With 1 million things constantly swirling around us, family, friends, the media, social media, marketers, personal problems and more. It’s a surprise business people have time to do anything at all.
So what’s your system for focusing on top issues?
I blog on 1 issue a day, try to think of that problem the night before and marinate on it.
HOWEVER, I noticed that I was running out of issues…
Why?
I think simply because I don’t have a centralized repository of all my issues.
The Best Way To Organize Your Opportunities
Every problem at its core has an opportunity to unlock inside of it.
If you spot the right problem, then turn into a question or an equation to solve, you’ll level up.
So how do we organize them?
Google Sheets 🙂
I’m simply going to have a name section and come up with a simple formula answering a few questions to determine how much I think it’s worth solving then review every month to see if my forecasting was correct and what I got wrong in the notes section.
The problem will always be around 1. Sales, 2. Operations or 3. Other (Just in case I miss anything, but the vast majority should be in the first 2 buckets).
As one of my favorite writers Tim Ferris asks: “What would this look like if it were easy?”.
So I asked myself this question and came up with the answer above.
I’m simply going to have a google sheet where I write all the issues down to look at the night before, both personal and professional (most days I’ll focus on the professional, but make no mistake about it, the closer you’re tied to a business the closer these 2 can blend).
Fun to think that I have been writing daily for 51 days now and hadn’t even thought of how to optimize these problems.
To me this represents business as a whole, often times 1 simple 1% improvement can compound itself and make a world of difference, on the other hand that proposal that you think is super important, but is a distraction.
How To Find Out If Something Is REALLY Worth Solving?
How do you know if the issue at hand is really a problem though?
What happens if you don’t solve it? Does your company keep moving, or does it never grow?
What’s the potential impact and opportunity – 10 weeks, 10 months and 10 years from now?
How much money is tied to this problem?
The simple questions above should be enough to get started.
Focus on the Rocks, not the Pebbles, Not The Sand Or The Water:
The video above talks about how if you fill a jar (in this case your life) with different focuses.
The System You Use Is Best
I think too often people error on the side of caution. Everyone wants to do everything perfect in a world that can make you feel everyone is looking at you to be perfect or you’ll fail (which feels like potential death).
Throughout my business and life journey I’ve tried to make it a habit to be ok with messing up and sometimes I even have sections I know I’ll fail.
Is google sheets the best? Are those questions above the best? Do I even give myself enough time to think about our problems?
I think what’s most important is that I actually START.
Doing the activities will get you better. This is how we’ve been growing, how I ran a marathon and what I think everyones philosophy should be towards systems. The one you use is the best.
*Note: After a couple of days, I’ve thought about effort and how it relates to success. The greater the effort something takes to accomplish the lower the odds that it actually gets done and therefore the lower your odds of succeeding. All we really have is effort and success, therefore there should be some kind of system that calculates the effort level to solve a problem. For now I’m gonna go back to what I wish I did…starting 🙂
