Entrepreneurs often tell me they are overwhelmed, but with everything you have on your plate, your incredibly active brain is juggling all your To Do’s along with hundreds of great ideas. No wonder it’s difficult to maintain focus!

When you’re unfocused, at the end of the day, you’ve started a dozen projects you’ll never complete and you’ve done none of the things critical to making progress in your business. In today’s competitive environment, it’s more than frustrating to chase your tail; you need to be focused and productive.

Most entrepreneurs start their business as a solopreneur. You create the vision for the business, formulate the marketing plan, execute it, sell, deliver products and services, execute the marketing plan and, in your spare time, network! Oh, and let’s not forget the paper chase: preparing proposals, contracts and invoices as well as chasing payments and making payments! Yes, there’s more, but I’m tired just listing them!

Of course, you also have personal and home responsibilities. Staying healthy and well rested is essential. And keeping the people in your life, your spouse, your children, happy provides a support system (or at least prevents a divorce from taking time and focus away from your business!)

No wonder you’re overwhelmed! Is it possible to run a business and your life without letting anything slip? Yes. How?

You adopt strong entrepreneur productivity practices. Productivity is not only about work performance. True productivity lets you honor all the commitments you make to others, to yourself, and to all the things that support you: your health, work-life balance and financial health. You just need to master self-management.

Neglect your self-management and you’ll soon find yourself overwhelmed, possibly in divorce court and procrastinating on your invoicing or sales calls. But you won’t have to worry about that for long… once your business and marriage fail, you can console yourself that at least you’re not dead. Unless, of course, you are.

Overwhelmed? Frustrated by your inability to focus? Improve your productivity.

Numerous requests have prompted me to launch an “Entrepreneur Exclusive” version of The Maximum Productivity Makeover for Creative Geniuses. To learn more, complete the Request for Complimentary Session or call 514-807-5008.

Commitment is essential to progress. If you can’t commit… if you can’t keep your promises, it will be impossible to achieve your goals. We all think, of course I keep my promises; when I promise someone I’ll do something, then I always do it. Can you say the same thing about promises you make to yourself? All progress comes from change and change requires you to commit to moving out of your comfort zone.

I just finished the first draft and first revision of my new book (working title, The Maximum Productivity Makeover for Creative Geniuses). I set a goal to write a book in 2010, but I knew I had to start long before December or it wasn’t going to happen.

Of course, as an entrepreneur, things come up. Emergencies happen and life gets in the way. After one month and then another zipped by with no progress made on my book, I realized I needed to buckle down.

I intended to honor my commitment to myself, but when I spotted an opportunity to reinforce my commitment by adding some external accountability, I jumped at it. Accountability is an extremely powerful tool to help you focus and take action. I enrolled in a coaching program where a group of potential authors gets together offer instruction, tips and encouragement to each other with the objective being for each participant to write a book in a weekend!

I didn’t really expect to complete my book in a weekend, but I thought that with that kind of rocket launch start to writing my book, I could finish the first draft within a month. Did I need to pay an $800 enrollment fee for a program to get this done? Probably not! So why did I?

Commitment is a powerful energizer, especially if you’ve invested heart and pocketbook! The program included four group-coaching sessions by phone during the weekend, a follow-up session a month later and 24 pages of information you need to know to become a published author.

Even the most successful people don’t have money to throw away so my $800 payment guaranteed I’d make space in my agenda to work through the program. I canceled everything for the long weekend, prepared meals in advance and made sure I accumulated enough sleep and exercise ahead of time so I’d be prepared to take full advantage of this weekend as a springboard for my writing project. And it worked!

Using the momentum I created that weekend, I continued to make space in my agenda to complete the book. More than 250 pages and one month later, the first draft is finished! Yes, it was an intense month, but I stayed focused because I wanted the investment to pay off.

That’s the power of commitment. And just a small sample of what you can accomplish when you honor your most important commitments, the promises you make to yourself.

How can you solidify your commitment to yourself?

What do you need to do to carve out time to complete that long-delayed strategic project?

In the comments, I’d love to hear the strategies you use to keep your commitments to yourself.

