January 18, 2024 • 15 mins
In this episode, Belinda Ellsworth discusses the eighth mistake people make in their work, which is not focusing on the main thing and getting caught up in urgency. She emphasizes the importance of setting goals and prioritizing tasks to ensure progress towards the main goal. Belinda shares her personal experience of sacrificing important tasks for urgent requests, only to realize that they were not actually urgent. She advises listeners to determine what truly requires immediate attention and not let urgency distract from important tasks. Belinda also highlights the need to set realistic deadlines and avoid procrastination to prevent creating unnecessary crises.
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Episode Transcript
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(00:00):
Welcome to Work from your Happy Place, the podcast that equips you with the
knowledge and inspiration to live your dreamsand find your own happy plays. You
will be encouraged by and learn fromentrepreneurs and artists who are already working from
their happy plays, all while pursuingtheir passion with a purpose. Be sure
(00:20):
to sign up for our free weeklynewsletter for our recap of the week's guests
and a preview of what's in store. We also have two special gifts for
you, a video, the fivecore principles to living a half yer life
and a printable download title Top tensales Strategies. Go to Work from your
Happy Place dot com, forward slashfree. Fill out the attached form to
(00:43):
receive your gifts and be added toour newsletter. And now here's your host,
Belinda Ellsworth. Hello everyone, andwelcome back. We are continuing in
our series on the top ten mistakesthat people make, and this is number
eight and number eight is not focusingon the main thing, getting caught up
(01:08):
in urgency rather than what's important.This can be a big mistake that people
make. They're constantly putting out fires. If you heard that saying before you
get up in your day. You'vegot a really strong plan of what you
need to accomplish, and then whathappens. An emergency happens and you get
(01:34):
sidetracked, and then all of yourenergy and time goes into that and you
never complete those important tests or thethings that needed to happen in order to
move you along in business, maybeto need to plan for new business.
Maybe you're needing to complete a task, and then you find yourself what rushing
(01:56):
and you don't give it the energyand time that it deserves, and then
you don't have is a good qualityof product or service or course or whatever
it is that you are doing.So what we want to remember in this
is first and foremost. We talkeda little bit about this and our very
first tip, which was not havinggoals. Right. You always want to
(02:20):
have a goal, and you alwayswant to kind of have your top ten
things. I like ten, nomore than ten, but you could have
your top three things that you wantto focus on for the day. You
could say what is my number onefocus today? And that is an important
piece to do. I typically wakeup in a day and I say,
(02:40):
okay, this first thing I doin the morning is what are the things
that I need to get done today, know matter what, and then they
go on my schedule. I alsoalways remember what is the main thing.
So in your goal we talked aboutthis, but the main thing is the
(03:02):
main thing is the main thing.And two oftentimes when we get caught up
in putting out fires or in urgency, it takes us away from the main
thing that we are trying to achieveor accomplish, and that is that whatever
it is, it's that goal,right. And so if you're not even
(03:23):
doing at least one thing in aday that moves you closer to that,
then you're probably putting out more firesthan you need to. Maybe you need
to rethink the things that are happeningand say, I got to figure out
a ways that I don't have somany fires to put out every single day.
(03:43):
Here's the other thing that I know. As long as you treat everything
as an urgency and needs your immediateattention, you're never going to probably really
achieve your goals in the manner thatyou want, and you're going to end
up feeling frustrated good amount of thetime. That's the other thing. It
drained you of energy. So whatI've learned to say is okay, I
(04:09):
need to take care of this,but it's not going to supersede the other
things. The top five things onmy list today that I had to get
done. Let me complete these,let me then work on this, or
maybe you can get some wheels inmotion. If you have a staff or
other people that work with you,you can say, hey, I want
(04:30):
you to look into this, butI'm going to continue working on this.
