Overcoming boredom with simple strategy

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It’s been said that I lack patience and have a very short attention span.

While I don’t necessarily enjoy this criticism, rarely do I disagree with the assessment. I want things done my way and at my pace. In addition, when I get bored, I want to move on to something else that interests me as quickly as possible.

Just ask my wife, my staff and my friends.

Guess who else is like me – most entrepreneurs, sales professionals and small business owners.We like new things. This is not a character flaw – it’s who we are.

However, 10 years of working with executives has taught me that there can be a significant downside to this personality profile. Because we get bored with the same routine over and over again, we tend to overlook the simple fundamentals that always lead to success.

For example, this type of individual typically dreads the mundane staff meeting. The last thing they want to do is review the status of projects, customers or staff members. As a result, these meetings are almost always postponed, rescheduled or shortened. This leads to an inconsistent and unpredictable culture.

Next, an entrepreneur’s obsession with the future often results in the lack of any meaningful measurement of the past. This behavior results in a poor understanding of costs, very little appreciation for the value of any particular customer and no sense for a sales pipeline.

As you can imagine, it can be difficult to work with this type of an individual. While there are a ton of great ideas, it’s hard to understand which initiatives are the most important. Critical details fall through the cracks and people get frustrated with dozens of partially finished projects getting pushed further down with every new brainstorming session.

If this sounds familiar, don’t panic. There is hope. These three simple tactics have helped me to gain focus and led to tons of progress.

First, get clear about what’s really important and never forget that everything can’t be important. Sometimes knowing what not to do is more important that another great idea.

Next, develop a list of the weekly tactics that absolutely must become a habit in your professional start. If you’re not sure where to start, try these. Plan the week in advance, hold a regular staff meeting and review the satisfaction of your top 10 clients.

Finally, the best leaders are self-aware and recognize that they make a ton of mistakes. They end every day by asking themselves one simple question – “If I could do anything differently, what would it be?”

As with most things in life, the solution is simple. All you need to do is execute.


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