Full Engagement To Create A Top Home Business
In addition to running a top home business, are you also trying to hold down a full time job? Do you feel like you have so many tasks needing attention that you are doing five things at once and few of them very well? And what about all the stuff you’re NOT getting done? How much more effective would you be if you automatically completed tasks without having to constantly find the energy to push yourself to do them? Think about it.
It takes tremendous willpower to focus on and complete all the boring tasks we have to perform each day; especially while dealing with so many distractions. You know, your cellphone, E-mail, children, cash (or lack of), your boss, and so on. Many a time I believed I had worked to the very end of human endurance and I patted myself on the back for a day well spent. But then… when I actually took stock of what I had accomplished, I realized I’d actually done very little. That ever happen to you? I thought I was an amazing multi tasking super efficient cyborg, but the lack of focus only served to make me super-inefficient. The answer was to become fully engaged.
There’s an excellent book by Jim Loehr and Tony Schwartz titled The Power of Full Engagement that deeply explores engagement, productivity and willpower. The book brings to light several interesting facts; one being that people have a finite reserve of willpower and that its very, very small. An experiment they performed to demonstrate this was to have two groups of people watch an emotional film. They instructed one group to not show any emotion during the entire film; the other was allowed to watch the film with no restrictions. After the film, they gave the participants tests that required intense concentration. The group that had to hide their emotions performed miserably simply because they had used so much will power in restraining their emotions, they had nothing left to concentrate.
So how can this help with you and you home business? Being a multi-tasking giant and living each day blown back and forth between the next emergency or deadline is bad, mmm-kay? Keep your will power and focus by following rituals instead!
“What kind o’ rituals?”, you ask. I don’t mean anything with fire, water or ancient Aztecs. There may, however, be some meditating and there’s likely to still be sacrifice, just not in the Apocalypto sense of the word. A ritual is any ordered group of actions that are done in the same way each time. The “actions” for our rituals are just good habits. The significant majority of our daily activity happens unconsciously. You don’t have to think “Oh.. red light, lift right foot, bring right foot over a few inches and put pressure on the wider pedal till the car slows.” You just stop. Those actions are all habits and how you drive your car can be called a ritual. No real willpower needed. Actually, your looking at more willpower to not succumb to the habit. You’d have to make a conscious effort to not press your foot to the brake if you were aware that not doing so would result in rear ending the car in front of you. So… simply apply rituals throughout your day to seriously impact your level of production. If you’re trying to improve your health, you might try a morning ritual like the one I borrowed from Eben Pagan.
I set aside about two hours every morning for this ritual. It begins when I wake up and grab a tall glass of water. Next I take care of my teeth and gums. Then I hit the gym or the road for some serious exercise. I meditate and visualize, go over my goals and plans for the day, eat breakfast and finally wash and put on some clothes. It’s automatic! I don’t think about skipping my workout because its part of my ritual and that’s what comes next. They say it takes 21 days to create a new habit. It may take you that much or longer. The important thing is to stick with it until it becomes more trouble to not do it than to just make it happen.
To make this work for your life and home business, create rituals for groups of regular tasks throughout the day. Let’s say you’re a video marketer and if you are completely focused, you can shoot edit and post a video in an hour. If you’re checking email, sending text messages and watching Jersey Shore, I’m thinking you ain’t getting it done in an hour, but we’re talking full engagement here. IGNORE EVERYTHING ELSE! (This may be difficult if you have extremely young children, but if they’re older… introduce them to your new “DO NOT DISTURB” sign.) So what you do is pick a time that you will devote to your video that’s the same for everyday… let’s say it’s 4PM for example. At 4PM EVERYDAY, you will ignore the phone, email and all other distractions and focus completely on creating and posting your next video masterpiece. It’s best to have a set order of steps as well. As this develops into a habit, all of the random things that come up during the course of the day will start to be shuffled between the spaces of your set rituals. Eventually you’ll replace more and more random stuff with well planned rituals and you’ll literally become a production machine.
As a word of caution, don’t try to create too many rituals at once as they require some willpower to get going. Too many and you’re setting yourself up to fail. Make your important tasks into habits and you’ll shoot your home business to the top in record time.
Jesse Walker is an Expert in Attraction Marketing who Runs a Top Home Business with Full Engagement. Use the #1 marketing system to generate 50+ leads a day!