One of the ways that I reallylearned this was as a speaker. There
were many times so I learned tostart with my staff and say, Okay,
this is the main thing for today. These are the things that we
have to get done, no matterwhat these other five things. I always
(04:54):
had ten the top five we're haveto get done. The other five were
this is what I would like toget off of our plate. If it
had or one or two of thosethings had to be carried over to the
next day, then it was okay. But my top five that had to
happen no matter what got done.Well, inevitably we would have somebody call
(05:15):
our office or email and say weare looking to hire you as a speaker,
and we need a proposal, andwe would like to know this and
this and we would like it today, and it might be quarter to five,
or it might be four thirty,and we still Sometimes it would even
be three thirty and we're still workingon the main things that had to get
(05:38):
done for that day. And inearly in my business, we would say,
Okay, stop everything, stop everythingwe're doing, and let's get this
proposal, because I felt in thosedays that getting a proposal to someone in
order to speak at their event,which might not be for six months away
(06:00):
or a year away even was like, oh, this takes precedence, right
like this, this is everything.So I would stop everything else we were
doing of things that had to getdone or needed to get done, and
we would start working on this proposal, which, if to do a good
proposal takes some research. You know, I want to just send over these
(06:20):
are my fees. You want tomake that proposal very specific to the company,
and maybe even find out like alittle bit of research and their pain
point, knowing then that here's whatwe are going to be able to do
for you. Because a proposal isn'tjust about fees, It's about why we
are the ones for the job.Here's why we're the ones for the job.
(06:43):
Here's why you want to buy thisproduct. If somebody is looking to
buy maybe one of your products inbulk, you want to give people the
reasons why they want to do that. So we would stop everything work on
this, and then I would reachout to the company, like the very
next day and say, I wantedto make sure that you're in receipt of
our proposal. You received everything,did you have any questions? Because if
(07:08):
they got it and didn't understand something, then then they would just pass on
it and we would never even knowwhy. We wouldn't be able to adjust
it. So I would say Iwanted to make sure that you received everything,
and they're like, oh, we'vebeen so busy, we haven't even
had a chance to open it.And after that happened to me a number
(07:29):
of times. It's like I sacrificedwhat I needed to get done in a
day. Oftentimes I would ask mystaff to stay later, especially the gal
that was helping me write up theproposal or do the research on what we
needed. Sometimes I had the wholeteam stay so that we could be doing
our research, typing up the proposal, looking at the times and dates,
(07:53):
and making sure that it looked goodand it was right, and so then
everybody would end up staying over halfhour. That costs me more money,
it costs them time with their familybecause they're probably excited or needing to get
somewhere. And then all for someonenot even really being an urgency on their
part. They're just telling me it'san urgency when in fact it really was
(08:15):
not. And so when people starteddoing that to us on the same day,
I would say, we can getyou a proposal by Tuesday. We
can get you a proposal by Thursdayat three pm. Is that satisfactory?
And guess what Nine times out often they said, oh, absolutely.
(08:37):
So See, oftentimes people create anurgency that is not an urgency and you
take your eye off the ball,off the focus of what the main thing
is, and then consequently it's verydifficult to get back to that and you're
not either getting other projects done oryou're not moving your project forward in a
(09:01):
timely fashion because you're constantly putting outfires. So this is learning what really
is urgent and what is not.Not letting things that come up as urgency
take your eye off of the ballof what you need to get done,
(09:22):
and making sure again that you arevaluing your time and projects and that you're
not putting them off simply because youdon't want to do them or they make
you uncomfortable. A lot of timeswe make excuses for that. That's another
whole section on mindset and what's holdingyou back from being the success you want
(09:48):
to be. But I can tellyou sometimes it's saying, well, I
had to do this emergency, Ihad to follow through with this, I
didn't have time to get this done. Today we create some of those situations
for ourselves simply because we don't wantto follow through with the thing that we
really need to get done. Soto reiterate number eight is taking your eye
(10:15):
off the ball of what's important byalways focusing on the urgency for the day.
And for me, I have learnedbecause I've got lots of projects going
on here and maybe you do too, and so you have to compartmentalize them
and you have to understand what arethe key things that need to happen on
(10:39):
this. So if I'm doing multipleprojects, then I have to say,
Okay, on this project project A, this is the one thing that has
to get done today. On projectB, this is the one thing that
has to happen with this to movethis forward. And sometimes that's the way
that I organize my day as well, because then I know that all of
(11:01):
my projects are getting moved forward,even if it's small incrementally. And then
of course you have to have yourwhat deadline dates on those projects, backing
it up, giving yourself the propertime that it needs. Don't ever rush
yourself. You know, this isthe other mistake that people make. And
(11:22):
I have worked with enough different vendorsand enough situations that they think, well,
this will only take me an hourto get this knocked out, and
then they procrastinate and they wait,and they let other things take precedence on
(11:43):
that main thing that I need toget to this client, and then maybe
an emergency really does happen, ormaybe your internet is down and you should
have gotten this done three days ago, and then you didn't get it done,
and now the client is very upsetbecause the project is not completed on
the deadline date that you had.So whatever you do, back out your
(12:07):
deadline dates and give yourself benchmarks alongthe way so that you are not creating
a crisis for yourself. Oftentimes,these emergencies or these fires that end up
happening a lot of times, notalways, but a lot of times we
(12:28):
actually play a role in that,and we can create those by not doing
the things that we need to do. So, if you have a project
or something that needs to be done, don't be arrogant enough that you think
I can knock this out, andI can knack this out in a day.
