You need a clear goal to start with, otherwise you will never know if you’re actually moving forward, backwards or just sideways.

Once you have a clear goal, the type of tasks you have can be divided into four categories:

• URGENT AND IMPORTANT
• NOT URGENT BUT STILL IMPORTANT
• URGENT BUT NOT IMPORTANT
• NOT URGENT AND NOT IMPORTANT

The Urgency Vs Importance Square

Which square should you be spending most of your time in?

The Wrong Answer

Most people say the red square – Urgent and Important – but this is wrong.

If you’re spending your time in this square, you will always be fire-fighting and never moving your business forward.

Of course there will always be times when you need to be in this square, but they should be few and far between.

The trick is to never allow something to become urgent in the first place by anticipating problems and having the correct systems and procedures in place.

The Right Answer

The best place for you to spend your time is in the green square – Not Urgent but still Important.

This is where you’re moving your business forward and you anticipate problems before they ever become urgent.

A good example of this would be attending a regular networking event like The Trades Hub.

You turn up month after month and you get really busy, so you don’t bother turning up for the next few months. Then all of a sudden the work dries up. It then becomes an urgent problem so you turn up in a flap and it takes you a few months to build the work back up again. This is because attending wasn’t URGENT.

What you should have done is kept on turning up month after month, even though it wasn’t urgent, because it is still IMPORTANT. That way the work never dries up and it never becomes an urgent problem.

Don’t Be Driven By Urgency

The mistake that people make is that they see the level of urgency as a deciding factor and it shouldn’t be.

Just because that phone is ringing and someone needs you to do something URGENTLY, doesn’t necessarily mean that you need to jump there and then. Just because something is urgent to somebody else, doesn’t mean to say that it’s important to you.

A bad square to be spending your time in is the dark grey square – Urgent but Not Important. This is where you’re running around trying to please other people and what’s actually happening is that you’re business is standing still. And if it’s standing still, it’s actually moving backwards.

To snap yourself out of this dangerous cycle, just ask yourself: “What’s in it for me?” Is this task moving me toward my goal, or is it just moving you closer to yours?

The Very Worst Square

Although it’s obvious, it’s amazing how many people spend their time doing tasks which are neither urgent nor important. This is just stupid and you need to just get a grip. Enough said!

Your Task

Your task is to write down a list of the activities you did last week.

Try and remember what took up the majority of your time and then place them in the different squares above.

The point is to figure out how much of your time was spent usefully and how much of it was wasted.

How much of the urgent and important tasks could have been prevented with a little anticipation?

How much of your time was spent in the correct square?

What 3 things could you do right now to improve this?

Your Promise

Make a promise to yourself now that you going to spend as much time as possible in the green square, with the occasional visit to the red square if it’s absolutely necessary, and never ever ever in the other two.

Make that promise to yourself and watch your business move zoom forward faster than it ever has before.

Plus, you’ll be much more chilled.

BOOM mother crushers!!

Urgency Vs Importance Vs Your Success

Click here to view the embedded video.

Arnold Schwarzenegger – 6 Rules to Success Speech

• Meet new contacts
• Start Networking
• Pick up more business

Over the past few weeks we have been working closely with them to launch their fab new website where they are allowing anyone in the  trades and construction industry to create a full business profile for FREE. No Gimmicks – No Catches – No Cost To You

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It was a fast turn around project which she wanted LIVE in 2 weeks to allow her to promote her flowers in time for Valentines Day.

Sarah’s Florist

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Bricks & Mortar

But promise me this. If you smile at any point, you have to share this article.

Cool Uses of Typography to Make You Smile from Pinterest

The real challenge is to edit down what we offer to our customers and to make the choice for them.

In this video, Sheena Iyengar explains how to make it easier for our customers to choose, through a series of simple steps.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Do You Suffer from This?

Does your business provide too many choices? Will the ideas in this video help you to reduce those options and be much more focussed?

If you found it helpful, please share your comments and tell us what you’ll be doing to improve your business right now.

How to Make Choosing Easier by Sheena Iyengar

Every page was personalised for me and it actually made me say wow.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Thanks Ocurem you are wonderful.

A Great Christmas Gift from Ocurem

A Mind Virus is a false belief which you’ve been infected with, and, if left unchecked, will start affecting all of your other thoughts. These viruses have been passed onto you by people close to you which could include your parents,  friends, family, business contacts, the news and media in general.

These Mind Viruses are keeping you on the hamster wheel and preventing you from moving your business forwards.

Examples of a Mind Virus

The Mind Viruses I’ve heard in the last few weeks include:

• You have to work hard for a living
• We can’t afford that
• Times are tough at the moment which is why we’re not getting any work
• It’s always quiet around Christmas
• Clients are only ever interested in paying the lowest price
• Only I can write proposals and they have to take hours to produce
• My services can’t be put into packages because every project is bespoke and unique
• Our industry doesn’t do things like that
• Your problems start when you employ staff
• Nobody can do this as well as me

As soon as you accept any of these to be true, your brain shuts down and stops looking for an opportunity to solve that problem.

Overcoming Mind Viruses

We have to hunt down and attack these Mind Viruses which are destroying us and our businesses.

Instead of thinking “We can’t afford that”, which as ‘Rich Dad Poor Dad’ explains, shuts our brains down, we need to replace it with “How can we afford that?” This transforms our mindset and allows us to seek opportunities.

Instead of thinking “Times are tough at the moment which is why we’re not getting any work”, we can replace it with “Although times are tough at the moment, there are still some great clients out there who are prepared to pay top dollar for our services. Let’s find them.”

Instead of thinking “You have to work hard for a living”, you can think “I can work easy for a living and money comes to me readily with little effort.”

Mind Viruses shut us down. Attacking them opens us up to opportunities.

How Lee Bestall Tackled a Mind Virus

Award Winning Garden Designer, Lee Bestall of Inspired Garden Design tackled one of his Mind Viruses last week and had instant results.

He believed that every project was totally unique, that his services couldn’t be packaged up and that proposals took two weeks to produce.

By challenging this mindset he found massive similarities across all of his recent projects and was able to group up his services into five neat packages. This meant that he no longer needed to write lengthy proposals which added two extra weeks to the sales process.

This in turn meant that when he met a potential client last week, he was able to effectively produce a proposal instantly and got the client to sign up to having a fantastic garden designed there and then. This saved Lee massive amounts of time and significantly shortened his sales process.

This was all made possible by challenging the Mind Virus which he had been infected with.

Further Reading on Mind Viruses

I found this great article which explains the Mind Virus in greater detail and how to keep your mind, virus free – ‘How To Keep Your Mind Virus Free’ by Dragos Roua

Share Your Mind Viruses with Us

This subject is fascinating me at the moment and I would love to hear of your Mind Viruses, how you’ve changed them and the impact that has had on your business.

You are Infected with Mind Viruses and They’re Holding You and Your Business Back!

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