Most business owners have goals in place, to-do lists that lead to their ability to reach those goals and yet are not easily able to shift their perspective in order to decide which priorities are most important.
Do they have the priorities in place that have led them to choose the goals that will help them the most?
Besides helping you to become successful at managing your time, the actual process of figuring out just what priorities take precedence over others is helpful in defining where your business goes. Some business tasks are much more worthy of your attention than others and successful business owners have learned that priorities also change with time, often quite quickly.
It’s also important to remember that something that is considered a priority for one person, may be completely unimportant to another. Learning to arrange priorities so your business life meshes with your personal life is your ultimate goal. Knowing what you want will make it easier but if you’ve ever asked someone what they really want out of life, the answers tend to be vague, such as money, happiness, security. While all of these are great priorities, they need to be broken down since they mean different things to different people.
Business priorities will also be different for each of us as our goals are as varied as our businesses. Thinking through what is most important to you and what should come first can remind you of what your original goals were when you began your business and can help point you in a new, more satisfactory direction where the outcome will be more in line with your interests. At the same time, you can decide if you are doing things for a real purpose or if they are habits. Some habits may be necessary to keep your business running successfully. Others may be holding you back from becoming the most successful business owner that you can possibly become. While deciding on priorities, make sure they are your priorities and not those that have been imposed on you by the thinking of others. While caring what others think is or can be nice, when it comes to your business, run it your way.
Deciding what is missing in your priority list is another reason to go over it. Sometimes it is the small things that can make the biggest difference, especially in business. Realizing this can re-ignite your interest if it has been flagging and have you looking at your business in a new way. What is most important is that you decide what you can and can’t live without, how much of your personal time you are willing to continue to give up to run your business (maybe this is the time to bring in virtual help), and also if your present goals are still pertinent to what is going on in the present business climate.
Business priorities that you decide on should always be of benefit to you, your business and your family. If a shift in perspective is necessary, spending time on just what your real priorities are, will benefit all of these.
© Chris Draper, DemGen Inc. 2014
image courtesy of seanclark
