Proactive vs. Procrastinator? - 08/08/08
Lael Johnson
Motivation, Mindset and Wellness
PROACTIVE VS. PROCRASTINATOR
by
Lael Johnson
Are you a proactive business owner or a procrastinating business owner?
It’s important to know both your business strengths and weaknesses as you continue to build your online business.
Remember that no business owner can complete every responsibility well. You will need to strike a balance regarding your business responsibilities, so that everything does get done on time, is completed reasonably well and is completed in proper order. Procrastination can show up in any of these areas. I’d like you to focus on where procrastination or proactive work shows up for you in these areas. The more you can replace procrastinating behavior in all of these areas, with proactive behavior, the more your business will grow.
Procrastination can show up in any stage of business. For some people, decision-making can be a vulnerable area. For example, I like to research and gather information so I can solve a problem. I tend to slow down when I need to make a final decision about how to use that information. I am not always confident that I can make good decisions, so I slow down in that area. If you are more confident in making decisions, but don’t like to do the work of research, then you might find yourself slowing down the whole process, because you haven’t found enough information for a complete summary of the problem. Another issue could be perfectionism. This can happen at any point during the problem-solving process. Have I completed enough research so that my summary covers all of the basic facts? Have I interviewed enough experts to obtain enough information, before I decide if I need to hire one to help me solve a particular problem? Finally, am I willing to admit that I don’t know enough about this problem? Am I willing to admit that I really need to ask for help from an outside source, before I make a final problem-solving decision here?
Procrastination can show up when you are working toward completing a project. It can show up when you are setting up a time line for completion of the project. You may know that you need to set up a time line, so that you don’t miss a deadline, such as preparing for a a major promotional event. You may need to outsource some of the preparation for the event, but the timing must be precise. You may need to make sure that your inventory is complete and ready for sale at the event, so that you don’t show up looking ill-prepared to your competitors and potential customers. It’s very important that you don’t put off setting up that time line. If you do, it will make the rest of your work harder to complete and will put you and other people under extra stress. What can additional problems can extra stress lead to? Extra stress can lead to making mistakes and missing smaller but important deadlines along the way. Extra stress can put pressure on people who are less confident, causing emotional delays that effect inventory production, through relying on shortcuts, working extra hours at the last minute and generally, pushing oneself too much to meet the expected deadlines at the last moment.
Finally, procrastination can show up in customer service. Prompt action regarding a customer service issue is the ideal scenario that every business owner should want to present. But, sometimes, the ideal just doesn’t happen for any number of reasons. For example, a customer places an online order, for a product that is has already been sold. The owner had put a disclaimer on the site, indicating that the product could be substituted at any time without notice. So, the owner did substitute the product and added a second product to fulfill the order, plus promising an additional refund, because this customer was a regular client. Fortunately the client was happy with the extra product that she received. Now, where could procrastination have happened? It already happened because the web site information had yet to be updated. It could also happen if there was a delay in sending the refund check to the client. It could also happen if the owner delayed in uploading new photos of other products on to the web site for future sales.
I hope that these examples of procrastination will help you become more clear about whether you are proactive or a procrastinating business owner. If you would like to further information on this topic, please read the Procrastination Quiz and the Procrastination Solution.
I hope that this article is helpful to you. Please feel free to comment on it here or at my blog .
Copyright 2008. Lael Johnson. Writer’s Eye Advisory Service. All rights reserved.
Lael Johnson @ August 8, 2008
Lael Johnson