If you’d like to start keep your commitment to yourself and double your productivity, join The Maximum Productivity Makeover for Entrepreneurs!. It starts in May.

A visionary thinker, you’re excited about the New Year because you’re already thinking of where you want your business to be at the end of this year.  I’d like to invite you to take a step back.

We focus so much on what’s next that we forget to enjoy the moment and celebrate our accomplishments.  As you checked each task off your To Do list last year, your first instinct was probably to look for the next thing to do.

You’re excited by your projects so you’re eager to see them come to fruition; however, there’s also a lot to be gained by looking back to celebrate and learn.

Celebrate!

I only realized how focused I always was on the future when my first coach pointed out that I rarely took time to celebrate my accomplishments.  At her invitation, I went through my previous year’s agenda and listed everything I had accomplished in my first year in business as a coach.  I filled two pages of significant milestones that had zipped by unnoticed and un-celebrated!  All this time I thought I wasn’t making progress; I felt I wasn’t very successful and that was very frustrating.

So I sent my coach this list and together we celebrated what I had accomplished that year that I’d almost missed!  By the way, if you’ve never done it before, do it.  You’ll be amazed how great it feels to celebrate your own accomplishments.

What Have You Learned From Your Accomplishments?

Looking back also helps you learn.  Look at your accomplishments.  What did you do to achieve them?  What kind of person did you become in the process?  What have you learned from the experience and how can you use this knowledge in the future?

If you began to network with other business people last year, you might have needed to get out of your comfort zone.  By doing that, you became someone who doesn’t let fear stop you, or you discovered that meeting people wasn’t as difficult as you thought is was.  Maybe you discovered you enjoy connecting with people.  You may even be so encouraged that you decide you’ll take bolder steps to connect with others.  See what I mean?

Turn Failures Into Learning Experiences

Now, doing this exercise may remind you of your failures as well.  The most amazing part of looking back is the shift that occurs when you notice what didn’t work.  I’m going to tell you something many gurus (and it doesn’t really matter what they’re gurus of!) will never tell you: it’s ok to look at your failures.  In fact, it’s essential if you want to learn (and you do want to learn, right?!)

But instead of dwelling on how you “screwed up”, I want you to embrace your so-called failures as the learning experiences they really are, use them as the opportunities to grow that they represent, and become wiser and better.  The next time you encounter a similar situation, you’ll be looking back at it as one of your accomplishments instead of one of your failures.  Just ask yourself:

1. What did I learn from this experience?  What went wrong (and even in the middle of the failure, did anything go right? How can we make sure we don’t lose what went right?)
2. If this or a similar situation happens again, what changes can I make to achieve a better outcome?
3. What systems, habits or structures do I need to put in place to be ready for the next time?  How will I recognize that the same thing is about to happen?  And how will I be sure to react to it happening in the new and improved way?

Can you imagine the meteoric improvement you’d spark if you looked at every accomplishment and every failure as a learning opportunity, and actively worked as pulling out every single lesson and acting on it?  That might just be worth taking some time to look back for a moment, don’t you think?

So, on your mark…  Get set…  Look back!

I watched Elvis Costello’s interview with U2’s Bono and The Edge the other night.  It was a thoroughly enjoyable show, particularly for a fan of both U2 and Elvis Costello.  At one point in the interview, Bono was speaking about the U2 members’ decision to form a band and he mentioned that they had decided to form U2 before they could even play any instruments.  That month, Bono also met his now-wife for the first time.  As he said, “That was a big month!”  That was thirty years ago, and both U2 and Bono’s marriage have lasted.

Bono went on to explain that the band just learned as they went along, acting on complete faith, listening to the music they liked and taking their influences from industry greats to create their own unique sound. They knew talent and ability had to be there as well, but as Bono said, “We just never considered that we might not have any talent or ability.”

He went on to relate some embarrassing moments; once they began to take off, they had the opportunity to meet Keith Richards and Mick Jagger.  Keith played along on one of U2’s songs, and then invited U2 to play a Stones song with them.  U2 had to decline the invitation, explaining that they couldn’t play along because they hadn’t learned to play any music but their own yet!  Of course, today, we consider then all extraordinary musicians, but what they realized is that the power of a dream comes from the ability to see yourself as an extraordinary musician before there’s any evidence to back you up.

