BUSYNESS AS USUAL

I’ve been thinking a lot about the difference between working “in” the business and working “on” it. The time you spend doing your job vs growing the business. In other words, Business (or Busyness) as Usual vs special effort towards the big picture. 

Busyness As Usual gives us the expected results for the usual input and activity. It’s all the stuff that gets generated by being in business: interactions with clients, prospects, staff, suppliers, systems, etc. It comes at us at least as fast (and often faster) than our ability to process and dispatch it. A lot of it appears to be urgent because someone else’s ability to stay in busy-ness depends on your response. Much of our Busyness As Usual is self-perpetuating. It stays that way unless we build the habit of proactive management, not reactive busyness. 

That’s why research shows middle managers spend up to 60% of their week reacting instead of leading (source: HBR, "The Busyness Trap," 2018). 

It’s not easy to draw a clear line between what’s important and what’s not. 

We’re big fans of having just 3 Most Important Goals (MIGs) at a time. In our business, tightly focusing on our MIGs has made it faster and easier to separate the important from the rest. 

But even then, we have RIGs and QIGs (Relatively Important Goals and Quite Important Goals). 

We have to choose to focus on the MIGs first. Otherwise, they won’t happen as quickly or as completely as they should. 

We call this 'deliberate goal focus.' Pick your MIGs. Plan your week around them. Protect them. Otherwise, the urgent will eat the important. 

That's the hard part. You need to live it every day. But that's how you stay ahead. Focus on what matters most, try not to get caught up in the noise. 

We have to deliberately choose what matters more, even when that choice has short-term costs. 

One of the tasks the brain finds hardest is prioritising. When you choose between two things, you have to imagine a future with each one, consider how much effort each one will take, and then compare. 

Effectively, you’re assessing the value and effort of two imagined futures. 

Our brains tend to default to the path of least resistance. If one option looks easier or clearer, it will choose it. That’s why if you don’t make the important work easy to start, your brain will ignore it. 

There’s real effort involved in stopping that train of thought and picking the MIG over the RIG. And effort feels like pain to the brain. 

But here’s the thing: the long-term pain of putting less important work ahead of your MIGs is far greater. 
Suffer a little every day by prioritizing well or suffer a lot later by missing big goals.