Multitasking to achieve more is a bad idea. Studies have shown trying to accomplish more than two things simultaneously leads to increased errors. Are you one of the many trying to increase your income by working later and later? Are you returning work calls and finishing a presentation while at your kid’s Little League game? We’ve all heard the work smarter not harder line, but how do you do it? Dan Kennedy offers his take on how to achieve more with less. If you missed the first two parts of this article, you can find them at HighGrowthBusiness.com. Now here’s Dan will how to double your income without doubling your work:
By Dan S. Kennedy
The all-time champion worst idea for doubling your income is to double your work.
You’ll be a rich corpse.
This is also the most unimaginative, uncreative, non-analytical approach. Consider farmers. At one time they all plowed with mules. They tried to get the mules to pull harder, move faster. They hitched two, three or four mules together. Then tractors. Then faster tractors. All the same brute force multiplied. One of my earliest consulting clients in the 1970’s was a company that did very complex, detailed soil analysis of farms. Their sales rep collected soil samples in test tubes from every part of the farm. In the lab, they analyzed each sample. On a color-coded map, they depicted nutrient and mineral deficiencies — different in soil only a few feet away from another hunk of ground. They prescribed different fertilizers for different parts of the farm. The soil’s ability to produce was greatly multiplied. Not by the farmer working longer hours, not by more mules pulling harder, not by a bigger tractor. By scientifically, strategically, cleverly leveraging the real asset: the soil.
Now consider salespeople. To increase income, they will try to generate more leads, squeeze in more presentations, run more appointments, work longer hours, talk on the cellphone while driving, eating, even while peeing! But that’s not leveraging the real assets: time and sales skill.
Consider the business owner. Same approach. More advertising, more leads, more customers, more products, longer hours.
It is all too common to attempt reaching bigger financial goals simplistically, by adding more customers to beget more sales even if you must personally work more hours and juggle more responsibility and absorb more stress, and add more overhead. But this IS simplistic. Almost unthinking. Certainly uncreative. A more creative, cerebral, interesting approach is to search for ways to achieve more with less.
About The Author: Dan Kennedy is the author of nine business books, including his newest, NO B.S. TIME MANAGEMENT FOR ENTREPRENEURS, available in bookstores or from online booksellers. Additional information and free chapter previews at www.nobsbooks.com. Included with the book, a coupon for a free kit of peak personal productivity tools. Kennedy is also a busy entrepreneur, consultant, speaker and direct-response advertising copywriter. Info at www.dankennedy.com.
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