Every entrepreneur faces that same moment.  The moment when you see something, a possibility, that no one else sees.  What decides your future is what you do at that moment.  Do you wait until you know how to build a business, or until you conduct enough market research that you’re sure it’ll work?  Or do you make a decision?

No one can decide for you.  And you can’t wait until you’re sure it will work before you decide.  The only way it works, the only way it has ever worked, is that you decide, and then you MAKE IT WORK.

A decision, belief in yourself, and the power of your dream, makes all the difference.

If you want to increase your productivity, spend more time thinking than doing.  And when you’re thinking, think about what not to do!

We must focus to succeed, as an entrepreneur, or in any endeavor, and the easiest way to focus is to eliminate all distractions.  There will always be more to do than the time available, so that’s what draws our attention.  We ask, “Ok, what do I do?  What do I do first?  And what do I do after that?  Then what?”

Staring at a crowded agenda and ever-growing To Do list (book?!), trying to spot the commitments and tasks that are most likely to help grow your business right now is challenging at best.  You “can’t see the forest for the trees,” and you end up constantly busy but not making significant progress toward your goals.

Productivity isn’t just a question of efficiency.  It’s a question of effectiveness.  Is what you’re doing making a difference?  The Pareto Principle states that 80% of your results come from 20% of your effort.  It’s great to be efficient, getting things done quickly and with the minimum expended effort, but that’s only useful if you’re doing things than advance you toward your goals.

When you have overwhelming demands on your time, it’s very difficult to target the 20% of activities that will result in 80% of your progress.  Strategic, deep thinking demands both time and energy.  For entrepreneurs, your time and your energy are very limited resources.  Depleting your resources in the trenches is not effective.

To improve your focus, clear some trees.  When you sit down to plan your week and decide which of your many To Do list tasks you will assign to a precious spot in your agenda, make a habit of eliminating at least one item from your To Do list each time.  That is, take it off your To Do list and DON’T schedule it in your agenda.

We’ll look at options for those tasks in future articles.  For now, however, you can save a lot of time by eliminating tasks that don’t contribute to your goals (your goals have changed or you shouldn’t have accepted the tasks in the first place).  If you’re feeling ambitious, delegate tasks that someone else can do almost as well as you can and outsource tasks you’ve been “too cheap” to pay someone to do.

What tasks did you find hiding on your To Do list, adding to your stress without contributing to your bottom line?  What was the most surprising task you found?  What was the most creative solution you found for eliminating a task?

If It Was Easier to Succeed Than It Was Fail…

Getting something done is a three-step process. You can boost your productivity by taking the right three steps.

Let’s say you need to go to the post office. First step, “I can’t forget to go to the post office this afternoon.” Second step, get distracted because you got involved in something more important than going to the post office (I know it’s hard to imagine, but…). The third step? Beat yourself up! “I can’t believe I forgot to go to the post office… again!”

Everyone forgets.  You’re an entrepreneur so you have a lot of your plate, many demands on your time and numerous distractions vying for your attention.  You will forget things.  Forgetting an errand isn’t a sign of Alzheimer’s or that you’re getting old.

A slight adjustment in your three-step process can really pump up your performance.  Instead of worrying that you “should” be able to remember to do things, just adopt a systematic approach to your errands.  The benefits of systemizing your business are legend (as outlined in The E-Myth by Michael E. Gerber, required reading for every entrepreneur), but we often neglect to apply this same idea to our daily lives.

First step, “I can’t forget to go to the post office this afternoon.”  Second step?  Set yourself up for success; imagine you have scheduled a meeting agenda from 2 to 3 pm.  After the meeting, you know you’ll be tied up following up with other attendees and then you’ll at your office, you’ll be bombarded with the phone messages, emails and other emergencies.  To have any chance to get to the post office, you have to go before the meeting.  Note the 10 minute post office trip in your agenda and set a reminder in your cell phone/personal digital assistant 15 minutes before the meeting.

