The Four Horsemen of the Productivity Apocalypse
If you’re going to succeed as a solo pro, you’re gonna need to get shit done. As the primary (or only) human resource in your business, if you’re wasting your time, you’re not going to succeed. Problem is, you’re on your own, and you likely have blind spots.
You don’t know what you don’t know!
Years ago in a conversation with my friend Christian Conrad, he talked about the four ways that people in organisations reliably waste their time. Doesn’t matter what industry they work in, or how large the business, he said he always sees people waste huge amounts of time because of:
✉️ Emails
👨👩👦👦 Meetings
📝 Reporting
🗣️ Interruptions
We laughed and called them The Four Horsemen of the Productivity Apocalypse 🐴🐴🐴🐴
(If you’re reading this and you still work in an org, you’re probably nodding right now!)
I’ve been thinking about the equivalent problems that exist for those of us outside of organisations.
For ten years, I’ve been helping solo pro’s build their businesses and I’ve observed all the different ways we reliably waste our time. Self sabotage is a uniquely frustrating aspect of the human condition, and I suspect you might exhibit a little of it yourself through one or more of these; the big productivity killers for solo pro’s:
Many solo pros waste inordinate amounts of time noodling around with the latest gadgets, widgets, apps, and platforms, that promise the world and often deliver little to nothing. If that’s you, you’re a technocrastinator.
💻 Technocrastination
Many solo pros waste inordinate amounts of time noodling around with the latest gadgets, widgets, apps, and platforms, that promise the world and often deliver little to nothing. If that’s you, you’re a technocrastinator.
💸 Salesphobia
Lots of solo pros will do anything, and I mean ANYTHING, other than sell their wares. Whether it’s yet another revision of your LinkedIn ‘about me’ page or rearranging the stationery drawer under the desk for the fourth time in three weeks, we have an amazing ability to do everything other than the one thing that will generate real momentum in your business. If that’s you, you’ve got salesphobia.
✨ Perfectionism
Closely related to salesphobia and often going hand in hand, we have the world’s most popular method of self-sabotage: perfectionism. After all, why would you write the second chapter of your book when you can edit the introduction for the 14th time? And the fact that the attendees of your next training program are all beginners in the field of your expertise and have absolutely no chance of noticing the changes shouldn’t stop you from spending 30 hours refining the workbook contents, should it?
🥸 Imposter Syndrome
Finally—and despite the slightly sarcastic tone I’ve been taking in this post I do hope you understand I have enormous empathy for this—we have the great grandaddy of all methods of self-sabotage: imposter syndrome. It’s incredible, but somehow despite having a post-graduate degree in the topic, decades of real-world experience, success stories out the wazoo and reams of positive feedback, we can somehow talk ourselves into thinking we’re under-qualified and have no right to be pontificating on the subject.
So… did we hit a nerve here? Are you guily of technocrastination, salesphobia, perfectionism or imposter syndrome?
PS - Peeps! Mish and I have been hibernating with our new baby and I've been missing you! So I'm very excited to announce the first free webcast in a new series designed specifically for individuals running a business as a solo pro.
In general, people have a terrible intuition for probabilities (which is one reason why gambling companies do so well), and in this session we're going to look at how our misguided intuitions lead us to make poor (or at the very least, sub-optimal) strategic decisions for our businesses.
All going well, you'll come away with a few fresh new ideas for your business, and a concrete plan for putting at least one of them into practice.
It's happening at 9:30am AEST, Thursday October the 5th.
You can register here (and in case you can't make it, I'll ask Gino to send a link to the recording to everyone who registers). Hope to see you there.