What Do You Do When There’s Too Much To Do?

Do you feel like there’s too much to do? I do. Since creating The Rocket Company six years ago, I wake up every day feeling like I’ll never get everything done.

And just to compound the problem, every new blog or article tells you about some emerging product or theory that you just have to try.

Technology blogs make me feel behind. Articles about company culture make me feel like The Rocket Company doesn’t have it all together and that we need a Ping-Pong table or a nap room. Courses I buy propose ideas that just add to the list of cool things I would love to accomplish but I don’t have time to pull off.

There is just so much we can do. The list of activities we can do to make our companies bigger and better is endless.

So what happens when there’s too much to do?

We dabble.

The definition of dabbling is, “To work or involve oneself superficially or intermittently,especially in a secondary activity or interest.”

The symptoms of the dabbling business owner are:
I lived this way for three years and it almost killed me and our company. Dabbling racked up a scorecard of 80k in debt, many laid off employees, unbearable stress for my family, and a near emotional breakdown for me.

  • Your revenue is stuck even though you are working harder than ever
  • You are super busy, but not getting a lot done
  • Your family gets your leftovers because you are burning the candle at both ends
  • You learn new marketing tactics, but don’t implement them well
  • Your team feels like there is too much to do and hey can’t accomplish their work within reasonable hours
  • You only finish stuff close to deadlines – there is no margin
  • You feel daily pressure when you approach your business and it’s not as fun as it once was
  • You start more than you finish

But over the last three years, The Rocket Company went from a distressed and failing organization to the 602nd fastest growing company in the United States and voted Atlanta’s14th best place to work.

What changed?

We made a decision. This decision changed everything for us, and you can do it too:

Stop Dabbling & Start Dominating.

Here is the step-by-step strategy we used to break through:

Step 1: Create One Crystal Clear Goal

Dominating means only focusing on one massive goal until it’s done. Our goal was this, “We will have 500 customers paying $99/month by December 31, 2011 at 11:59PM.”

I told our team and myself that we would do no more new ideas unless they support the goal. We intentionally put blinders on.

We learned that focused action creates massive traction.

Step 2: Read Your Goal Out Loud Everyday

I put that goal in my office. Everyday I visually looked at this one goal and said, “We will have 500 customers paying $99/month by December 31, 2011 at 11:59PM.”

Is this ridiculous? Probably. But it worked. Dominating makes you live a lopsided life where you only do what matters most. If you and your team are not sick of hearing your goal out loud, you haven’t said it enough.

Step 3: Create a Stop Doing List

Does checking Twitter 47 times a day help you accomplish your goal? If not, ditch it. Do you feel like being addicted to email is helping you reach your goal? If not, delegate it. Do the next 5 appointments you have on your calendar have anything to do with this one thing? If not, cancel them.

You can’t create traction if you continue to take the same actions. Something must change.

Step 4: Focus Every Minute & Dollar On One Thing

Dominating requires the courage to say no to anything that doesn’t help you get closer to your one goal. As soon as you make the decision to sell out to one goal, you will be tempted to invest your time and resources in other things because you always have.

Don’t cave. Sell out. Leverage all your efforts into making your one thing reality.

Bruce Lee spoke about the power of domination when he said, “I fear not the man who has practiced 10,000 kicks once, but I fear the man who has practiced one kick 10,000 times.”

Are you a dabbling or dominating? What’s the one step you need to take today to begin dominating?