How do you remain present while running a business?
When you are pulled in every direction, it’s challenging to remain fully engaged in the present.
We’ve compiled a list of 5 strategies for remaining present. Let’s discuss:
- How to address the symptoms of distractedness
- The number one step you can take in addressing the root cause of an absent mind.
How Distractedness Affects Our Lives
Professional Struggles:
Dropped correspondences. Forgotten meetings. Missed opportunities. Things fall through the cracks when we struggle to remain present while running our business.
Multitasking is an accepted way of life for entrepreneurs. But the negative effects of multitasking can sabotage your professional growth.
Personal Struggles:
Even when we close our laptops and fire up the grill with friends, an absent mind can derail a night’s enjoyment.
Our relationships flourish when we are present and engaged. Yet all too often, we spend our Saturday afternoons with Monday morning meetings running laps through our heads. If we leave this problem unchecked, we run the risk of missing out on meaningful moments in our lives.
Five Strategies for Remaining Present:
1. Engage Using All Your Senses
Engage with your environment by consciously observing how your senses interact with your environment. Is there a smell in the air? What is catching your eye? How does something taste or feel?
Use your senses to ground yourself in the present and direct yourself back towards the task at hand.
2. Practice Active Listening
Ground yourself in your interactions by actively engaging with the conversation. Ask questions, show your understanding, maintain eye contact, and validate what others are saying.
Active listening requires you to fully engage as you make note of what others are saying, how they are saying it, and the logical path their ideas are following.
Active listening provides two benefits:
- The increased stimuli and back and forth makes it easier for you to stay engaged.
- Your teammates receive your best effort because you are engaged with details and striving to understand.
3. Write Things Out of Your Head
Our minds are not built to store all of the to-dos and details connected to our busy modern lives.
Like an overheating computer trying to run too many programs at once, your mind cannot perform optimally when it is keeping tabs on too many things at once.
When a new to-do or thought comes to mind, write it down. Get it out of your brain and onto a list.
Remove the distraction of extraneous thoughts and give your brain the space to do its best work on the current task.
Your list could be digital, but writing ideas out on paper is a valuable habit. We like Strategic Coach’s “being present” exercise. This exercise recenters your thoughts and helps you remain present while running your business.
4. Set Aside Time to be Present
Take time to be present for yourself and present for others.
Present for yourself: Find moments throughout the day to recenter yourself and practice mindfulness. Before you go into a meeting, take a moment to breathe, center your thoughts, and consider what goals you want to achieve in the meeting. Are there specific questions you want to ask? Updates you need?
Present for others: Do you feel like you are not giving your team your best? Healthy team communication is essential. Set aside specific windows of time dedicated exclusively to hearing members’ status reports and concerns. Take this time to provide them with direct feedback.
When you set a clear and singular objective for a time window, you are able to keep your objective in mind and remain faithful to it.
5. Address the Root Cause: Embrace Delegation
We can build habits that help you remain present while running your business, but they only deal with the symptoms of a distracted mind.
We need to address the core of the issue – excessive workload. Entrepreneurs take on an extraordinarily high number of responsibilities. When we are pulled in every direction, it becomes nearly impossible to give individual tasks our best effort
The solution to this problem? Delegation.
Many entrepreneurs struggle with delegation. Nonetheless, exceptional leaders understand they should not do everything themselves. We can dramatically improve our wellbeing, performance, and clarity of thought by outsourcing portions of our day-to-day responsibilities.
Imagine having an outlet where you could offload tasks and feel confident they will be reliably and efficiently completed. Picture the clarity of thought–the mental freedom to create a vision for your future, complete tasks only you can do, and forge valuable relationships.
Finally, you could fully engage with the present.
Here’s the best part. That solution already exists…
You can build a team of reliable and driven individuals who are ready to pursue your goals alongside you.
Success Stories: How We Have Helped Entrepreneurs Like You
Ready to build your team? The best place to start is with your number two – your assistant. Our Superpowers Executive Assistants help you gain leverage on your time and achieve a present mind.
Here are a few examples of how our Assistants are making a difference:
1. Our Superpowers Assistant, Kassie, has “saved hours a day” for her client, Maryna. Maryna sends numerous emails daily, and it is easy to confuse different clients. Kassie noticed this issue and proactively suggested handling starting-point drafts for emails. Now, Maryna can open up her laptop, personalize any final details, and have the emails sent out – no confusion about the subject, what to say, or who is receiving the email. This practice has made the emailing process exponentially more efficient and free from error.
2. Another client of ours, Chad Gill, recounted the peace of mind he has found because of his Superpowers Assistant, Emily. She has organized and centralized everything he needs to do and know about:
“I know the comfort of lying in bed at night knowing that my tomorrow is planned out. And getting up in the morning knowing, I might not remember everything I’m supposed to do today, but I can go to a place where I will, and it’s all right there, and it’s all manageable, and it’s going work.” – Chad Gill
3. Ben Hernandez, another Superpowers client, has discovered clarity of thought and a sense of freedom because of his Assistant, Amber. “Absolutely, I think that I have gained freedom. The freedom of headspace of knowing that I’m not going to go home at night and log on at 9 pm and go through 150 to 200 emails. [It] has been unbelievably helpful.” -Ben Hernandez
Next Steps
What do you need to consider when onboarding your right-fit assistant? We put together an article on determining if your assistant is right for you.
If you’d like to sit down one-on-one and have a personalized talk about your specific needs, book a discovery call today. We are happy to talk through the process with you!
