Distraction causes others pain!
Last week, I was walking through a local mall. I was on the way to the car. All of a sudden a sharp pain radiated from my right ankle. It was not pleasant.
I looked around and saw what had caused the pain. It was a trolley that had connected with my ankle just below where the muscle joins the bone. What followed was a flurry of apologies from the lady who was pushing the trolley. I had various expletives to shout but I managed to refrain and we started walking again. I was a little worried about how much this was going to bleed because I still had a little walk to my car. Initially, it did not bleed at all but this happened once I started walking.
I made my way to the bathroom. While walking I saw why she had run the trolley into me. She was busy doing something on her smartphone so her phone was a distraction from her current task. She was distracted from looking where she was going or who was in front of her.
A Distraction can be a problem in business
Many business owners are the same. They are easily distracted. The distractions may be important but they are distractions. They are distractions from the other important items that need their immediate attention.
The result of these distractions is a long list of items that are half-finished. From one or two distractions come a list of five items that require your urgent attention. This leads to crisis management. All five are due by the same deadline. One of two outcomes occur:
1. You finish all five at a lesser standard than you like or are known for, or
2. You manage to complete three out of the five and are now under pressure because the other two are overdue.
Either way, you are losing. Losing quality or losing business.
What is your distraction? How distracted are you? How do you know? You might think that you have no distractions. Before you shout at me for saying that, track what you do every day for a week. Track all business-related tasks you perform to tell you how you take on every task. You can shout at me if I am wrong.
PS: Facebook or Instagram for “business” is only business if income will be generated from that task.
Read more about time-wasters here
This article was updated in February 2022