As a business owner, you are both the boss and the employee. Some people can thrive in this type of situation and achieve more than they could in a traditional work environment. For other people, this situation can spell disaster. That is why it is important to analyze yourself several times a year to make sure you are staying on track.
Are you focusing on your business? This one thing can make a huge difference to your success. When you’re working at home, it’s pretty easy to lose focus with all the other things calling for your attention. But it’s okay to let the laundry sit for a few hours while you’re working. The laundry isn’t going to pay any bills, but your business sure can.
Not only is focusing on business tasks important, but it is important to be focused within your business. It is easy to get sidetracked with new business ventures and other offers. It can be hard to spread your time and energy over too many projects. It is easier to manage a select few projects that are tightly woven within your target market.
How productive are you? At the end of the day, do you ever feel like you worked all day and didn’t accomplish a thing? Look at the tasks you’re actually working on and how important they are to the success of your business. Surfing the web (even if you’re reading sites related to what you’re doing), chatting in forums and reading blogs are not productive – schedule time for these either after your important tasks are done, or for a set period of time at the end of the day.
On the other hand, if you feel your time is being sucked away by answering email, updating your website, or collecting research for an upcoming information product you are working on, try outsourcing those tasks to a virtual assistant. This will help you free up some time to work on business tasks that need more attention.
Are you reaching the goals you’ve set for yourself? If you’re constantly missing deadlines and not reaching goals, you might want to look at them and see if they’re really realistic. Create an action plan for yourself and follow it.
Here’s a question that might be hard to consider – would you hire yourself? Why not write out a job description for what you do and “interview” yourself to see if you’re really the type of worker you would hire.
If you find that you wouldn’t actually hire yourself, take a look at the areas that need improvement. This can be uncomfortable, but once you identify your weaknesses you can get to work on improving them, or outsourcing those tasks to someone who can do them better than you.
Not only is focusing on business tasks important, but it is important to be focused within your business. It is easy to get sidetracked with new business ventures and other offers. It can be hard to spread your time and energy over too many projects. It is easier to manage a select few projects that are tightly woven within your target market.
How productive are you? At the end of the day, do you ever feel like you worked all day and didn’t accomplish a thing? Look at the tasks you’re actually working on and how important they are to the success of your business. Surfing the web (even if you’re reading sites related to what you’re doing), chatting in forums and reading blogs are not productive – schedule time for these either after your important tasks are done, or for a set period of time at the end of the day.
"Would you hire yourself?" I think that's a fantastic way to judge how good you are as a worker.
I recently read an article about the Vision vs the Process. We all start with the vision of course. But really gets the ball rolling is the process, e.g., here's what needs to get done and here's how you get there, step1, step 2, step 3. The other good thing I read was this: find the biggest bottleneck and fix it, then go to the next and fix it, etc. Like you said in the post, it's all about focus.