How to Accomplish Tasks you Dislike
Many entrepreneurs I know get into the business so that they can
do what they love. Many have told me that at their corporate
jobs they usually spent 40-50% of the time doing something that
they actually enjoyed, while the rest of the time was spent in
meetings, planning, writing TPS reports, and engaging in all
sorts of corporate administrivia.
Naturally, newly minted entrepreneurs think that the only
business activities they will have to participate in are the
ones they actually like. Unfortunately, they are in for a rude
awakening. As they start operating their businesses, new
business owners are chagrined to discover that they will have to
engage in some activities that are very similar to those they
were doing at their corporate jobs: accounting, marketing, PR,
and administrative work for their businesses. In fact, new
entrepreneurs discover that they end up having to perform even
more uninteresting activities than they did in their corporate
jobs. Unfortunately, completing these tasks is a must. Your
business will not do well if marketing, accounting, and
administrative items are not taken care of.
Naturally, faced with doing tasks they don't like business
owners procrastinate and become very good at wasting copious
amounts of time. At the end of the day, nothing gets done. Not
even tasks that are fun.
AvocadoConsulting.com has created a plan designed to help you
identify and conquer unpleasant activities. This ensures that
they will get done and you won't spend any more time on them
than it is absolutely necessary:
* Identify tasks you dislike doing. These are the ones that make
you cringe just from thinking about them, take you forever to
accomplish, and rev your procrastination mode into high gear *
Decide on what it will take to accomplish them:
1. Break them up and do them for just one hour (but do them!)
every day.
2. Pick a special day of the week (Monday is a good candidate,
since it doesn't have a good reputation already) and allocate it
to tasks you dislike. Spend the rest of the week completing
other activities.
3. Identify rewards you can give yourself when you complete each
one of these tasks. Give yourself an hour off to go out and get
a cup of coffee, eat a piece of low-fat chocolate cake, or read
that magazine that you've been neglecting for a month. *
Outsource. You can't get someone else to go to the dentist for
you (and get the same effect), but you can get someone else to
perform many of your business tasks. Get an accountant to do
your accounting. Hire a professional organizer to help you
organize your office and your documents. Find a virtual
assistant for help with administrative tasks.
Take action today. Identify tasks you dislike doing, figure out
how to go about completing them, and go do them. Right now.