In any given week there is usually one high value activity that takes precedence over everything else – one that if successful will dramatically enhance your professional standing and personal confidence.
With proper focus, these events can actually energize you and help you to more easily complete your other necessary activities.
Game Day is Your Highest Value Activity
Professional athletes and actors are well paid for delivering exceptional performances on a periodic basis. For the rest of us, it can sometimes feel as if we are grinding out a living from one day to the next. The solution is to restructure your week as if you were a pro athlete.
Why not consider reframing your week to focus on one high value activity. Surely there is a potential deal on your radar that if you get it will have a significant impact on your business. This is where you should be focusing your energy as you manage those other day-to-day activities.
As a professional speaker, my high value activities are presentations to small business audiences. When all goes well I not only earn my fee, but also the opportunity to do it again – either for that audience or one that is associated with it. That's high value.
What I've noticed is that I get more accomplished during those weeks when I'm exceptionally focused on giving my best presentation. There is another time when this happens. The week before going on vacation – when you work hard to clean up everything that will prevent you from enjoying the ultimate high value activity.
You know what I'm talking about. You can never get it all done before vacation, but your intense focus allows you to quickly focus on what's important while setting aside everything else.
Are you using you high value activities – or are they using you?
Are You Grinding It Out Every Day?
The reason most small businesses are successful is we are grinders – we have the entrepreneurial work ethic. Your challenge for moving to the next level is to channel that energy.
Go to your calendar and you will find a number of key events on your schedule – ranging from conferences you will be attending to appointments with key clients. Choose the most important events and make them the theme of the week so that you can give them everything you've got.
The interesting thing about game day is you can still elevate your confidence when you fail. You'll recognize your mistakes and commit to never repeating them again. And if you do happen to hit a home run, well, that's always a thing of beauty.
I recently gave a presentation to a new group of small business professionals. It was a short term opportunity so I did not have the usual amount of time to learn as much about them as I would have liked.
Needless to say, I was nervous when I took the stage as the keynote speaker. As it turned out, the results were exceptionally positive. Does this happen to you? Of course it does. You'll find it happens more often than you realize when you have that game day focus.
Use Big Opportunities To Energize You
These days we are all overwhelmed by responsibilities. To a large extent its due to information overload. The key to managing it well for your business is to have a theme for the week that helps you to focus on what is most important.
This does not mean you forget about all of the other stuff that you are accountable for – far from it. The truth is when you clearly establish your focus everything else naturally falls into place.
When an athlete focuses on delivering an exceptional performance that results in winning the game, the specific actions spontaneously happen.
This is the key to the game day theory. Focus on the actions – not the results. When you do that you free yourself to perform at your highest level.
This week I'm planning a major reinvention of this blog that will allow me to better serve you – my loyal subscribers, as well as the casual visitors that I hope will join us.
For me, this is blog enhancement week. That's what matters most. I'll meet my deadlines for promised articles, responsibilities to my consulting clients, and I'll probably do all it better too.
When you have a theme for the week that puts your highest value activity front and center, it effectively pulls everything else along with it.
Opportunities can either energize you or drag you down and compromise your productivity.
The key is your focus – using them to channel your energy for greater productivity.
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Until tomorrow, Jeff
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