There are a lot of business owners who are probably sick of saying, “I’m really busy”. We all hear it so often – it becomes a little meaningless. Generally speaking, if business leaders are super busy, they’re doing it wrong.

Particularly, since there’s really no direct link between BEING BUSY AS A BUSINESS OWNER and business success. In my opinion, always being frantically busy in their business is probably the #1 mistake made by small-medium business owners.

THE QUESTION IS:   

Are you focusing on the right things? i.e. Strategies that will turn into results tomorrow

Now some of you might be thinking, this is easy for him to say, and it is. Particularly since most of us put pressure on ourselves to achieve more and get better results year on year. So our natural inclination is to respond by putting in more effort, and trying to do more.

But there is ALWAYS a limit to how much more you can achieve by extra effort. Taking some time away from your business to just think is a start.

These are some of the questions you should be asking yourself:

• What am I doing now where my effort is close to maximum, but I still need to achieve more?
• How can I do it differently?
• What changes can I make in my business so I can achieve more next month without more effort
• How do others achieve more than me?  And don’t be afraid to ask them!
• How can I modify what I need to achieve so it becomes easier?

One of the reasons business owners feel they need to be super-busy all the time is because they’re confusing hard work with working long hours. A fundamental mistake, which almost always results in business stagnation. Working hard is all about critical thinking and then making the hard decisions in your business. For example, thinking about a system you could implement that would reduce or eliminate a common mistake in your business. This is a great example of ‘hard work’, which will give your business real results moving forward. But unfortunately for many owners, this type of ‘thinking’ work gets neglected, as they choose to just clock up more hours, and make themselves even busier.

One way to help focus your efforts on the important things in your business, rather than just doing more ‘stuff’ is using a five-minute journal. If you’ve never heard of this, look it up. It can really help you achieve more, whilst working less. It’s based on the fact that only a small number of important things we do in our business give us our results. All the other things we do in our business is just about being busy to make ourselves feel good.

Another method is the Pomodoro technique, which has been shown to cut a person’s workday by up to 50%.    

If you take nothing else away from this message, it’s that being ‘too’ busy in your business is one of the biggest mistakes you can make. In my opinion, it is the #1 thing holding small-medium businesses back. The key is to concentrate on RESULTS, not on being BUSY.