Ordinary things consistently done, produce extraordinary results.

I don't know about you, but I'm tired of reading articles that tout the latest and greatest shortcut or gimmick that will supposedly help me achieve extraordinary results. It seems like everywhere I turn, there's another self-proclaimed "expert" promising to teach me how to do things the easy way. But if it were that easy, wouldn't everyone be doing it? The truth is, there are no shortcuts to success. It takes hard work and dedication to achieve lasting results. But that doesn't mean you can't make things a little easier on yourself. You can set yourself up for extraordinary success by doing ordinary things consistently.

Think about this for a second. If you improve a process in your business by 1% a week for a year and build on that success every week, your improvement will be 138% better than where you started. 

I know this sounds like a huge number, and it's just math. 

The question is, why don't we do this?

When I ask this question, the answer I most often here is the world seems to conspire against me. I know I should be working on actions that will move us forward, and it seems I keep getting pulled into the weeds.

I get it. We spend way too much time in our business fighting fires. Instead of taking care of issues when they arise, we put them to the side. This works for a little while, and when too many things are put to the side, they often become emergencies. 

We are often too tired to work on 1% projects because we've been fighting fires. If you have a way of making this easier, then you might find the fires get smaller and might even totally disappear. 

How can we combat what gets in our way?

Have you ever noticed that it's hard to get anything meaningful done when you don't have a written daily plan? It's even harder to have a meaningful daily plan when you haven't thought about what the important things are for your business and written them down.

That's why I love personal management programs. The one we use here is ClickUp, and there are dozens out there. The second thing we do is work with the planning method called OKRs. This forces us to focus on one or two major projects and have a process for tracking what we're doing at least weekly towards moving the needle on the objectives we want to accomplish.

Finally, there's a new piece I've added. This one change has made me about twice as productive as before. We've added a program called Harvest that integrates with ClickUp and helps me track where I spend my time. Because it's combined with ClickUp, the friction for using the program is small.

Time blocking is something I hate, and I usually won't do it.

OK, Josh, that program Harvest sounds like time-blocking. I hate time-blocking, and I've never been able to do it.

I agree. Every time I've tried to do time blocking with paper and pencil, it's not worked. Likewise, whenever I've tried time blocking with a computer program outside an integrated solution, it's not worked. The one that is working is when I found an integrated solution with low overhead.

By low overhead, I mean that it takes little to no extra effort to track how I spend my time. And, when I started tracking my time, life got more effective, and I'm accomplishing way more. I can even push the ball forward at least 1% a week.

I keep looking forward, and it just seems there's so much to do I don't know why I even bother.

Here's another problem I often see. Business owners and I, including myself here, have a bad habit. We only look forward to seeing what we need to do in the future. 

Please stop doing only that. Instead, I want you to at least monthly and, even better, a weekly look back to see what you've accomplished. This is another reason to use time tracking as one of your tools to keep moving forward. You'll be amazed at how far you've come when you look backward and have been improving by 1% per week.

Success breeds success. The more you improve, the more you want to improve. So you'll find that fighting the alligators in your swamp decreases, and you'll have more time to work on that 1% project.

Here's an easy place to start.

This is always that hard thing. Often, I don't know where to start and need a nudge. Here's yours.

1. To move things forward, understand it's about consistency; the more consistent you are, the easier it is.
2. Find a way to keep track of your actions to move the ball forward. I encourage you to think about using ClickUp and Harvest for this project.
3. Make sure you look backward at least once a month to track your progress. More often than not, you'll be thrilled with what you've accomplished. If not, you'll see where the bottlenecks are occurring.

These simple tips will help you make more progress than you thought possible. And, you might find that you stop having all those problems that keep you from moving forward.

What do you think about making a 1% improvement a week? Just hit return and let me know.

P.S. I know this is pretty far in the future. But I'm doing a webinar on November 11th at 2 PM EDT, where I will show you ways to double your profits in one year. I call this program More Cash, More Fun. I hope you join me in this free web class. If you would like to reserve your place, click here.