Stop doing so much!

Yes, I just shouted at you. Stop doing so much! Why would I do that when a ton of our conversation revolves around productivity and accountability? Improvement, growth, and success all require taking care of business and checking items off your daily list, right?

It depends.

There are constants in your business that need to be accomplished on a routine basis. Daily, weekly, monthly, even hourly activities create the revenue in your company. You sell your products and services, you produce them, store them, deliver them, bill for them, and collect payments for them. There's a rhythm, a buzz, in that activity. It's your cash cycle.

Since these are the activities that produce revenue and profit, you're not going to stop doing them. But if you do the same things tomorrow and next week and the week after that, how are you going to grow your business? When you do the same things you create more of the same.

Our coach friend Michael Synk calls this shoveling the sand in your company. You're filling a hole with it, and you keep shoveling.  If you want to fill the hole faster, though, you need something bigger. You need some rocks. Learn more from his book, Rock and Sand

Rocks are the projects and improvements that make the sand shoveling faster or more efficient. They help you fill the hole faster. You have make a point to make time for them, because the sand shoveling consumes your entire day if you allow it to do so. That said, you also can only handle a few rocks at a time without losing your rhythm in your sand shoveling.

Your quarterly priorities are your rocks. They are the big things that you want to accomplish to improve your business. They are SMART goals with a beginning and end. They are the reason why I'm telling you to stop doing so much. When you choose too many priorities, nothing is a priority.

When you set a priority you are committing to focus on a project or task that you place in front of other things. You are likely to achieve only 5 per quarter, and that's being optimistic. We say this because rocks take time, and rocks consume resources while you're working on them. The bigger the rock is to achieve (in difficulty or importance), the fewer you should commit to at one time. You want to make sure that the big things get done.

You may be able to make concurrent progress on more than one rock. BUT - you benefit the most from completed priorities. If you spread yourself too thinly you are more likely to lose your focus, and you might end the quarter with nothing truly complete.

In summary: Shoveling sand produces cash, quarterly rocks provide focus and help you fill the hole faster. Choose your top 5 rocks, and then your top 1 of five. Doing less can result in better focus and better results.