8 things that are wasting your time in your business

Being busy and productive are not the same thing, and they don't always translate into growth. In today's episode we explore 8 things that you might be busily doing in your business that don't actually move the needle or make you more productive.

– The curse of perfectionism and how it's holding you back.
– When over planning feels safe and comfortable, but not necessarily productive.
– Why taking action steps leads to clarity and confidence (not the other way around).
– How over complicating tasks can cause overwhelm and stagnation.
– The art of saying ‘no'! Ask yourself: ‘Would I say yes to this if it were tomorrow?'.
– How failing to identify your focus point leads to ‘shiny object syndrome'.
– Why distracting yourself by over-consuming content (and doing too much research!) is one of the biggest time and energy wasters.

 

8 ways you're wasting your time and your energy in your business.

 

I, like many of you, came from a corporate background before I started my business and in my corporate role. It was all about the appearance of being busy. We had to look busy and it was a good thing if we worked late into the evening, because then it looked like we were being really productive.
So I ended up filling my day with a lot of really pointless tasks that didn't really benefit the company. I was working for a whole lot, but it made me look busy and it made me feel productive and it filled up my day. So I could be appearing to work late. And then when I started my first business and left my corporate role and even into my second business, which is through a couple of different iterations is the business that I'm in today, I found it really hard to unbundle busy and productive.
In my mind, I had linked being busy filling my day with things as also meaning I was being productive. And I worked so hard doing all of the things. I was constantly busy in my business. And yet my business didn't move forward. I was working harder than ever, but things just weren't falling into place. And, you know, in the last blog, I actually talked a bit about my pre my first business and why that didn't work out. But even with my second business, I was working so hard. I was being so busy, busy, busy all the time. And not seeing that growth. And that's because there's a big difference between being busy and being productive. It's really easy to spend your time on the things that don't move the needle.
Because the things that do move the needle might feel challenging. They might require you to use your brain differently, think differently. Or they might require you to step outside of your comfort zone. Now not all of the things that I'm going to share in today's blog are busy tasks. There might not even be tasks on your to-do list.
Some of them are just areas where you're wasting time and not even realizing it. But they all have the same end result. They stop you from doing the things that actually move the needle. They fill your day. They make you feel like you don't have enough time.
And then you prioritize these over the things that move the needle, because it's easier to do these than it is to do the challenging, uncomfortable things that actually move the needle. Now you might've heard some variation of the quote. To get a different result, you have to be willing to do something differently.
I think it was Einstein said the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again, and expecting a different result. And this is exactly what I'm trying to get at here. So let's cover off on eight places where you are wasting your time and your energy in your business.

 

1.You're wasting your time and energy trying to make every single piece of content. Absolutely. Perfect. Before you share it.

This might be social media content. It might be a podcast episode. It might be your sales pages. It might be even your website or it might be the emails you're sending to your list.
And rather than just getting the raw materials out of your brain and getting it out there, you're editing it and editing it again and editing again. And then questioning whether you need to add more to it. I used to spend an hour on every single podcast episode. And this was back when my podcast episodes were like maximum 10 minutes.
I would spend at least half an hour outlining it, 10 to 15 minutes recording it because I would constantly stop and redo things. And then at least 15 minutes editing it, editing out every single um, every single ah. But then I realized that my audience didn't really care if I left in the ums and the ahs, because I'm human.
And it meant that I saved a lot of time and now my team edits my podcast, but there's no way I would've got to 641 episodes if I was still spending an hour on every single episode.

 

