Today's always-on, 24-hour news, Facebook Live, streaming status updates, feed alerts, and instant messaging culture has created a society that is nearly incapable of producing deep work.
Have you turned into a reactionary?
A news-feed-seeking robot that responds like Maslow's dog when you hear that email ding, that Skype IM chime, that Facebook bling?
Do you shift from whatever you were doing and go check that message?
Then scroll through your 18 open tabs before you try to get back to work only to be distracted by another chime or phone call or visitor to your desk?
Do you find that you cannot think, plan or execute beyond the next scheduled (or unscheduled) Monster / Red Bull / Starbucks Triple Grande Latte?
Clifford Nass, a Stanford sociologist who conducted some of the first tests on multitasking, has said that those who can’t resist the lure of doing two things at once are “suckers for irrelevancy.”
Emergencies have their benefit.
They make you focus.
They make you push.
The adrenaline makes you forget the fear and you often discover new, wider boundaries that you blow through with greater ease than you thought possible.
Which is fantastic if you're an ER doctor.
But what happens when you're a business owner? A salesperson? An entrepreneur that has to put food on the table and a roof over the heads of your family who are counting on you?
What if you don't have enough business to have emergencies, which is actually an emergency in and of itself?
What do you do when you're left with your own thoughts, have to set your own schedule, set your own priorities, and you actually have time to research, focus, and study your business, your clients, your ideal prospects, your marketplace?
What do you do then?
Do you have a system in place to grow your sales?
Can you discover and implement new ways to "delight to the upside," which will create raving fans, word-of-mouth marketing, testimonials, and referrals, which will enable you to raise your prices, increase your advertising, and hire better staff and build an even better business?
That's what you're supposed to do as a business owner, as a salesperson, and as an entrepreneur.
The bad news is that it can be hard when you're either new to this type of thinking and action-taking and/or you're trying to do it alone.
The good news is, you're not alone and the trail you are blazing has been blazed before.
You just need to pause long enough to ask the right questions and find the right mentors to guide you along your most efficient and profitable path.
Need some help?
Contact me and we'll set a time to speak anything about online marketing, CRM, and more!
Then leave a comment below and let me know what you think about the problems you're facing in growing your business today.