When everything is important, what’s really important?

Posted on | August 28, 2009 | Comments Off

The life and times of the typical microbusiness owner is distinguished by the fact that there is never enough time to do everything we need to do.

That’s what we tell you, if you sit down and talk to us about our businesses — that’s assuming we’re willing to sit down and talk to you at all when there’s so much we need to get done.

The top issues for microbusiness owners are: time and money.

Since it is impossible to manufacture more of one of those, and illegal to manufacture more of the other, we have to develop other strategies to address those two issues.

Which brings me to today’s question: How do you decide what’s important?

Being us, sometimes it really does feel like everything is important but it’s really not, you know. (You do know that, right?)

I got to thinking about this by reading one of Mary Schmidt’s headlines.

(You see, Mary and I are joined at the brain, so I don’t even have to finish reading the post — although I did — in order to be inspired to start thinking … )

You would think that, in business, priorities would be fairly easy to establish. In business, the bottom line is … well … the bottom line. So, in the world of the microbusiness owner, you’d think that the actions and tasks that make money for you are the ones that command your attention first.

Ah, but it doesn’t always play out that way. Priorities for microbusiness owners are often more easily found by, say, reading their mission statements. If said statement is not so full of flowery lingo as to be meaningless, it will probably give more than a hint or six about what the person behind the business really cares about or prefers doing with their time.

Just remember that next time you start thinking that you don’t have time for X — whatever “X” may be.

That is especially true when “X” is something that will make more money for you than you are making right now.

(Pause for musical interlude … )

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It may be true that lovely, noble microbusiness owners are loftily above being excessively mercenary and prefer to make those widgets for the love of widget-making.

But it is also true that you run a business.

You might not want to become a future Acme Widget-Making Corp. (which only grew to be that large because of all the stuff they were able to sell that gullible Coyote) but you do need to be making a profit, or at least paying the bills.

If you’re not, they don’t call that a business. That’s a hobby.

But, of course, once you get past the ‘is it making money for me versus not making money for me’ question, then you enter a whole ‘nother ballpark.

How much does it really matter when Twitter is down?

Will your reputation get damaged that badly you do fire that abusive client?

Is it really necessary to spend every waking moment of your life at your desk, working?

It’s supposed to be your business, not an albatross around your neck.

It’s really easy to fall into the habit of being in a permanent state of crisis-chaos, where everything is an emergency and you’re always dashing around putting out fires. You’re always so busy that you just don’t understand why you’re not a millionaire yet.

So … how much of what you ‘have to do’ do you really have to do? And how do you decide?


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Category: Friday Musical Interludes, Management
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