When your alarm goes off at 1:45 pm, you can easily excuse yourself from anything you’re doing because “you have a meeting to go to.”  There’s no point starting anything else since you only have 15 minutes free before the meeting; it’s the perfect time to go to the post office (and you’ll get to check it off your To Do list!)

Third step, pat yourself on the back!  Adjust the timing to your own situation, but you can see how, by thinking systematically, you can find ways in almost any situation to make it easier to succeed than to fail.

You can apply this approach in numerous situations.  Want to exercise more?  You could rely on willpower, but what if you signed up for a class… with a friend?  Now it’s hard to fail because you’d be letting your friend down.  It’s easier just to go (and succeed!)

So that’s the key.  When you can make it easier to succeed than to fail, make it easier to do what you want to do than to avoid it, your productivity will soar and you’ll move toward your goals, not by inches but by leaps and bounds.

What strategies do you use to make it easier to succeed than to fail?

By Linda Walker

Can you be an entrepreneur?  Do you have what it takes?  Are the characteristics of an entrepreneur innate like an artist’s talent?  Does success comes from brilliant “flashes of genius” that lead to new products and markets?

Innovation is essential to successful entrepreneurship, but flashes of genius aren’t enough. Leonardo Da Vinci was definitely a genius, and “invented” the submarine, the helicopter and many other machines we use today.

But Da Vinci wasn’t an entrepreneur.  None of his “flashes of genius” could become successful business in the 1500’s.  The technology just didn’t exist.  As an innovator, he was extraordinary.  As an entrepreneur, he was a bust.

Successful entrepreneurship is a discipline, not a talent.  You can develop your entrepreneur skills.  You don’t need to have been born with them. Peter Drucker, the first “management guru,” called this the “cult of the entrepreneur.”

Peter Drucker says, “What is needed is willingness to learn, willingness to work hard and persistently, willingness to exercise self-discipline, willingness to adapt and to apply the right policies and practices.”

Some entrepreneur personality traits make it easier for you to start your own business, and some characteristics of an entrepreneur may make you more likely to become an entrepreneur (though they rarely determine success), such as having parents who were self-employed.

I work with “rebel” entrepreneurs who, though they are intelligent, creative and energetic, struggle to focus and get organized.  Your “rebel” brains activate with passion, and because you think differently, you must use different approaches to manage your time and organize your business.  (Learn more about these differences in the free report,

“Top Ten Entrepreneur Productivity Myths… Busted“)

I believe Rebel entrepreneurs like you offer our best hope for the future and you will solve many of the world’s problems, saving the environment, solving the energy crisis, overcoming poverty and tackling many other challenges… as long as you’re empowered to bring your amazing ideas to fruition.

But the real entrepreneur test comes daily as you work to build your own business.  The real secret to success comes from your own decision and your own desire.  Will you need help?  Of course.  Will it be easy?  Of course not.  But that’s never stopped you before, has it?

I love working with entrepreneurs. Their passionate, us-against-world attitude is exciting, but they were always the toughest clients to keep. Brilliance, creativity and a whirlwind of activity just aren’t enough to overcome the procrastination, poor focus and lack of follow through that often cost them their business.

I wanted to help, but I was struggling with the same situation at home! I’d naively hoped Duane’s marriage proposal a month after our first (blind!) date signaled the end of his reckless trouble making and thrill seeking. But, impulsive as ever, he roamed from job to job – sales, clerk, programmer, teacher, project manager…

After crossing the country (twice) following his latest “opportunity of a lifetime,” I put my foot down. He had to stick with his job with a dot com. He loved the excitement but he just couldn’t manage his time or get organized.

Spiraling out of control, Duane delivered a project late (at double what he’d bid!) Ready to fire him (as miserable as he was, Duane would have been relieved!), instead Duane’s boss demoted him, but insisted things improve.

Devastated, Duane thought, “Time for a change!”, but I refused to pack up and leave (again!). I wasn’t even sure our marriage would last… in the few hours he wasn’t at work, Duane was just as unfocused and disorganized at home. I felt like the only adult in our family. We needed help, and as stressful and uncertain as those days were, they provided the incentive for us to find the silver lining to the cloud we’d been living under.

