Growth Activities

Posted on May 31, 2007. Filed under: Business, Dreams, Empowerment, Entrepreneur, Goals, Planning, Self Help, Startup |

I categorize the work I do into 2 broad categories – growth and non-growth activities. Growth activities are the activities that will enable automated revenue generation while non-growth activities are the activities that won’t. Growth activities are things like automating process, test marketing, creating systems and processes to make doing other activities less time consuming. As an analogy, a non-growth activity is cooking while a growth activity is creating a machine to cook for you. I want to focus more and more of my time on growth activities.

Yesterday I had trouble working on QuickButler (a growth activity) because I left till the end of the day – after I finished all the non-growth work. I figured QuickButler work was more exciting so I’d always have energy to do it. I was wrong. Yesterday, after having worked the entire morning on non-growth activities, I was having a hard time getting into QuickButler. Today, I found that I was a lot more productive if I worked on QuickButler first. Growth work should take a high priority in my workday and I’m going to start working on it first before all the other work. Up to now, I was always playing it “safe” by working on non-growth activities first.

I made the change today to work on QuickButler first thing in the morning, after my morning routine and I’ve noticed a considerable difference in my productivity.

I also made a public announcement on my Facebook profile that I was committing to getting up at 5 am for this entire week (including weekends). I find little positive pressure tactics like these help keep me from sliding into procrastination. Even after not getting a full night’s sleep last night, I was still very productive the entire day because I started my day on growth activities. I find that getting up at 5 am and not always getting a full night’s sleep actually makes me more productive. After the initial “blah” feeling, that goes away and I’m left with this feeling of great passion determination. This has been a great revelation.

To further keep procrastination at bay, I also made a commitment to not log into Facebook for the entire day – and to give $20 to the person that would catch me on it before 6 pm. This really helped keep me focused on the important tasks of the day instead of going for the easy procrastination activity of going on Facebook.

I feel a renewed sense of passion and determination to make my dreams come true.