Be honest with yourself. Which are you?
Are you a doer or a note taker?
Personally, I would have said that whilst I like to take a lot of notes, I am a doer. However, upon deciding to have a serious declutter of my drawers this weekend (oo, er, missus!) I discovered no less than eight writing pads full of notes that I had taken whilst attending various workshops and listening to webinars over the past couple of years.
I painstakingly went through these and was a little shocked at what I found. Some of these notes had extremely useful information that if I had actually taken the time to action at the time, may have helped me tremendously in my business. On the other hand some of the notes, particularly with regard social media and SEO, were now out of date so I had completely wasted my time, money and energy attending these workshops that I didn’t ever make time to action lessons learnt.
Therefore I am going to set you a challenge to stop you falling into the same trap (or to escape if you have already fallen prey). Go dig out all those notepads you have hidden and go through past notes. Highlight what is still relevant and actions that need to be taken, then set aside a day (or more if you need) to re-read and implement those action points. Ditch any that are no longer relevant or of interest. If you don’t feel the energy and enthusiasm to action them at the time you set yourself, also ditch them. If you still can’t find the time or inclination to sort them out now, you never will and they will remain cluttering up your both your desk and your subconscious mind.
And here is the biggie!! Before you complete the above task DO NOT sign up to any more webinars, workshops or anything else that you are going to waste time on if you are just going to take notes and not actually implement anything afterwards. Remove yourself from the false sense of security of being a busy fool!
This can also be a very hard habit to break. Only last evening I found myself signing up to yet another webinar ‘just in case’ there was some vital information that I may miss (and this is what prompted me to write this post).
To help break the habit, unsubscribe from all the newsletters from those wonderful coaches apart from your most favourite. Instead of funding their businesses, focus on putting lessons into action to fund your own! Also install an AdBlocker on your laptop so no more Facebook ads pop up in your newsfeed to distract you with bright shiny objects that draw you away from your core business duties!
Once you are up to date and have implemented the list of outstanding actions for your business, you can come back and those coaches will still be there waiting to take you to the next level.
Go do this now. Don’t wait. Block out time in your diary and become a future doer not a note taker.
Let me know how you get on in the comments box at the bottom of the page (and how many notepads you found!)
