Growth Ideas #4: Deal with Distractions

Companies that grow have learned a simple lesson: focus on the goal and discard distractions. Pure. Simple. Effective.

There is no shortage of things to do, listen to, look at or work on. The question is: does that thing advance you toward your desired outcome or pull you to the side, even slightly?

Conference calls, meetings, forms to fill out, webinars, office drama, technology changes, economic worries, Facebook, Twitter, interpersonal conflict—these are just a few of the things that consistently take us off course and out of the race. To make it even more insidious, it rarely comes as one big thing; more often than not, it’s “death by a thousand cuts.” In other words, it’s the snowball effect of a combination of little distractions that lead us into shipwreck.

People often ask me how I can get so much done—travel, client visits, teaching, writing, coaching, creating, etc. It’s not that I work terrible hours. It’s a little secret I’ve used for years. Each quarter, I take a hard and penetrating look at the things that fill my days with a view to eliminating or delegating everything possible. My rule of thumb is that, if it’s not driving me to my goal it’s distracting more from it. Distractions have to be dealt with, discarded.

And sure enough, I have to do it again in a few months because distractions, like kudzu in the South, always grows back.