Selling Mary Kay®: The cost of procrastination

 

Today I wanted to blog about enemy number 1 in your personal Mary Kay® business (and truthfully, in any self-employeed postion)

 

 

Enemy number one is PROCRASTINATION

 

You may think that Procrastination means “I’ll do it tomorrow”, and you would be partially right.

If you look at the definition it actually means that you opt to do lower priority tasks instead of higher priority tasks. We are ALL guilty of this!

 

Often, someone will opt to do something that has instant results and put off something that may not have that satisfaction, or sometimes people will just do an easier tasks and put of the hard stuff off for latter (hard can also mean “uncomfortable” or “fears”).

This is why you can have a spotless kitchen and have not yet made a single call!

 

Yes, it’s true that the kitchen will have to be cleaned, the trash taken out, the kids brought to school… but these things will always be there (at least until the kids start driving!).

 

So, how do you get past the habit of doing the easy stuff and working on the things that matter?

 

I’m not going to give you some magic secret because Mary Kay® already told us how, so I’ll just repeat how here.

 

1. Complete your 6 most important things list the night BEFORE:

 

The 6 most important things are the MOST IMPORTANT things you have to complete that day (yes you have to take the trash out, but no it should not be on the list… unless it’s 9 or 10…. which would NOT be on the 6 most important things list).

         You may want to read this blog, 6 most important things list

2. Time-blocking:  Life is FULL of distractions! In order to get over this, make an appointment with yourself (and keep it!). Schedule this appointment around your other obligations AND schedule the appointment for a time that will work for the tasks you are trying to complete.

For example: You have to enter in all your invoices into your computer for tax tracking (which QT Office can help with by the way….)   You would want to do this either late at night or early in the morning before anyone else gets up (or possibly nap time if you are in a situation that has nap time). …. basically, when it’s quite and you will not be distracted by phone calls or anything else.

Example two: You have to make those phone calls.  Suddenly the 7 am or the 11 pm time slot does not work, so you would want to make this appointment for a time your customers will be home. I would suggest 5:30 (ish) or early afternoon on a Saturday. This time may be a little different if your customers have a schedule that is different than the standard 9-5.

I’ll end with a popular proverb:  “Lost time is never found again.“

This means that you can “do it tomorrow” but you will never be able to make up that lost time, you are simply borrowing it from the future… and it’s lost forever.