How often are you ruthlessly asking yourself “IS WHAT I’M DOING RIGHT NOW GOING TO GET ME WHERE I WANT TO BE 3 MONTHS FROM NOW?”

If you’re like most of the population, the honest answer looks something like “…erm, no.”

This week alone I came across…

• A woman spending HOURS agonizing over which shade of blue to use in her new logo’s text. She posted multiple posts and gathered hundreds of opinions from random people who weren’t in her target audience. The final shade of blue she chooses isn’t going to make the difference between her making $200k or $1M this year. Not worth a week of her time.
• A man who boasted about reworking his Gmail folders. Twice. In a week. Even though he admitted they weren’t really a problem to begin with but hey, he’d seen a tutorial and thought it sounded like a good idea. Could’ve used those hours to move forward, instead he just moved things around.
• A man who says he’s committed to growing his business writing (VERY lengthy) posts for his blog. Which gets less than a handful of visitors a day. Have a hunch he’ll be in the same spot if we check back in with him in 3 months.
• A woman updating her site’s About page posting 30 headshots–all looking practically identical, spending hours asking people which one she should use. Like the woman with the logo above; I watched her waste HOURS of her life on a decision that’s not going to make or break her business.
• A friend who set a firm goal of tripling her existing company’s revenue this year…. started an ENTIRELY NEW side-venture into which she’s now pouring her energy and effort. (And guess what’s no longer getting attention…)

^^^ This is all nothing more than a covert form of procrastination and avoidance. It’s how people get pulled off-track while FEELING like they’re ACTUALLY working.

It’s SO easy to get caught in the “I’m working! I’m working hard! I’m being productive!” trap.

The world’s most successful people, though, are CONSTANT and RUTHLESS about the questions they ask themselves throughout their days.

“Is what I’m doing right now REALLY going to move me forward? …Or am I just doing work that makes me FEEL okay about myself—but isn’t REALLY going to move the needle?”

And successful people are HONEST with their answers.

They know that taking action is POINTLESS unless it’s SMART action. Unless said action that will propel them toward where they want to be 3 months from now. (This is different from taking the “right” actions — sometimes we take action, fail, learn from it, then re-calibrate. That’s still smart action.)

So.

✖️ STOP working on autopilot.

✖️ For the love of god, STOP doing so many things during your busy days that don’t even make a difference.

???? Focus on the 20% of things you could be doing that’ll make 80% of the difference.

???? Imagine you suddenly only had 1/3 of the hours to work each week and HAD to ruthlessly strip away all the shit that doesn’t matter. What would you be doing? How would you change how you work? (Trust me, you’d be thinking COMPLETELY differently.)

❗Ask the RIGHT questions. The hard ones that make you pause. Questions like “Is what I’m doing now moving me forward, or am I just working?”

❗Be ruthless honest with yourself. Question your immediate, first responses. Pause. Wait for the deeper, real answers to bubble up.

And then go kick some ass.

You’ve got this. 😉