My new Internet friend, Mr JJ Jalopy… Life coach, posted an excellent post on his blog yesterday he called “Get everyone on your side…and rock your new schedule”  ßHighly recommended reading!

Jalopy’s incredible blog is helping people all over the world get their fledgling businesses off the ground, and he has been concentrating on the mindset aspects of starting your business so far. 

Jalopy made a critical point yesterday…

You need to make sure that the people in your life respect your new venture and give you the time and space to make your business flourish.  And you need to enforce these boundaries in order to succeed.

I want to extend this point a bit further because it has been my experience that most people are fully capable of sabotaging their own days without even a smidgen of help from friends or family members.

You don’t need your buddy Ralph to show up at your door to shoot the breeze in order to destroy your day.  You do the same thing to yourself by checking e-mail first thing in the am, and constantly throughout the day.  Or by surfing the Net in an endless search for what has changed in the last three minutes…  If you flit from task to task without focusing on one thing and completing it, then your results will suffer. 

And in the end, the only things that count are the things that you complete.  That pile of half-finished projects, while maybe fun to talk about, is 100% useless without bringing it to life.

So how do we create a Focus Zone?

You need to turn off your email and browsers and focus on the work, and then check them at selected intervals. for max productivity… You need to keep away the external distractions like Mr. Jalopy discusses. And you need to focus on getting projects pushed through your system and completed. Your “cockpit” that is within arm’s length of you when you sit at your desk needs to have at the ready the things that you most commonly need. 

You need to be committed to finishing one thing before moving on to the next.

Have a great day!

Rob

PS: And his advice to give your kids small tasks to do is great… my kids have stuffed mailers into envelopes, put stamps on them, done filing, put binders and folders together for presentations, etc.  It is an excellent chance to teach them about business and self-reliance.