2. You are wasting time planning too much.

Planning planning, planning. It feels really comfortable because we think if we can plan enough, we'll remove any uncertainty from the equation.
If we can just plan it right, it'll all go to plan. I'm not usually a huge planner. But I noticed this coming into my life in a totally unrelated context. For the very first time I was going on a multi-day hike by myself. I was. Packing my own tent, carrying my own dehydrated food, cooking my own meals, all of that.
And it was for five days. And before I left, I had a spreadsheet outlining every single thing. I outlined exactly what I was going to eat for each meal. Exactly how much all of my equipment weighed down to the gram, because when you're carrying everything on your back, each gram adds up. And it gets very heavy very quickly. And then it hurts your knees and your feet and you get blisters. So I had this massive spreadsheet detailing, every single thing, how far I was going to walk each day, which campsites I was going to stay at.
And on day four, something that I didn't plan for ended up happening on day four. I ran out of toilet paper. Not really what you want to happen on a five day hike. When I also wasn't feeling particularly well, so suddenly here I was where the scenario that popped up. And it didn't fit in with my plans of how long I was going to walk each day and where I was going to camp. But I figured it out. My solution was I ended up walking the last two days in just one day. So on day four, I walked 37 kilometers, which is roughly 20, 20 to 25 miles, roughly. So pretty far to walk in one day. But I had to, and that was something I could never have planned for. So rather than planning for everything and hoping that that removes the uncertainty. Remember you can never remove the uncertainty. There's never a guarantee that something's going to go to plan.
But what you can trust in is your own ability to figure something out when it doesn't go to plan.

 

3. You are wasting too much time waiting until you have more clarity or more confidence before you take action.

You might be sitting there like, oh, I want to do this one day. But I'm just not clear on it yet. So I'll just wait. And the clarity will come to me.
Or I want to do this thing, but it feels really scary right now. So I'm going to learn more. I'm going to research more. I'm going to plan more and then I'm going to feel more confident and then I will do it.

Here's the thing – clarity comes with action. Confidence also comes with action. It's not until you take those first steps that the path begins to reveal itself. It's really hard to see what the entire path is going to look like until you start to take those steps.
Same with confidence. You don't wait, you don't build confidence by waiting to do you build confidence by doing. Recently I got back from America, where for the first time ever, I had to drive on the wrong side of the road. I knew I always put it off whenever I've gone overseas. I've always resisted hiring a car in places where they drive on the right-hand side of the road. But for this trip I had to, and before the trip I did so much research, I was like, Googling, how do I drive on the right hand side of the road? Which way do I go around a roundabout? Who do I give way to, who do I yield to? And in all of that research, it didn't make me more confident. It made me less confident. It actually made me more overthinking. It made me more scared. And then when I sat in the car, on the wrong side of the car, because normally we sit on the right hand side of the car and drive on the left-hand side of the road and everything's flipped.
So I'm sitting on the wrong side of the car on the wrong side of the road. Freaking out because I can't stay in the in the lane because I'm trying to align myself up. But then a few hours after doing that, I started to get the hang of it. I started to feel confident. And that's because I actually sat in the car and drove it out of the rental car lot and started to feel comfortable on the wrong side of the road. Confidence comes by doing same with podcasting. People are like, oh, you're so competent at podcasting. I wasn't. When I first started, if you go back to like the first 10 episodes, you'll notice such a difference in how I speak. And the content and episodes, they were fully scripted. These are now more of a bullet point 0utline. Those first probably 50 episodes were fully scripted.

 

4. You are wasting time and energy in your business over-complicating things.

And feeling overwhelmed as a result. Overwhelm is this beautiful blanket feeling of like, I just don't know what I'm going to do. And I don't really want to think about all of the different pieces. So I'm just going to tell myself that I feel overwhelmed and then I don't have to poke and prod into this uncomfortable thing.
And a lot of the time it comes because we are over-complicating things in our mind. We think that there are all of these different steps involved. We think that it has to be. A certain way and. We build it all up. And it's spinning around in our head. And then we're like, oh, too hard basket. I'm not going to deal with that.
I really loved Tim Ferriss's book, tribe of mentors. And in his introduction for the book, he talks about how he felt a little bit daunted at the prospect of writing this book. About all of the people who are high achievers in their fields and how he asked himself this question, what would this look like if it were easy?
And he decided that the answer to that question was to simply interview people who are absolutely killing it at whatever they do and turn those interviews into the book. I still use this question. What would this look like if it were easy? What is the minimum viable version of this thing?
A place where I know that many of you get stuck is if you're thinking of creating an online course. And then you think about all of the different pieces involved in the course creation, in the course launch all of that. And it just builds up in your head as this mucky cloud of different things you need to do.
And I always say, well, what's the minimum viable version that you could do. Could you teach your online course as a live workshop first?
Would that be easier than prerecording all of these different modules. Most of the time it will be. And then once you create that live workshop and you teach it, you've already done a huge step and then it becomes easier. And this fits in really nicely with the waiting until you have clarity.
I think with action overwhelm also starts to fade.

