I’ve noticed a common theme among the business owners that seem to plateau.
They get to a certain level and never seem to break through.
It could be the economy, competition, or lack of skilled workers.
However, I think it is something much simpler.
The will power the small business owner has to break out of their comfort zone and to do the next thing necessary so that they may take their business to the next level.
We often think of willpower as this endless resource that keeps our fitness in check, but it really seems to be a depletable resource that we squander each day.
Some of the earliest evidence of this effect came from the lab of Roy Baumeister.
In one early study, he brought subjects into a room filled with the aroma of fresh-baked cookies.
The table before them held a plate of the cookies and a bowl of radishes. Some subjects were asked to sample the cookies, while others were asked to eat the radishes.
Afterward, they were given 30 minutes to complete a difficult geometric puzzle.
Baumeister and his colleagues found that people who ate radishes (and therefore resisted the yummy cookies) gave up on the puzzle after about 8 minutes, while the lucky cookie-eaters persevered for nearly 19 minutes, on average.
Drawing on willpower to resist the cookies, it seemed, drained the subjects’ self-control for subsequent situations.This is the same reason most grocery stores will arrange their layout where you buy your fruits and veggies first and ice cream and junk food last. You have already depleted your willpower buying carrots and kale, so you feel like you’ve been good and deserve a little cookies-n-cream.
And no, this does not mean eating cookies and ice cream will make you a millionaire:).
If your willpower is something that can get used up, you need to reserve it for your most important tasks.
Don’t:
- Check your email first thing in the morning. It is important, but not a priority.
- Wait until the end of the day to tackle a hard task. Knock it out first thing in the morning, i.e. eat that frog. If you don’t know what that means you should Google it.
- Deal with a lot of basic data processing tasks or errand running in the first half of your day.
Do:
- Automate routine decisions, so you don’t waste willpower on it. For example, Steve Jobs (yes, I’m sick of talking about him too) only wore a black turtleneck and blue jeans, he didn’t have to think about what he was going to wear.
- Block out 90-minute segments early in your day to make important decisions that will grow your business.
- Do your marketing and sales activities early in the week, because as the week eats away at your willpower, those sales call scheduled for Thursday will get moved to next week.
If you don’t start saving your willpower for the highest priority items in your business, you will be stuck eating radishes for a long time.
