Distraction-Proof® Advisor Ideas

AdvisorBlast – Quick Tips to Accelerate Your Practice

In this issue: If it doesn't actively move you toward your goal, it's a distraction!

How are you doing on your New Year's resolutions? If you're still going strong, congratulations! Most resolutions have already fallen by the wayside, though. Often the problem is that we try to do too many things, get overwhelmed, and so ignore everything. We've bought into the fallacy that the more activity we create, the more successful we'll be. We spend tremendous time and emotion accumulating and processing more and more information and making grand plans of things to do, but a lot of that effort can be simply wasted effort on the path to success.

How do we succeed sooner? The challenge isn't so much finding the pathway, but staying on it! We so easily get distracted, even by good things, which pull us away from where we really want to go.

We are overloaded with information constantly bombarding us. There always seems to be another article to read, another podcast to listen to or webinar to watch. Clients I've worked with have felt huge stress at the thought that they might miss something important they need to know, but are overwhelmed with the sheer volume of information they have to process just to "keep up," much less become "the expert."

Once you have more information than you can realistically process, further information actually becomes counter-productive and impedes your progress.

Often I encourage groups I speak with to do the bare minimum required to wildly succeed. The instruction "do the bare minimum" shocks people – we're used to hearing we need to do more! But stop and think: if you do just the things that will lead to your success, the other activities are really a waste of your energy.

Be careful here! You want to know and do the bare minimum activities needed to achieve the success you want, not simply to do the bare minimum activity, full stop! The first is wise, the latter is just lazy.

Doing the bare minimum to succeed makes sense. The issue then becomes knowing exactly what it is you need to do to succeed.

So, for the first month of this year:

1. Identify your key activities: What works best for you to move you toward your goal? (This might be different than the activities of your associates.)
    
2. Schedule these activities into your calendar: Ensuring they become the central activities you begin and complete.
    
3. Don't get sucked into thinking that all ideas are helpful to your pursuit: No matter how sensible it might seem, if it doesn't specifically contribute to your end goal, quickly move on. Otherwise, you're just getting distracted.

Focus your time on doing those things that will lead to your success sooner so you can get the money you need, the clients you want, and more time to do what you love!

To your wild success in 2012,
Paul

Copyright Paul Kingsman 2012
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As a motivational speaker and executive coach, Paul Kingsman helps financial services professionals successfully grow their businesses by taking practical daily steps to achieve outstanding long-term results. Combining his experiences as an Olympic medalist and his background as an adviser, Paul understands how to stay focused over the long haul, as well as the unique business challenges faced by advisers. Through his professional speaking and executive coaching he equips them to overcome distractions so they can get the money they need, the clients they want, and the time to do what they love.

To find out more about how Paul can equip you or your team to achieve outstanding results, visit paulkingsman.com/coaching or email him at Paul@PaulKingsman.com

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