 

5. You are wasting your time saying yes to things you don't really want to do.

You know the ones, coffee catch-ups, networking events that you don't want to go to, collaborations that don't really excite you. All of those things that fill up your calendar that when you said yes to them a while ago, they felt like a great idea. And then you sit down and you want to do some work and you look at your calendar and you're like, where's all of the free space, because I just have back-to-back calls all day.

I really loved the question. Would I say yes to this, if it were tomorrow, if it were happening tomorrow, would I say yes to this? It's very easy for us to say yes to something when it's in four weeks time or eight weeks time.
And then when it turns up tomorrow or today we regret it. So would I say yes to this, if it were tomorrow? You don't have to say yes to everything and no is a full answer. You don't have to justify it. If it's something you don't want to do, you can say no.

6. You are wasting time and energy researching tech and platforms.

This comes up a lot. Every time I survey my listeners, this comes up a lot. I'm trying to decide the best email platform. I'm trying to decide where to host my courses. I'm trying to decide, which is the best podcast host. I'm trying to decide all these different aspects.
There's a lot of different tech out there. But for the most part, they're all pretty similar in terms of pricing and in terms of features. And when you're just starting out. You don't need the most advanced features. This is a classic example of putting the cart before the horse.
If you're creating a course or a membership, for example. If you are letting the fact that you haven't chosen where you're going to host your courses, hold you back from actually deciding what the course is going to be about and who it's for and how you're going to position it.
Then that is putting the cart before the horse. Because once you know who the course is for and how you're going to position it and the messaging and all of that. Now you've got to feel more excited about getting your courses out there. And it's not going to matter so much which platform you choose, as long as you choose one that works for you. And if somebody asks me where's the best place to host a course, or the best place to build my email list. I just say, go with Kajabi. I love Kajabi. We're in the process of moving some of our sales pages onto Kajabi because our websites previously or website is on a different platform. And I really think that if you are new or even if you already have been running your business for a while, being able to have it all in one place is such a massive advantage because then you don't have to duct tape all of these different platforms together. And it removes the risk that something's going to break. So I love Kajabi. You can grab a 30 day free trial here. You can sign up, you can test it, take it for a test drive, before you have to actually pay for it.

 

7. You're wasting your time and energy not knowing what to focus on.

When you don't have that particular focus for what you are working on this year, this quarter, this month, this week, it can lead you to chasing shiny different ideas. You can feel a little bit scattered. You feel like you're not really moving forward. You don't really know where you need to be spending your time. So you just do what feels most exciting or most urgent. Having focus gets you to where you want to go a lot faster.
But you first need to have clarity on your vision. And on your business model, because when you know what you're working towards, then it becomes a matter of every decision you're making is either getting you there faster, or it's slowing you down. And you can ask yourself, is this getting me to my vision faster? Or is this building out the business? That is my future business model I want, is it getting me there or is it slowing me down?

 

8. You might be wasting your time and energy is consuming too much content.

Now this might be social media content. It might be other people's podcast episodes. It might be reading things online. Consuming too much content is really using up a lot of your brain energy and it can be really distracting. At its best, it might be wasting your time. And at its worst, it might be creating comparisonitis. It might be creating feelings of not enoughness.
You know, I'm not posting enough reels because my competitors are posting more or I should be doing this because my competitor is doing this. And then we feel like we're just not doing enough And that's not a great place to run your business from. You're doing the best that you can and you don't need to be looking at what other people are doing, you don't need to be researching based on what other people in your industry are doing rather than consuming switching to creating from where you feel inspired and aligned, rather than consuming based on what everybody else is doing.

So there you have it. Eight places you are wasting time and energy, making your content perfect, planning too much, waiting until you have clarity and confidence before you take action, over complicating things and feeling overwhelmed as a result, saying things saying yes to things that you don't want to do, researching tech and platforms, not knowing what to focus on and consuming too much content.

 

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