Business, all of life, really, is balancing the long term with the immediate. Sometimes we need things NOW! (or at least it seems we do), and other times we focus on long-term.
A classic is saving for retirement versus buying a little bit more of something you want right now.
Another classic, in business, is working for (chasing after) immediate income now, like networking for clients, versus doing some strategic, foundational work on your business, like working on your website, or your business model. Or putting a system into place.
How do you balance these two? There is no set formula, but there is one principle, plus three clear questions you can ask yourself when looking at how you spend your work time.
There is one principle and three questions to help bring balance back between urgent and strategic tasks.
The principle is this: there is NEVER a time when you should *only* be focusing on urgent tasks.
I need to clarify this principle. By “never” I don’t mean in a single day, or even a few days. It’s often helpful to have a single focus for a short period of time.
But over a reasonable period of time, say a week, or two weeks, or a month, there is no reason to stay in urgent/survival mode. For three reasons:
1) It’s exhausting. To always be running after the immediate dollar just takes it out of you, and the pressure is no fun at all.
2) It’s dispiriting. You lose the sense of a larger time-frame. If you are always thinking about the next week or the next month, you forget that you’re playing a longer game, and you put unrealistic pressure on yourself.
3) You’ll stay stuck. If you never put focus on long-term strategic projects, then you chances of ever coming out of immediate urgency mode is basically zero.
Given this principle, let’s ask three questions so you can tell how you should apportion your business work time.
1. How close to survival are you?
This needs to be answered honestly. Often, the ego will, out of fear, tell you that doom and despair are right around the corner. While sometimes that is true, usually that’s not really the story.
Ask yourself, what’s true here? Are you really about to get tossed out onto the street, which IS terrifying and needs action, or is it just a fear, and you have much more spaciousness than that.
2. How much of your foundations/strategic pieces are already in place?
Is your website what you need it to be? Did you already rework your business model and now you just need to market it? Do you have adequate systems in place, and maybe they just need cleaning up, or you need to stick to them?
Or have you not attended to your business model? Is your website ancient and not useful? Are systems mostly nonexistent while you do everything by hand?
If you are missing foundational and/or strategic pieces, then attention is needed!
3. Given the answer to the above questions, ask the heart of your business how much is needed from each?
Maybe half your time needs to be spent on immediate action and half on strategic pieces that may not pay off for awhile. Maybe most of your time needs to be on immediate action, and maybe 10% of your time on strategic pieces.
Or, maybe your business is going really smoothly, and you can put some real focus on strategic pieces, at least for a few weeks.
What does your heart show you? And remember, you need *some* attention on your strategic pieces or you’ll never change your situation.
With hugs and big gratitude,
Mark Silver
Heart of Business, Inc.
Every Act of Business Can Be An Act of Love.
p.s. Accelerating Growth
Talking about strategic pieces, our Accelerating Growth Home Study deals with the big strategic pieces of Business Model, Systems and Team.
If you missed the announcement yesterday, we’re now offering it as a home study, and you can pick which of the three modules you want, without having to get them all. Special price savings this month as we launch it for the first time!
Click here: Foundations3: Accelerating Growth
p.p.s. Not sure what you need?
Knowing where your business is in its development is the easiest and most sure-fire way to determine what it actually needs now, and what can wait until later.
Take our free Readiness Assessment, and get a personal reply from us. It will walk you through the stages of development and help you truly understand your business: it’s not broken, it’s just developing.
Click here: Free Readiness Assessment
