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Running a business is hard work, and the earlier it is in your business journey, the more work you’ll have to do because it’s unlikely you’ll have the funds to employ anyone. The problem that some people find when they have a lot of work to do is that they become unfocused and start to procrastinate. This is bad enough when you work for someone else, but when you work for yourself, it will have a direct impact on your income and the potential future success of your business.
This is why it’s so important to learn how to stay focused as a business owner. If you can do this, you’ll find things become much easier, and you’ll have a clearer idea of what you want to achieve as well as what you can achieve. With this in mind, here are some tips to help you stay more focused when you are running a business.
Outsource Difficult Tasks
Because there is so much to do when you run a business, there are sure to be tasks that you don’t enjoy or that take up a larger percentage of your time. There will probably be tasks that fall into both of these categories. If you try to do them all, you might find you become demotivated because everything takes a long time to get finished, and you might not get the results you are hoping for. Alternatively, you might put these tasks off because you don’t enjoy or understand them, leading to more procrastination and a loss of revenue.
The solution to this issue is a simple one; outsource these tasks to experts. Take your accounting, for example. If you can outsource your accounting tasks to a virtual accounting firm, you can buy back a lot of time and ensure you are more focused on the more pressing tasks of running your company that need your attention. This is crucial when it comes to operating a business, as says Savage of New Canaan – Savage New Canaan is an expert in precisely this kind of work.
You don’t have to outsource everything, but by cutting back the amount of work you have to do by outsourcing or at least getting help with some of the more time-consuming and difficult tasks, you’ll find you’re much more interested in working and can move your business forward more positively.
Find A Business Mentor
If you’re finding it hard to focus on your business, it might be because you’re feeling overwhelmed due to the work you have to do and the number of decisions you have to make. Since many of these decisions will be crucial to the success of your business, it’s easy to see how business owners might want to step away from them and procrastinate before coming to a final decision.
The problem with this is that by the time a decision is made, the opportunity might already have passed by. If your competitors were able to make their decisions faster, they’d be the ones moving up, and you’ll be the one left behind. No business owner wants this to happen.
Finding a business mentor could be a good solution. When you have an experienced mentor on your side, you’ll always have someone to bounce ideas off and someone to ask questions. Of course, you shouldn’t rely on your mentor for everything – you do need to learn how to run your own business – but having them there as a kind of safety net can be reassuring, and it can help you make those all-important decisions more quickly because you have been able to talk everything through with some who has plenty of experience.
When you work with a mentor, you’ll be able to stay more focused because you’ll be accountable to someone for the work you do. You won’t be able to meander around because your mentor will set goals for you (or help you set your own) and expect you to meet targets. In this way, because you’ll always have something to work towards, you’ll never (or rarely, at least) wander off in a different direction and get distracted from what you need to do.
Stop Working
It’s been mentioned numerous times how important it is to work hard when you’re a business owner. You need to build your business up, find new customers, stay ahead of your competition, and so on. However, this can be a problem in itself when it comes to your focus or lack of it. The more you work without taking a break, the harder everything will become. You’ll be tired, which means you’ll be less productive. The problem is that many people notice this and try to push onward, thinking that if they work for longer, they’ll complete their tasks eventually.
This is actually the worst thing you can do. By continuing to work when you are exhausted, you’ll not only be less productive and offer up lower-quality work, but you’ll also lose focus, often without even realizing it. Your body and brain will be trying to get you to relax, and when you see it’s happening, you’ll ignore the signals and continue to work. In the end, this is just not sustainable, and you could burn out completely. Even if you don’t, you’ll easily fall out of love with your business because everything seems so hard.
The way to get past this is to stop working. When you feel tired and you know you’re not doing your best work, take a break. Ideally, this should be as long a break as you can manage, but even ten to fifteen minutes can be useful if it’s done in the right way. The right way in this case means getting away from your workspace and moving around or, even better, going outside. It could mean reading a book or listening to music. Whatever it is, just make sure it has nothing to do with your work tasks. When the break is over, you will often find that you are more focused and can finish your work with a clearer head. If this is not the case, stop working entirely and come back to it the next day if possible.
It’s also a good idea to give yourself set working hours, just like you would have if you worked for someone else. In this way, you can practice the self-care you need in order to be more motivated when you’re working. Even business owners need to have a good work-life balance.
Learn To Say No
If you are the kind of small business owner who is always saying yes to any demands placed upon them, it’s no wonder that you are losing focus. You’ll simply have too much to do and not enough time to do it in. Quite apart from making you exhausted and less motivated to build your business anymore, you also run the risk of giving your customers poor quality products and services or disappointing them by missing deadlines, for example.
Even if you want to make money in your business and it feels as though you have to say yes to every demand that comes at you to do this, it’s far better to learn to say no when you need to. If you can’t take on a job for a customer because you’re already fully booked, for example, say no. You might lose that money, but you’ll save your reputation and your peace of mind. Once you are able to say no and prioritize your work, you’ll be able to stay more focused, and that will lead to more positive things.