Who wants to be successful by doing what they love? I’m sure everyone’s hand would go up. It is a shame that we are not properly trained to be successful by doing what we love to do. We are trained to get a job and work in the status quo, but for most people, the status quo does not offer a lovable job. There is a distinct feeling of dignity and happiness to make your own success instead of working for someone else.
Every entrepreneur takes a bold step by getting out of the status quo (or never being a part of it), but not all of these entrepreneurs are successful. Many entrepreneurs are rising stars who are not household names quite yet.
If you are like most entrepreneurs, you have an array of tasks to complete. If someone asks you how many tasks you have to complete today, you may say dozens. You may have the sticky notes, the score cards, the plan, and everything else all laid out so you can easily accomplish the tasks in front of you.
It is a shame that few or even none of the tasks most entrepreneurs perform line up with what they truly want in life. The primary reason most entrepreneurs do not reach their high standards is because most of their time gets split up until only the crumbs are left. These crumbs of time are all entrepreneurs allocate to the one thing they want at that moment. Maybe you want to be a millionaire, see your training course get twice as many sales this month, triple your blog traffic in the next quarter, or something else.
The one thing you want, the most important thing, is the one thing you need to spend the majority of your time on. If your one goal is to become a millionaire, you need to carve out 50% of your time towards that goal. You need to grow your email list, create the products, find partners, and make your products wildly successful. If you are focusing on anything that derails you from your one main goal, then it is a distraction. As New York Times bestselling author Gary Keller puts it, “until your ONE Thing gets accomplished, everything else is a distraction.”
[tweetthis url=”http://bit.ly/1xck0wi”]The one thing you want, the most important thing, is the one thing you need to spend the majority of your time on.[/tweetthis]
Of course, events outside of our businesses will call for our attention. Attending the kid’s soccer games, seeing loved ones, and having dinner with your family are three of the many events that are more important than goals and business. Entrepreneurs work on their own schedules which means they control how long they work, but they also control when they take breaks. You don’t want to work on your business at the dinner table when you should be talking with your family members instead. Business is important, but it should not consume your life.
The reason many of us feel consumed is because our tasks do not line up with the one thing we want. If your one goal is to grow your Twitter audience, then don’t focus on growing a Facebook audience. Sure, if your Facebook audience becomes big, you can promote your Twitter account to that audience. However, growing a Facebook audience takes time, and now you have less time to grow your Twitter audience. Then you may give Pinterest, Instagram, and YouTube a try all in the effort to grow your Twitter audience. Creating accounts on all of those social networks and updating them with new content takes up time that you could have used to learn and implement powerful techniques that could have grown your Twitter audience.
This is why social media experts encourage users to focus on one social network at a time. If we split our time amongst different social networks, we will have many small audiences instead of one large audience. I would rather have 5,000 followers on one social network than 500 followers on 10 social networks.
The days of your one thing in life constantly getting the crumbs of your time are coming to an end. In order to truly move forward in your industry and get what you want as an entrepreneur, you need to make your one thing your top priority. In fact, you should allocate 50% of your time towards your one thing. If you want to be a millionaire, 50% of your time should be spent implementing the most important parts of that plan. The other 50% of your time can be carved out to various tasks that are not as important, but those tasks should only be completed after you complete the important tasks that move you closer to the seven figure income.
In Conclusion
Logically speaking, the one thing you want to do in life should be the one thing that you spend most of your time on. Although the logic is simple to follow, the actually implementation of this logic is almost never done. We need to identify the one thing we want to do in our lives and then take the bold steps needed to make that one thing happen. Then, everything else that is needed will fall into place. It is better to be good at one thing than it is to be mediocre at 10 things.
Teachers and entrepreneurs have a lot in common
I agree. Both have the main function of empowering others with knowledge and/or vital capabilities.
Haha, so true. Unfortunately that one important thing is usually the thing I’m putting off because it’s intimidating!
You make a very good point, though. I’m going to try to get the one most important task done first every day, then move on from there.
Thanks for another great post.
My pleasure Reece. I am happy to hear that you are now going to focus more of your efforts on your one thing. Focusing on the most important thing for your entrepreneurial success is the key to making a full-time income without working for someone else.
Thank you Marc. Focus is what I need right now to grow my business. Great post
Thank you Wambui. I am happy to hear that you liked the post. The key to being successful in any field is to have a strong sense of focus.