“Am I Doing The Right Things”

A couple of weeks ago, after enjoying a family meal at my wife’s favorite oriental establishment, we shared the insights of our Fortune Cookies’ scripts. My wife’s was most intriguing as I contemplated its message and suddenly realized its true value.
The message read, “Before asking yourself, Am I doing things right, you should be asking yourself, am I doing the right things.” This struck me like a bolt of lightning.

How much time is spent researching, preparing, and often second guessing yourself in an effort to make sure you are doing things right, when more often than not, it is overkill, and you should be focusing on what is productive and doing those things that are going to move your business forward. With so much coming at you, so many demands made upon your time, phone calls to return, so many emails to filter through everyday, it is easily to be tempted to click on something that looks interesting and get sidetracked. Staying focused is becoming increasingly more difficult. Staying focused on what things you can do to achieve your goals is of utmost importance. One of my business associate and mentor’s favorite phrases is, “What can I do right now, today, that will move my business forward.”

We all have, or should have, a daily “To Do List”, of planned activities or tasks, not just for our business, but for all areas of our life that are directed toward achieving our life’s goals. We should be continually checking these tasks, re-evaluating their effectiveness in achieving our goals, and re-adjusting the list to make sure we stay on track and on target.

Just like a missile guidance system that keeps the primary target in its memory bank, it is continually making adjustments, going up, down, and around, avoiding obstacles while maintaining its course toward the target. It is just as vital to keep your “Target” in your memory, and the vision of your goal crystal clear even though you may not be thinking about it all the time.

Getting distracted and losing sight of your ”Target”, can be fatal to your business. There are so many different types of distractions that can, and often will cause temporary loss of focus and cause your target to become temporarily fuzzy or even out of sight.

Keeping your vision, your goals on what it will take to obtain your vision, and your “to do” list of what you have to do to achieve your goals, must be one of the first things you do in the morning and the last thing you do at night, to make sure you keep on track and on target to overcome distractions, interruptions, and loss of focus.

In case you are wondering what my Fortune Cookie’s script said, I found to be just as valuable, but not so profound. “Begin, the rest is easy” So instead of contemplating the “how to’s” or the “what if’s” or all the other things you do to insure you do it correctly, just do it, right or wrong. Get the ball rolling, once you start the process, energy and momentum will take over and you can make corrections or adjustments later. Getting started can sometimes be the hardest thing to do…but once that first step is taken, things become much easier and sometimes things seem to happen even without your help. Just keep doing the right things.