Do you have a love-hate relationship with entrepreneurship? It’s exciting to be your own boss but also overwhelming because everything depends on you. When you think about your business, do you feel overwhelmed with a long list of tasks? Or do you feel empowered to tackle your goals and accelerate your company’s growth? Imagine waking up every morning feeling energized – not stressed – about the day ahead. How different might entrepreneurship feel to you?
Many entrepreneurs are going through the motions of life, trying to keep their heads above water, feeling busy and overwrought, but not really sure where their efforts are taking them.
It doesn’t have to be that way. There is a way to live your life so that you experience deep meaning from day to day, ultimately accomplishing your business to-do’s while staying focused on what matters most.
“When we change our focus, we change our life.”
We live in a world with a million distractions competing for our attention. We have been taught that we can juggle our many tasks by multitasking. If you’re a business owner trying to hold it all together with limited time, you may think that multitasking is the only way to stay afloat.
This is a lie. The human brain is built for focus, and focus is how we harness its true power. Multitasking has been shown to be less effective and can contribute to memory loss, poor mental health and burnout.
The key to fulfillment and happiness in your business and life is radical, intentional focus. You need to know exactly what matters most to you, why it matters most to you and your plan for getting there.
Rapid Planning Method
The Rapid Planning Method, or RPM, is a linchpin of our entrepreneur business coaching. It can help you create the ultimate plan for a more fulfilling business and personal life. You can also think of the RPM as a Results-oriented, Purpose-driven, Massive Action Plan.
The RPM method is more than just setting goals or making a to-do list. It defines what is important to you and how you will get there in achievable, measurable steps. Here’s a bite-size peek at how it works:
Step One: What do I really want to achieve?
Clarity is power when defining your result. What is your outcome? What’s the result you’re committed to achieving? The more specific and measurable your goal is, the more powerful this step will be. Instead of “I want to grow my business,” try “I want to increase sales by 20%.”
Step Two: What is my purpose?
Ask yourself, “Why is this more than just something I should do vs. something I’m emotionally invested in?” Why is it a must for you to get this result? Remember, reasons come first, answers come second.
Step Three: What do I need to do? What is my Massive Action Plan?
Brainstorm a list of ideas for getting where you want to go. Don’t hold back. You can then choose which of your ideas will be the most effective.
It’s one thing to talk about what you want to do with your life or business, but the power comes when you do something about it.
Rewards come in action, not discussion.
Following these three steps will bring focus to your business and your life. You can revisit them repeatedly when you need to reprioritize and re-align with your purpose.
The key to applying this kind of focus to your life is to first get out of your head. One of the best ways to do that is with something we call capturing.
The power of capturing
“If you’re in your head, you’re dead.”
Keeping everything in our head, even good things like goals and plans for business growth, can become a source of stress and overwhelm.
Our brains can only focus on a limited number of things at a time – somewhere between five and nine things at once. Juggling all of our goals, to-do lists and tasks is mentally and physically exhausting. It is no wonder so many of us feel burned out.
Getting things out of your head and written down alleviates the stress on our overwhelmed brain.
Capturing is gathering all those thoughts floating around in your head and getting them down on paper, and all in one place. You can put them on your phone, too, but the act of physically writing something is particularly powerful. Find a system and stick with it. If you are capturing your thoughts on a myriad of calendars, sticky notes, phone notes, and random scraps of paper, you will continue to feel scattered and overwhelmed.
Once you start getting out of your head, there is a way of organizing your thoughts, goals and tasks in a manageable way that allows you to focus on what is most important to you.
We call this process chunking.
Chunking
Chunking is how we turn a lot into a little.
Here’s how it works: Write down all of the things you have to do this week. Don’t hold back – this is your dumping ground for your thoughts, and it should feel freeing to get it all out.
Now, start looking for commonalities in your list. In your business, what relates to finances, sales or employee development? In your personal life, what relates to relationships, health or personal growth?
Maybe your list looked something like this:
1. Develop the quarterly budget
2. Meet with sales team about quarterly action plan
3. Finish PowerPoint slides for the presentation
4. Follow up with human resources manager about new healthcare package for employees
5. Review Google Analytics with marketing team
6. Attend lunch with potential client
7. Make dinner reservations for wedding anniversary
8. Go to daughter’s soccer game
9. Call Mom for her birthday
10. Go to the gym
11. Fix the running toilet in the kids’ bathroom
12. Call the lawncare company to remind them to add aeration/overseeding to your services
Right away, you can start grouping together tasks. The first six tasks fall under work/career. Calling Mom, going to the soccer game and making anniversary plans would fall under “relationships.” The toilet and lawncare tasks fall under “chores.” Twelve to-do’s may feel like too many, but when you divide them into several chunks, your list suddenly feels doable.
The most common areas of life mastery are health, relationships, work/career, finances, meaning and emotion and spirituality. When you practice capturing and chunking, most of the things on your list can fit into one of these overarching categories, and suddenly, your list becomes streamlined and manageable – not overwhelming.
Relate your goals to your purpose
So often, we get caught up in a long to-do list and find that we are just checking boxes while the aspects of our lives that are most important – our relationships, our health, our goals – get pushed to the side. When you practice capturing and chunking, it is easy to see if you are devoting your time to focusing on what really means the most.
This is the purpose of the RPM – to define what is really important to you and why. You should always return to that and ask yourself if your focus is aligned with your ultimate goals and life purpose.
With your tasks and goals in manageable clusters, you will feel less stressed and overwhelmed and will have the mental capacity to focus on and tackle your greater goals that will move your business and your life forward.
Take action
Now that you have gotten out of your head, defined your goals and related those goals and tasks back to your purpose, you are ready to take action. Lists and chunking can only get you so far. The real magic happens when you harness the power of your purpose and focus to change your life.
You know your purpose, so don’t let distractions get in the way. Leverage tasks that don’t bring you closer to your goals. This might mean taking a good hard look at your schedule and assigning any projects that could be done by someone else. You are still responsible for checking in and supporting, but if you’ve got a good team and a good follow-up system, leveraging should work well, freeing you up to do the things that only you can do.
Assign yourself a specific time and place to tackle emails each day, rather than letting them sidetrack you all day. If you’re a social media fan, consider using focus settings on your phone so that you aren’t tempted to tune in and lose focus on work or family.
Understand that the most successful people are intentional with all of their time – even “downtime” can move us closer to our goals and the things that matter most.. Think about those categories that are important to you. When you have free time, use it to do what matters most: brainstorm ways to grow your company, take a walk with your spouse, throw the ball with your kids, read an inspiring book.
Because you took the time to capture and organize your thoughts, you have unlocked the mental focus to drive your business to new heights while still spending time with the people and pursuits that bring you joy and fulfillment in life.