And maybe the client's given you threemonths to do this or two weeks,
(12:54):
and then you're like waiting and waitingand waiting, and you're like,
so only going to take me anhour. It always takes longer than you
think it does. And if youdid just the one thing to move that
forward every day for two weeks,you'd have it done. You'd be able
to check yourself, you'd be ableto make sure that you could show it
(13:15):
to the client. They're not ina rush. You're getting it to them
ahead of time, and then theycan say, oh, this looks great,
except do you think you could dothis now? There's time. There's
time to make it right. Soagain, these are all things about you
focusing on that urgency or you notutilizing your time in an effective manner so
(13:41):
that you're not creating those fires inurgencies for yourself or for your customers,
your vendors, your clients, whoeverthat might be. So thanks so much
guys for tuning in for our Tuesdaytip. Make sure that you tune in
for our other great interviews that wedo with entrepreneurs. We have also interviews
(14:03):
that we do with artists. Ifyou know of an artist, or you
know of an entrepreneur or a businessowner that has a product that they are
just knocking out of the park,please recommend them to us. Do a
referral, reach out to them,say hey, I think you'd be great
on this show, and all theyhave to do is go to booking at
(14:24):
workfromyrhappy place dot com and then wecan start the process of letting them apply
for the show. So please putyour thinking caps on. You know,
as a community here, we canall be working together to make sure that
you get the greatest, greatest showpossible and that we can continue to work
(14:45):
efficiently as well. So thank youso much. A rate review is always
appreciated. Check out our website.So many great things going on. Our
brand new planner is on sale.It is amazing and it is a must
have for your business, so checkit out. Thanks so much everyone,
(15:05):
and we'll see you next time onwork from your happy place.
Welcome to Work from your Happy Place, the podcast that equips you with the
knowledge and inspiration to live your dreamsand find your own happy plays. You
will be encouraged by and learn fromentrepreneurs and artists who are already working from
their happy plays, all while pursuingtheir passion with a purpose. Be sure
(00:20):
to sign up for our free weeklynewsletter for our recap of the week's guests
and a preview of what's in store. We also have two special gifts for
you, a video, the fivecore principles to living a half yer life
and a printable download title Top tensales Strategies. Go to Work from your
Happy Place dot com, forward slashfree. Fill out the attached form to
(00:43):
receive your gifts and be added toour newsletter. And now here's your host,
Belinda Ellsworth. Hello everyone, andwelcome back. We are continuing in
our series on the top ten mistakesthat people make, and this is number
eight and number eight is not focusingon the main thing, getting caught up
(01:08):
in urgency rather than what's important.This can be a big mistake that people
make. They're constantly putting out fires. If you heard that saying before you
get up in your day. You'vegot a really strong plan of what you
need to accomplish, and then whathappens. An emergency happens and you get
(01:34):
sidetracked, and then all of yourenergy and time goes into that and you
never complete those important tests or thethings that needed to happen in order to
move you along in business, maybeto need to plan for new business.
Maybe you're needing to complete a task, and then you find yourself what rushing
(01:56):
and you don't give it the energyand time that it deserves, and then
you don't have is a good qualityof product or service or course or whatever
it is that you are doing.So what we want to remember in this
is first and foremost. We talkeda little bit about this and our very
first tip, which was not havinggoals. Right. You always want to
(02:20):
have a goal, and you alwayswant to kind of have your top ten
things. I like ten, nomore than ten, but you could have
your top three things that you wantto focus on for the day. You
could say what is my number onefocus today? And that is an important
piece to do. I typically wakeup in a day and I say,
(02:40):
okay, this first thing I doin the morning is what are the things
that I need to get done today, know matter what, and then they
go on my schedule. I alsoalways remember what is the main thing.
