How To Avoid Decision Fatigue

With only about a week to go until the Black Friday, Small Biz Saturday, and Cyber Monday bonanza hits us hard I wanted to chat with you about how to avoid the overwhelm of all the ideas, courses and services headed your way. There is one question you can cask yourself to cut through all the things or spot the right deals for you. Here is it: Will this move me closer to my goals faster than what I am doing right now? I encourage my clients to have a Northstar in their business that is what success would look like for their business in 10+ years. This is where people can get a lot of mindset noise creep up if for them their why is not as big as world peace or as socially motivated like building schools. But I encourage you to sit with the question for your business – how will you know you’ve been successful? If you answered make a bajillion dollars no matter what, I’m guessing this is your first time here and probably your last. More likely you had a number tied to a lifestyle dream, travel dream, time dream, family dream, etc. I want you to make it into a one-liner – a short one-liner like “I want to retire my partner”, “I want to support my family working 4 days a week”, I want to send my kids to college debt-free, etc Now that can seem pretty big and far off and a little un concrete so let’s bring that in a little to 3-5 year timeline. What does your lifestyle look like then and what would it cost? And what time would you be willing to spend in the business? And what would you not be prepared to do any more that you’re doing right now? Now when faced with a decision you can start with your north star – does doing the new thing get you closer to that goal faster than what you’re doing right now? Often we’re looking for the next thing to save us where if we simply stay consistent with what we’re already doing we’d get there just as fast if not faster You can double-check with the same question to your 3-5 year time horizon which is more about how you want your business to fit around you. does doing the new thing get you closer to that lifestyle goal, time goal, or work goal faster than what you’re doing right now? For example, if you’re considering a new service, will it create time for you? Will it create enough revenue to more than cover the cost? Will you need to work more to make it all work? As with most decisions, nothing is black and white and you may land up with a couple of maybes. What asking yourself this question against longer-term future goals does is Focuses you on building a sustainable business long term Stops the impulse buy of the services/program you hope will “save” you Gives you the ability to step back so that when you do buy, you can go all-in Once you have that long-term vision – write it on a post-it along with the questions does it get me closer faster? and stick it to your laptop or computer screen so that you can get out of this season without being overwhelmed.