Sort Yourself Out, Why Don’t You?

Have you ever compared yourself to others? They seem to be organised, in control, achieving, whereas YOU are feeling you’re swimming upstream looking like a duck on the pond, calm on top but paddling frantically underneath the water!

To make it worse, some people feel they need to give us a nudge in the right direction with advice such as ‘well I can do it and so you can too’ or ‘it’s easy, I don’t see what you find so difficult’! Of course, now we feel we are totally under-achieving comparing ourselves to others believing even more that they are successful and confident, and we are the opposite!

If you are in business or want to set up a business, you do need to have our ducks in a row; be organised, consistent, have a plan and stick to it. However, it’s difficult when we are our own boss, and have no-one to keep us accountable and most of all ensure we are on the right track and not heading up the wrong path.

Being disorganised is a road to disaster but how best can we bring uniformity into our business working day?

1. Have a plan – without a plan we don’t know where we are going; we end up drifting, not reaching our destination because we don’t know where our destination is.

2. Set tasks – our tasks should relate to our plan; they can’t be stand-alone and more importantly can’t be unachievable, nor should we set more than we can manage in any given day.

3. Being smart – this isn’t smart as in clever, but ensuring our plans and goals are SMART, specific, measurable, achievable, realistic and time-based, unrealistic goals are counter-productive.

4. Keep focused – we all get distracted and this doesn’t help us be or feel productive; removing likely possible distractions is a great way to start every day.

5. Gather inspiration – we need to be imaginative and creative, continually looking at new ways to keep abreast of what our competitors are doing.

6. Be consistent – it’s hard to keep that ‘constant’ in our working days, particularly when we often don’t feel like it; self-motivation can help by setting and planning our days well.