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The Productive Mindset

A productive mindset is essential to having a successful business.

A mindset is a set of attitudes, beliefs and expectations that you have about any given

situation. I describe mindset as equaling results plus systems plus delegation. The key

is to focus on results, systemize everything you can and delegate everything you

absolutely don’t have to do yourself.

Focus on results first. This is a simple change in your state of mind that can make you

more productive and happier at work. It’s a shift of your mindset from the work to getting

the result. Instead of it feeling like drudgery (if you see it as onerous and overwhelming,

it will be if you just focus on the work), it won’t if you take your focus off the work and

place it on the result. That is, keeping the result in mind, not the work, it shifts from a

mental place of working to a mental place of accomplishment and fulfillment and

satisfaction of a job well done.

If you ask any successful entrepreneur about the work they do, the majority of them will

immediately shift the conversation away from the work toward the dream, toward the

impact they want to have in the world, toward the result they’re trying to realize. It’s not

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that they don’t work, or don’t understand work, it’s that the work is simply the path to the

result they want. Their minds are focused on the result. Most of them will tell you about

the unbelievable hours they work and they’ll do it with a smile. Not because they love

work (they do want to get free of work at some point), but because they get joy from

making progress toward a result.

Don’t treat this idea of redefinition and refocus as superficial, or some mental trick that

you have to play on yourself. It’s real and it’s important. If you really can shift your

mindset, your personal productivity is going to leap ahead, and more importantly, you’ll

find more joy and greater satisfaction in your work.

Systemize everything. There are two kinds of tasks. There are one time tasks and

there are repetitive tasks. Repetitive tasks are those which occur often, with frequency.

Basically, they are the same, or similar, things that are done over and over. The vast

majority of business work consists of repetitive tasks. These sort of tasks can be

strategic planning, which is done

annually, to filing, which is done dozens of

times a day. An entirely new invoice

wouldn’t be created each time to bill a

customer. A standardized template, or

invoice form, would be used. This is a

kind of system. It’s the repetitive nature of

business work that makes systemization

both possible and beneficial. If you find

yourself doing the same thing, the same

task, repeatedly, or making the same

decision day after day, it’s time to create a system to deal with that task. If something

can be done more than once, the same way, with the same outcome, a system can be

created for it.

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For instance, say lots of purchases need to be approved every work. Rather than view

each purchase as a unique event, a set of decision rules can be created for routine

decisions that let other qualified people make the decisions following the rules, the

standards, the procedures that you have established. Instead of hundreds of tasks

yearly, you have one task and that’s the creation of the system. Then only a few

occasional purchasing decisions will be exceptions to the rule you’ve set out.

Systems should be created to deal with repetitive work and then when a particular task

comes to life, or when you schedule it, simply plug it into the system. When a task has

been systemized, it’s easier to delegate and it will be completed with the minimum of

supervision. So, one time, or infrequent tasks (unless they’re really important), don’t

require a system. They can simply be dealt with as they occur by doing them yourself,

or delegating them.

Delegate everything you do not have to do yourself. If you’re like most business

people, you’re a go-getter. Your basic mindset is simply to wade in and get the job

done. The more productive mindset is to

delegate all you can and only do yourself

what you can’t delegate. It’s a shift in

thinking. This alone can boost your

personal productivity immensely. Your first

instinct should be to create a system for

getting it done and delegate it to someone

else to do. The idea is for you to take on

only those tasks that you can’t delegate

and to systemize all the work that can be

systemized, which is almost all work.

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In a very small business, or in a start-up situation, you often don’t have the luxury of

delegating very much. But if delegation and systemization, rather than doing it, are your

first instincts, then you’ll find yourself focusing on building a business rather than merely

doing the work and that’s true entrepreneurship.

The important thing to remember is that delegation isn’t just assigning someone

accountability for doing something and then forgetting about it. That’s abdication and it

takes your focus off the result. Responsible delegation means selecting responsible

people who can do the task satisfactorily, training them (if necessary), making all the

necessary explanations, carefully defining the result that the person must accomplish,

assigning a completion date and, of course, supervising, not micromanaging or bossing,

as necessary.