I had the pleasure of listening to a podcast recorded by Brendon Burchard, New York Times bestselling author of 3 fantastic books about forming good habits. There was one particular story that really stuck with me. It’s about a C.E.O. of a major company. She was working so incredibly hard, but just not gaining any traction in her new role. She sat down with Brendon, who also happens to be a high performance business coach, to figure out what the problem was. When going through her daily work habits, she said this phrase, “I chopped a lot of wood today.” What does that mean exactly? It means she got stuck on the menial tasks, the time-consuming, down in the dirt wood chopping tasks.
Wow. That one sentence blew me away. Business owners, take a look at your week. How much time are you spending on tasks that don’t really help your business? How often are you restocking the coffee supplies, solving tech problems, or pinch hitting in the front office to cover lunches? I bet the answer is somewhere in the region of A LOT!
Okay, now tell me this- when you’re busy chopping all that wood, who is looking at your projections for this year? Who is planning for your next product launch? Who is looking at whether or not that last new thing you brought in was a success or a failure? Who is handling the big things that could really move your business forward? Well, you are, of course. Because you need your business to succeed. So you’re working late into the night and squeezing in those important planning moments whenever you have a spare moment.
That is such a huge problem! You’re giving those real, quality, needle-moving decisions the least amount of your time and attention. According to Brendon, high performance bosses spend about 60% of their week on those big ticket items. Here’s another problem: you’re fitting in this type of work at night or a few minutes between conference calls. That means the quality of the attention you’re paying isn’t great. You are probably mentally exhausted when it comes to making those decisions, which means you aren’t in the best frame of mind to make excellent business decisions.
Here are a few tips to help you quit chopping wood, and to spend more time making quality decisions.
- Delegate- Ask your receptionist to empty garbages and tidy up the office. Have a delivery driver stop and pick up coffee supplies on their way back.
- Hire Help- I’m not saying stretch your budget to the max by bringing on a full-time salaried employee. Hire a high school kid to answer your phones and help customers a couple days a week. Hire a cleaning service to go over your office instead of you doing it. Make someone else chop the wood.
- Time blocking- We’ll get way more into this but try blocking out a couple of hours during your day. Pick a time when the office should be quiet. Close the door, tell everyone you are not to be disturbed, and give yourself time to work on the big things. This is very difficult when so many others need your attention, but it is vital to your business to give yourself the time.
I hope this helps you get ahead of your business goals this year. Remember, you’re not a lumberjack, you’re a decision maker!
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