Burnouts aren’t that cool: Stop spinning your wheels.
Alright, I don’t want this one to come off preachy. Can I get an amen? Ha!
Seriously though we’ve all fallen victim to this and it’s understandable. What I’m talking about is spinning your wheels on anything that in a lot of cases isn’t getting you anywhere.
Typically I’d use an example from my career in the military here but not this week. This week I’m going to use my beloved coaching industry that I’m in now to help illustrate my point.
One of the things many coaches use to not only help people but also draw in potential clients are mini courses. These courses are great. I mean that! I know some coaches with awesome free courses, heck there’s one on this very website that I offer for developing resiliency. So what’s the problem? Well....
Sometimes the development of these courses becomes THE THING. I’ve seen coaches spend months and months building, editing, refining, and lamenting over these courses. Only to finish and launch them on their website and get absolutely zero engagement. Talk about a demoralizing experience.
The reason many times is because over the months of developing that course they didn’t do anything else. The course creation consumed their working hours and when it launched it went out to the same network that wasn’t hiring them 6 months ago, because they hadn’t done anything else besides build this course.
That’s just one example but we all fall victim to this in all businesses and all walks of life. We have a tendency to get fixated on what I call “shiny things”. These are those things that grab our attention and regardless of potential impact, or a lack thereof on our overall success, become the things we focus on and devote all our time to.
Now, am I saying just don’t do the shiny things? No! That’s not what I’m suggesting at all. What do I’m suggesting is that you prioritize the shiny things in a way that is achievable, sustainable, and time bound. This is something I work with, with my clients all the time. So trust me, you are not alone.
The point is those shiny things, while important , aren’t typically the things that are going to influence your immediate success. So, find space in your schedule to work on them but after the more pressing issues are sorted out.
Going back to the original example. Instead of working 6 hours a day building out a course to launch. That will be presented once completed to the exact same audience. Spend the bulk of that time building your audience and a small portion working on the course. The end state being that, once completed your course will be presented to an audience eager to receive it. We used to call those target rich environments (had to sneak a military reference in).
Apply this to every form of business or even around the house. The shiny things will always draw you in if you let them. Instead I challenge you to intentionally prioritize where those fit in your day so you can stop spinning your wheels doing things that aren’t getting you anywhere.
