(This is an oldie, but  a goodie so I’m reposting it!)

I  can see it now…..

A room full of grizzly looking, sleep deprived entrepreneurs sitting around wondering what happened to their dreams of success.

One by one they start to share their stories:

“Hi, I’m Amy.  I am an email addict.”  I sit down to work on the projects that would make me money, but every time that email alert pops in, I’m bouncing to check on who could have possibly contacted me.  So by the end of the day, I’m drained, overwhelmed, and have accomplished nothing!.”

Next is Dave, who has the tell tale dark circles under his eyes.  “Hi I’m Dave, and my life has become unmanageable as a result of the distraction of email.  My problem is that I can’t sleep until I know every email is done, sent, or responded to.  Its freaky…in fact, if I get up in the middle of the night to go to the bathroom, or can’t sleep, I will head straight to my computer to finish off the email that came in when I was away.  And can I share my biggest shame?  I secretly get a little bummed when it’s about one in the morning and I hit the send/receive button and nothing comes.  I’m a mess.”

But the saddest one of all is Ray, who sits in the corner, barely able to hold his head up.  “Hi, my story is sort of similar but it’s not just email that’s causing me to get off track and waste hours and hours and hours.  Mine is that damn Facebook and Twitter.  In the old days I’d give myself about thirty minutes to ‘surf the web’ as we used to call it back then, but with the inventions like Tweetdeck, I’m screwed!  Now it takes all the energy I can muster to get anything done.  And you want to know the worst part of it?  As a coach, when I’m supposed to be listening to my clients on the phone, I secretly pop in and check on the tweets while I should be listening to them.  They are paying me good money, and I can’t even be present because I’m so addicted to distractions.  What they heck should I do?”

Now obviously this is a fictitious “12-Step meeting for email addicts” but many of you will read your own story in the three characters above.

The fist thing I want you to know is that you are probably (unfortunately) among the norm.  We love distractions!  Our cell phones have alarms, our Outlook tasks pop in to alert us, we get reminders of teleclasses, and all sorts of things that intrude on our space.  So what’s a ‘focus challenged’ entrepreneur to do about all this?  I have a few suggestions below.

1.  Turn off the email alert -yes….in Outlook you can stop the function that tells you every time an email pops in.  You may notice a huge void, but that’s the goal!

2.  Discover the cost of being interrupted constantly – I recently heard a statistic that every email distraction can cost up to 64 seconds.  Multiply that by the countless times we go chasing the rabbit down the hole and you wonder why things aren’t getting done????

3.  Schedule chunks of time for distractions – Give yourself certain hours where you’ll be on Facebook, certain times you’ll tweet, and certain times you will check your email.  It really is about discipline.   Have you planned your time?  Do you set up a schedule the night before of what needs to be accomplished, or do you just jump on the computer and just start responding to emails?  That is the kiss of death for any hope of productivity, so START NOW.  The deal is that you control your time, and not other people’s calls, requests, or emails.  Think like a singulary focused million dollar business owner.  Would they ‘twitter’ their time away?  Probably not.

4. Get your social needs met – I haven’t done a formal study, but one of the reasons why email (and Facebook) are such distractions to me is because I’m an EXTROVERT.  Meaning when I’m sitting home working by myself, there’s that part of me longing for connection.  So it’s easy to take a break to see what the cool kids on FB are talking about.  Getting your social fix will solve this and allow you to be more focused. And for the introverts reading this….please let me know your experience here as well.

5.  Purge, purge, purge -  Do you really need 67 ezine subscriptions?  Take one whole week and everything that you would be tempted to say, “I’ll get to this later” …GET RID OF!!!! You can always re-subscribe, but the enormity of getting hundred and hundred of emails a day leads to overwhelm.  (Don’t want to hurt someones feelings by unsubscribing?  Here’s a trick – set up a message rule in Outlook to send their email directly to the delete folder.  That way you don’t have to see it, and they don’t have to know you left their list.)

6. Have an assistant handle your email -This is where I am.  And truthfully, I am FIGHTING this one!  Because I admit that I’m like a crazy email junkie- the more the better in my book.  But I know what it costs me in terms of productivity.  Not quite ready yet to release this one.  (Maybe there is really that 12-step program for those of us unwilling to surrender our crazy addiction.)  How do you do it?  Let’s all share what works for us with navigating the email craziness.

Those are my six tips.  Make a comment on the blog and and share if you have any other ideas cuz we are all in this together!

Blessings,

I had almost forgotten this technique until today.  Two different people on two different coaching calls seemed to be struggling with the same complaint….

“Help!  I know what I should be doing, but for some reason I can’t motivate myself to do it.  I am procrastinating and can’t stop.”

Then it came back to me.  Hearing these two similar stories, I asked them each my $64,000 question that shifted them instantly.  Here’s what I said…

Okay, I hear that you aren’t able for some reason to pick up the phone or get into action.  You just can’t make yourself do it.

Do you have a loved one? (They answered yes)

If someone held a gun to your head and told you they’d shoot your loved one, do you think you’d be able to do this thing you have been struggling with?

In both cases they instantly shifted, giggled a bit, but then ‘got’ that they needed a gun to their own head. Now why would I ask the crazy question about if they could do these things if the stakes were higher?  To prove that it wasn’t the thing that caused the breakdown, but the mindset they were approaching it with.

We get in trouble as business owners because we create internal deadlines for our work that can be slippery.  One of the clients today was an attorney who stated that what got her in gear was when she had a trial.  Meaning = a hard deadline where someone else was counting on her work to get done.  I helped her to see that she needs to set her own deadlines and then create accountability via a coach or a mastermind partner/group so she has that external motivation that works better for her.

The other client was able to come up with her own ‘gun to her head’ which was the sense that if she did her work, she’s be able to provide for her family in a much bigger way.  She’s going to get pictures, words, or statements about how specifically she’ll leave a legacy and what that means.

Do you see the shift?  If you are stuck, as yourself my question?  If your answer is yes, then find a way to come up with something that is more motivating to do and more painful NOT to do.

I gave a couple of examples, but here are a few more….

Give yourself a negative consequence.  Example – if you don’t get your newsletter written you could ‘penalize’ yourself by having to donate $$ to a candidate that you can’t stand.  This works well for those who are motivated by a bit of punishment.  (I used this for keeping on the exercise path a few years ago and it really motivated me…until I slipped and then had to go through the website of the candidate that disgusted me and find where to send $ to him.  Yuck!  Great motivator if you are passionate about certain causes.)

Those who like rewards, you could set it up that if you do the activities you are putting off, get a massage, go to the bookstore, buy a new book, etc.  The ‘gun to your head’ becomes the good thing you’ll do to yourself.

Have a visual reminder in your office.  Years ago I was coaching a financial planner who had to do tons and tons of cold calls.  When I asked him how the heck he did that, he told me that he wanted to marry his girlfriend and she wanted a huge ring that he would love to buy for her.  To keep him moving forward, he had cut out a photo of the ring and put it on the phone.  So the calls were no longer about the quota, but about his love and the possibility of pleasing his girl.  That was the gun to his head that kept him moving forward.

So the next time you hear yourself say in your head, “Well, I can just make those calls tomorrow…they can wait,”  I want you to take some new action.  Procrastination breeds procrastination, and then it’s ugly cousins of self doubt and discouragement move it, so you have to stay on top of it. Do this experiment and let me know how it’s going for you.  And if overwhelm is causing you some challenges, check out my “How to Manage Your Entrepreneurial Overwhelm Without Losing Your Entrepreneurial Creativity” product.

Blessings,

Therese