In addition to running a top home business, are you also trying to hold down a full time job? Do you feel like you have so many tasks needing attention that you are doing five things at once and few of them very well? And what about all the stuff you’re NOT getting done? How much more effective would you be if you automatically completed tasks without having to constantly find the energy to push yourself to do them? Think about it.
It takes tremendous willpower to focus on and complete all the boring tasks we have to perform each day; especially while dealing with so many distractions. You know, your cellphone, E-mail, children, cash (or lack of), your boss, and so on. Many a time I believed I had worked to the very end of human endurance and I patted myself on the back for a day well spent. But then… when I actually took stock of what I had accomplished, I realized I’d actually done very little. That ever happen to you? I thought I was an amazing multi tasking super efficient cyborg, but the lack of focus only served to make me super-inefficient. The answer was to become fully engaged.
The Power of Full Engagement by Loehr and Schwartz is a phenomenal book on the subject productivity that alerted me to the fact that humans have a limited reserve of willpower and that reserve ain’t very big. They tested two groups of people by having them view an emotional movie. They gave one group instructions to not display emotion and allowed the other group to watch normally. After the movie ended, each group received tests that required intense concentration. Turns out that repressing emotion required willpower and consequently left none for the test. They performed poorly as a result.
So how can this help with you and you home business? Being a multi-tasking giant and living each day blown back and forth between the next emergency or deadline is bad, mmm-kay? Keep your will power and focus by following rituals instead!
What the heck’s a ritual? We aren’t talking about magic or dancing in the moonlight; maybe some meditation and some human sacrifice without any knives or volcanoes. Get it? OK… anyway. Take a series of actions and do them the same way each time and you’ve created a ritual. These “actions” are really just some good habits you’ve created for yourself. Remember, ninety-five percent of the stuff we do everyday is done automatically; no thought needed. How much concentration does it take to take a shower and dry off? Do you think “take right hand turn hot knob… wait… now turn cold knob… now warm… now step in…” Of course not, your shower ritual is a habitual. All you have to do is create rituals chock full of good habits for other parts of the day. Maybe your trying to improve your health and energy level. If so, you might want to try a morning ritual like the one I swiped from Eben Pagan.
For me this takes about 2 hours every morning. I get out of bed, drink a couple of glasses of water, brush and floss, workout, do some meditation and visualization, I look at my goals, plan my day, eat my breakfast, then shower and dress. The cool thing is that my workout is smack in the middle of my ritual so I do it automatically. I don’t even think about it. It may take you twenty one days to develop the habit or a few months. But once it’s become a habit, it will likely start to take you more willpower to NOT do it. And that’s what you want.
So let’s talk about rituals you can create to boost your home business. Maybe you’re a video marketer and it normally takes you a couple of hours to shoot, edit and post a video. Maybe if you’re focused and not watching Jersey Shore or True Blood at the same time, you can bring the time down to 1 hour. So what you do is come up with a series of steps, an exact time to begin and DO NOT ALLOW ANY DISTRACTIONS. If you’re time to begin is at 5 pm, do it EVERYDAY at 5pm with the same steps. Make it a habit. Soon the random stuff that comes up each day will find itself automatically moved to accommodate your new habits. And once your good habit filled rituals start to take over your day, you’ll be amazed at what you will accomplish.
Creating more than one or two rituals at a time may be too much because you’ll need some willpower to get them started so instead build slowly. Full Engagement with your highest value activities will do wonders for your home business.
Learn more about Rocking your Top Home Business with Full Engagement. Stop by Jesse Walker’s site where you can find additional resources to increase your success.