I credit divine intervention for the experimental training program at a local university. Seeking intelligent, creative people full of energy, but who struggled to maintain focus and get organized, they described Duane (and my favorite entrepreneur clients) perfectly!

We learned that some people are better suited to a primal existence. Compare a “farmer” (or accountant, manager or clerk) to a nomadic “rebel” (rock star, artist or entrepreneur). Often labeled with ADHD (Attention Deficit Hyperactive Disorder) as children, as was my youngest daughter, as adults these “Rebels” struggle because they think differently.

Their brain activates with passion, and the time management strategies that work for others just don’t work for them. But once Duane learned to work with his brain instead of against it, life took an exciting 180-degree turn almost overnight! Within weeks, he was back to his old salary AND then surpassed it! Within two years, Duane was vice-president at more than triple his salary. Astonishingly, career rocketing to success, Duane simultaneously cut his hours!

Duane was a new man. I was proud of him, and as was recently described in an article in The Globe and Mail, Duane’s transformation inspired me. I decided I had to share this “secret” with the Rebel entrepreneurs I’d been unable to help earlier in my career.

Numerous time management experts claim to know the secrets of time management, and while their strategies do help many people, entrepreneurs come to me after they’ve exhausted the experts’ advice with little or no improvement. The strategies I teach have proven so successful for “Rebel” entrepreneurs they’re featured in Success magazine.

The challenge I face with my “Rebel” clients is convincing them they CAN DO THIS. Often having struggled through school, failed at job after job, even failing in business before they find their passion, most are convinced they’re the problem, not the solution. But it’s stunningly easy, and once you start working with your brain instead of against it, the transformation is immediate and amazing. It’s hard to believe, but the more screwed up you are, the faster and better these techniques work.

Are you ready to find your silver lining? To learn more, please request my free report, “Top Ten Entrepreneur Productivity Myths… Busted!“

Entrepreneurs are visionary, creative thinkers who hate being “boxed in.” Systems are certain to reduce your workload, and yet every entrepreneur resists them vehemently, believing they are synonymous with bureaucracy, lack of creativity and the loss of their dearly held freedom.  Would it surprise you to learn they’re liberating?  Here’s how:

1. Systems streamline boring or complicated processes and minimize mistakes, freeing you to do more creative and interesting activities.
   
2. Once your system is foolproof, you can delegate work while maintaining control.
   
3. Systems free you to tackle the next exciting opportunity, making it possible to run your business part-time or increasing its value should you decide to sell.

Systems release you from the daily grind and unleash your brilliant and creative mind to imagine the new heights to which you can bring your business.  Imagine!  In the end, systems don’t box you in, they set you free.

Successful entrepreneurs spot an opportunity in the market, a niche, and create a specialized company to fill that particular hole.  Specialization is a proven recipe for success and a valuable lesson.

Your business is a system to fill your targeted niche, and all parts of your business contribute to its success.  With many roles to fill, entrepreneurs often act as “chief cook and bottle-washer.”  Though you hate paperwork, administration is unavoidable.  Proposals, invoices, accounting and income tax returns are all essential to your success.

Starting out, you may be the entire team, but if you don’t grow, adapt and specialize, you’ll tear your hair out and ultimately your business will fail. What I love the most about entrepreneurs is your creative energy, brilliant ideas and passion.  Your specialty is providing the vision and leadership for your company, and you must apply the lesson of specialization within your business as well as you do in the marketplace.

The sooner you assign company roles to specialists, the faster you’ll grow. Before you hire employees, outsource some tasks to other entrepreneurs.  You can start building your team with a virtual assistant, a bookkeeper and a computer technician you can rely on.

If money is tight, use systems to automate and streamline tasks so you free your time to concentrate on your specialty to promote your business and drive more profits.  However, you’re not really saving money by putting off creating your team.  Delegating to specialists lets you apply your time to building your business, and because they’re specialists, they’ll do the job much more efficiently than you can.

The great news is that it makes good business sense to let specialists to do their thing while you do yours.  Although initially you may find it challenging to delegate without losing control, soon you’ll be able to focus worry-free on building your business instead finding ways to avoid paperwork.