Time Wasters of your Business: Being Too Available
I’m here! I’m here! What do you need?!?!?
Sounds familiar?
I want to tell you a story about when I was way back in primary school. That’s what we call Elementary school in Trinidad. I was about 8 or 9 at the time.
I learned this lesson then and never forgot it. So when Dr. Bob Clarke talked about it in his article in What’s Working Now I was getting flash backs.
I always wanted to help the world when I was young. Most children want to do that so I wasn’t “special” in that regard. What made me different is that I always found a way to be there for everyone and most times I got left behind.
One day I had to stay back late with the kids in detention because I didn’t finish my “sums” as we called it during class time; the teacher came over and asked how much I didn’t finish. I told her I was helping the others.
She looked at me sternly. I thought I did something wrong.
She said told me that you don’t have to be there to help everyone all the time.
I didn’t understand it then and I really thought she was telling me to be a selfish person. So Although I learned the lesson, I never practiced it because I thought my teacher was telling me to be mean.
The thing is I knew the work very well and she knew I knew, how else would I be able to teach others at the age of 8!
But what she was trying to tell me is get your work done first then go help others.
So I had to learn to block out people’s requests until I was finished with my own work.
Well I never really perfected that (wink wink, nudge nudge).
Well in the online world we’re always connected. We have our phones on, email on, facebook, twitter! Everything is always on and running and this is how people generally access you.
My email is always open. One of my old professors says that I have an addiction to email. The only time I close my email is when I’m going to bed.
Now if I stopped what I was doing every time an email came in, then I would call myself an addict.
But if you just decided for one day to not check your social media, to not check your email and to not take any calls other than family people won’t be able to get in touch with you.
They will be forced to solve their problem another way for just that short space of time.
And guess what the world will still revolve on its axis.
If people can get a hold of you at any time of the day and worse yet you respond to them always …..
When are you going to have time to work on your business?
Take the challenge today – lock off your social media and email and just work on your business and see how much you can get done in two hours!!!
Have a great day!
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Hilary De Freitas
Online Marketer, Operational Nerd and Mom
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