So in your goal we talked aboutthis, but the main thing is the
(03:02):
main thing is the main thing.And two oftentimes when we get caught up
in putting out fires or in urgency, it takes us away from the main
thing that we are trying to achieveor accomplish, and that is that whatever
it is, it's that goal,right. And so if you're not even
(03:23):
doing at least one thing in aday that moves you closer to that,
then you're probably putting out more firesthan you need to. Maybe you need
to rethink the things that are happeningand say, I got to figure out
a ways that I don't have somany fires to put out every single day.
(03:43):
Here's the other thing that I know. As long as you treat everything
as an urgency and needs your immediateattention, you're never going to probably really
achieve your goals in the manner thatyou want, and you're going to end
up feeling frustrated good amount of thetime. That's the other thing. It
drained you of energy. So whatI've learned to say is okay, I
(04:09):
need to take care of this,but it's not going to supersede the other
things. The top five things onmy list today that I had to get
done. Let me complete these,let me then work on this, or
maybe you can get some wheels inmotion. If you have a staff or
other people that work with you,you can say, hey, I want
(04:30):
you to look into this, butI'm going to continue working on this.
One of the ways that I reallylearned this was as a speaker. There
were many times so I learned tostart with my staff and say, Okay,
this is the main thing for today. These are the things that we
have to get done, no matterwhat these other five things. I always
(04:54):
had ten the top five we're haveto get done. The other five were
this is what I would like toget off of our plate. If it
had or one or two of thosethings had to be carried over to the
next day, then it was okay. But my top five that had to
happen no matter what got done.Well, inevitably we would have somebody call
(05:15):
our office or email and say weare looking to hire you as a speaker,
and we need a proposal, andwe would like to know this and
this and we would like it today, and it might be quarter to five,
or it might be four thirty,and we still Sometimes it would even
be three thirty and we're still workingon the main things that had to get
(05:38):
done for that day. And inearly in my business, we would say,
Okay, stop everything, stop everythingwe're doing, and let's get this
proposal, because I felt in thosedays that getting a proposal to someone in
order to speak at their event,which might not be for six months away
(06:00):
or a year away even was like, oh, this takes precedence, right
like this, this is everything.So I would stop everything else we were
doing of things that had to getdone or needed to get done, and
we would start working on this proposal, which, if to do a good
proposal takes some research. You know, I want to just send over these
(06:20):
are my fees. You want tomake that proposal very specific to the company,
and maybe even find out like alittle bit of research and their pain
point, knowing then that here's whatwe are going to be able to do
for you. Because a proposal isn'tjust about fees, It's about why we
are the ones for the job.Here's why we're the ones for the job.
(06:43):
Here's why you want to buy thisproduct. If somebody is looking to
buy maybe one of your products inbulk, you want to give people the
reasons why they want to do that. So we would stop everything work on
this, and then I would reachout to the company, like the very
next day and say, I wantedto make sure that you're in receipt of
our proposal. You received everything,did you have any questions? Because if
(07:08):
they got it and didn't understand something, then then they would just pass on
it and we would never even knowwhy. We wouldn't be able to adjust
it. So I would say Iwanted to make sure that you received everything,
and they're like, oh, we'vebeen so busy, we haven't even
had a chance to open it.And after that happened to me a number
(07:29):
of times. It's like I sacrificedwhat I needed to get done in a
day. Oftentimes I would ask mystaff to stay later, especially the gal
that was helping me write up theproposal or do the research on what we
needed. Sometimes I had the wholeteam stay so that we could be doing
our research, typing up the proposal, looking at the times and dates,
(07:53):
and making sure that it looked goodand it was right, and so then
everybody would end up staying over halfhour. That costs me more money,
it costs them time with their familybecause they're probably excited or needing to get
somewhere. And then all for someonenot even really being an urgency on their
part. They're just telling me it'san urgency when in fact it really was
(08:15):
not. And so when people starteddoing that to us on the same day,
I would say, we can getyou a proposal by Tuesday. We
can get you a proposal by Thursdayat three pm. Is that satisfactory?
And guess what Nine times out often they said, oh, absolutely.
