Successful Habits

There will always be more things demanding our attention than we will ever have time to address, so the sooner we develop successful habits the better.

If you are anything like most people reading this you probably have a new project that you want to get working on, a few projects that you started and have to get back to, and a few dozen more you want to pursue but don’t have the time or resources. Am I right?

If so, than you are not alone. Many entrepreneurs, including myself, fall into this situation at one time or another. Our brains don’t stop looking for new solutions so it is no surprise that the number of projects in queue continue to stack up.

So, how do you mange this reality? Do the following for 21 days and your life will be changed forever!

Get into the habit of pushing through your emotions.

It is imperative that habits become your motivator and not your emotions. What often happens is that we jump into something while we are excited about it but once the excitement is gone so to is the desire to work.

I have seen the ability to push through emotion present in more successful people than any other.

Focus your efforts to one area at a time and do not move on until a task is completed. Break projects down to tasks that can be complete in one sitting, and don’t leave loose ends! Even if the results are not exactly like you would like them to be, a completed job is always better than an incomplete job.

This principle is commonly implemented in formal project management. The idea is that jumping from task to task will only extend the over all time to complete everything. The project that is your life has too many parallel tasks to count so identify those that will allow progress in the direction you want to go and get them done, one at a time!

Lets take a look at an example. Say we have three tasks that need to be completed and each task consists of three parts. Each part of each task will require exactly one day. With this scenario our three tasks could be illustrated as follows

Task A

Task B

Task C

If we alternate through each task until all are completed the sequence would look like the following;

This approach would require 9 days for all tasks to be completed. Task A would be completed on day 7, task B would be completed on day 8, and task C would be completed on day 9. Not bad but not optimal.

If we change the way we address the tasks and instead of alternating through each one we focus on one task until it is complete then move on to the next we would have something similar to the following;

This approach would again require 9 days but unlike the first time around task A is now completed in 3 days, task B is completed in 6 days, and task C again finishes up in 9 days.

You can see how this can be hugely beneficial in multi project environments in which dependencies on task completion are critical.

As an entrepreneur you will find you will have less time than you need to complete the tasks you need to complete. Applying this principle could greatly assist you in your overall effectiveness but it will require you to fight the urge to take a break from one obligation in order to work on another.

This successful habit if adopted will yield many dividends. If you develop a habit of continually completing tasks required for a specific project you will be surprised at how fast you will get the job done.