Refine Your List
Once you’ve prioritized your list using the approach above, it’s time to refine it even further. That will allow you to decide which of your remaining top tasks you’ll focus on.
To do this, ask yourself: “If I accomplish this task, how long will it take for the results to get me to my goal?” You may want to focus your attention on getting tasks done that will move the needle forward in a shorter amount of time.
As you refine your list, it’s also important to consider the certainty that accomplishing the task will move you closer to your goal. To give you an example of what I mean, let’s say that your goal is to create massive financial wealth. Buying a lottery ticket might accomplish that, but the chances of it doing so are slim to none.
A far surer—and therefore better—approach to achieving your goal might be to implement a new revenue generation strategy to scale your organization into a 6- or 8-figure business while decreasing your operational costs so you can maximize profit. Unlike winning the lottery, this is something you have control over, and if you are executing well, then your chances for success are high.
Engage In Objective Analysis
As you consider which of your tasks to focus your time and resources on, get in the habit of engaging in objective analysis. Calculate where you want to go and how completing the task will help you get there relative to the other items on your list. At the same time, look at how much time the task will take, what the odds are of getting it done successfully, how much it will cost and what resources you will use to complete it.
The more you practice analyzing your decisions like this, the quicker you will get at it. Eventually, you may find yourself able to instantly make decisions about where to prioritize your resources. More importantly, you’ll also be able to quickly decide what you shouldn’t waste your time on.
Of course, this doesn’t mean that you can never change your mind once you’ve made a decision. If new information comes to light, you can—and should—reconsider and, if necessary, pivot. Giving yourself permission to maneuver is an important part of being a successful business owner, and it’s also crucial to successfully maximizing your return on work.
Sort Through The Confusion
As you begin to take steps to approach how you allocate your time differently, learn to embrace saying no. Work by exclusion and only say yes to the things that will help you reach your goals.
This doesn’t mean, of course, that those day-to-day tasks currently consuming so much of your time should be left to fall by the wayside. If they are truly important, delegate them. That ensures they get done while leaving you free to work on the things that will move your business forward in a meaningful way.
The consequence of continuing to do things the same old way you always have is that, at best, you will stay right where you are—frantically running around and putting out fires while watching your company struggle to grow. Learn to prioritize differently and sort the confusion. Not only can this help you pare down your to-do list and decrease your stress, but it can set your company up to enjoy more consistent and massive growth.
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