(08:37):
So See, oftentimes people create anurgency that is not an urgency and you
take your eye off the ball,off the focus of what the main thing
is, and then consequently it's verydifficult to get back to that and you're
not either getting other projects done oryou're not moving your project forward in a
(09:01):
timely fashion because you're constantly putting outfires. So this is learning what really
is urgent and what is not.Not letting things that come up as urgency
take your eye off of the ballof what you need to get done,
(09:22):
and making sure again that you arevaluing your time and projects and that you're
not putting them off simply because youdon't want to do them or they make
you uncomfortable. A lot of timeswe make excuses for that. That's another
whole section on mindset and what's holdingyou back from being the success you want
(09:48):
to be. But I can tellyou sometimes it's saying, well, I
had to do this emergency, Ihad to follow through with this, I
didn't have time to get this done. Today we create some of those situations
for ourselves simply because we don't wantto follow through with the thing that we
really need to get done. Soto reiterate number eight is taking your eye
(10:15):
off the ball of what's important byalways focusing on the urgency for the day.
And for me, I have learnedbecause I've got lots of projects going
on here and maybe you do too, and so you have to compartmentalize them
and you have to understand what arethe key things that need to happen on
(10:39):
this. So if I'm doing multipleprojects, then I have to say,
Okay, on this project project A, this is the one thing that has
to get done today. On projectB, this is the one thing that
has to happen with this to movethis forward. And sometimes that's the way
that I organize my day as well, because then I know that all of
(11:01):
my projects are getting moved forward,even if it's small incrementally. And then
of course you have to have yourwhat deadline dates on those projects, backing
it up, giving yourself the propertime that it needs. Don't ever rush
yourself. You know, this isthe other mistake that people make. And
(11:22):
I have worked with enough different vendorsand enough situations that they think, well,
this will only take me an hourto get this knocked out, and
then they procrastinate and they wait,and they let other things take precedence on
(11:43):
that main thing that I need toget to this client, and then maybe
an emergency really does happen, ormaybe your internet is down and you should
have gotten this done three days ago, and then you didn't get it done,
and now the client is very upsetbecause the project is not completed on
the deadline date that you had.So whatever you do, back out your
(12:07):
deadline dates and give yourself benchmarks alongthe way so that you are not creating
a crisis for yourself. Oftentimes,these emergencies or these fires that end up
happening a lot of times, notalways, but a lot of times we
(12:28):
actually play a role in that,and we can create those by not doing
the things that we need to do. So, if you have a project
or something that needs to be done, don't be arrogant enough that you think
I can knock this out, andI can knack this out in a day.
And maybe the client's given you threemonths to do this or two weeks,
(12:54):
and then you're like waiting and waitingand waiting, and you're like,
so only going to take me anhour. It always takes longer than you
think it does. And if youdid just the one thing to move that
forward every day for two weeks,you'd have it done. You'd be able
to check yourself, you'd be ableto make sure that you could show it
(13:15):
to the client. They're not ina rush. You're getting it to them
ahead of time, and then theycan say, oh, this looks great,
except do you think you could dothis now? There's time. There's
time to make it right. Soagain, these are all things about you
focusing on that urgency or you notutilizing your time in an effective manner so
(13:41):
that you're not creating those fires inurgencies for yourself or for your customers,
your vendors, your clients, whoeverthat might be. So thanks so much
guys for tuning in for our Tuesdaytip. Make sure that you tune in
for our other great interviews that wedo with entrepreneurs. We have also interviews
(14:03):
that we do with artists. Ifyou know of an artist, or you
know of an entrepreneur or a businessowner that has a product that they are
just knocking out of the park,please recommend them to us. Do a
referral, reach out to them,say hey, I think you'd be great
on this show, and all theyhave to do is go to booking at
(14:24):
workfromyrhappy place dot com and then wecan start the process of letting them apply
for the show. So please putyour thinking caps on. You know,
as a community here, we canall be working together to make sure that
you get the greatest, greatest showpossible and that we can continue to work
(14:45):
efficiently as well. So thank youso much. A rate review is always
appreciated. Check out our website.So many great things going on. Our
brand new planner is on sale.It is amazing and it is a must
have for your business, so checkit out. Thanks so much everyone,
(15:05):
and we'll see you next time onwork from your happy place.
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