If there is one thing that is sure to prevent growth in your business, it’s procrastination.

Maybe it’s just one of those little things that can easily be done, or not done.

Or, it might be one of those more daunting tasks that you know are going to take for-eeeevvver to complete.

But here’s the thing. While you are procrastinating, time and opportunities are slipping by.

What about that post you told yourself you were going to write last night? But then something more ‘pressing’ came up (well sometimes that does happen). Was it really more pressing or to put a different twist on it, was it something that could have waited as well?

While you might be putting off just one more thing, even just every now and then, you’re creating a deficit that is actually ‘unrealized gain’ to your business.

Be sure that your procrastination is not due to a lack of clearly defined goals. What is it that you really want out of life? Why are you in this business in the first place?

And also be sure that you don’t have trouble making decisions. Good decision making skills are an essential part of success. Without them, you could miss numerous opportunities while you are making up your mind.

Take a moment to reflect on how important it is to actually make a decision
before you take too much time deciding between the options at hand!

The one thing that can cause stagnation in your business in procrastination, because it is the exact opposite of Action.

“Action will destroy your procrastination.” ~ Og Mandino

And we all know that it is only action that brings results! As a matter of fact, we want to be taking massive action, and persisting in that until it becomes habit!

It is that habit that turns into persistence over time, causing the biggest gains in your business in the long term.

If you have ever read ‘The Slight Edge’ by Jeff Olson, you’ll know what I mean.

As we continue making the small decisions either toward adding to our lives and our business, or not making those decisions, we are either improving our outcome, the sum total of our success in the long term, or we are allowing time to work against us (putting us at risk of having lost unseen gains due to those little choices).

And most people are familiar with the expression, Time = Money!

So think about this – while you are thinking about doing what you need to do, could you just be doing it? Would it take longer for you to plan doing it than just to do it?

Or, if you just START something that you’ve been putting off, you might see that you’ll feel much better about the task and not so willing to procrastinate on it further.

Instead of calling it quits at the end of the day, think about whether there isn’t just one more thing you can do for your business today. Is there just one more phone call? A few more social interactions online that you might want to accomplish?

Don’t let procrastination be the insidious demise of your business as you create deficit after deficit in your action plan.

Eventually you will have missed opportunities that you don’t even know about! While you waited to call that one lead, someone else may have spoken to them and you could lose a promising prospect!

“Procrastination is opportunity’s natural assassin.” ~Victor Kiam

Remind yourself of the effects of this accumulated deficit on your business in the long run. It’s like not starting that savings account that you could see grow only slowly at first, but which would accumulate into a very large sum after several years.

The same goes for your business. The work that you do now is worth well over tenfold in ten years!

Wishing You Awesome Success!

This entry was posted on Monday, July 5th, 2010 at 5:00 PM and is filed under Motivational Inspiration, Personal Development. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.