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The Silent Productivity Killer Nobody Talks About
The solution is not a hack
Prolific writers and successful salespeople share one thing in common. They avoid a problem that plagues the masses of dreamers who promise, plan and prepare but never produce.
Curbing this behavior will elevate your productivity. Breaking this habit is difficult, but I’ll share an exercise later that will ease the transformation.
The “Getting Ready” plague
In my first sales job, my manager tasked me with cold calling one-hundred leads each morning. The fastest guys finished in an hour. It took me three to four hours.
Before my first call, I went through a getting ready ritual. I categorized the stack of leads by industry and then alphabetized them by name. This effort resulted in no added benefit. The sole purpose was to put off an uncomfortable task. Of course, back then I had convinced myself this was a necessary step to complete before jumping into the real work.
A month into my sales job, my manager sent me to a seminar. The speaker said something that caught my attention. It was a lesson I’ve carried with me sixteen years later. I’ll admit, I forget it or push it aside at times. But it’s one of those lessons you cannot unlearn, and it nags at you if you ignore it.
