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In my last post about weaknesses I mentioned that one of my weaknesses was that I’m easily distracted. Like the attention span of a mosquito after drinking a meth user’s blood. Following the outline there I know it and acknowledged it as a weakness, now it is time to combat it.
It is easy to be distracted in today’s world: Twitter, Facebook, RSS Feeds, Push notices on your phone, text messages, co-workers asking questions etc. I read a book a while back called Bit Literacy which speaks about how our minds handle incoming “bits” of data. The conclusion is that the way to handle information overload (distractions) is to manage your incoming streams, and minimize the amount of data coming in and the times you check it.
To cut back on my incoming deluge I unfollowed about 40 twitter folks, dropped about 1/4 of the RSS feeds in my google reader, turned off most of the push notices on my iPhone, and set limited times to check other things on the web.
Additionally there are certain things in any sales job that have to be done but aren’t “sales” jobs. They’re busy work.
I don’t feel comfortable as a salesman not having my email notifications on – don’t want to miss an important timely email – or my phone obviously, but those are distractions that are part of the job. Answering non sales emails, dealing with personal issues, etc. As noted here at SalesMarks.com: scheduling this time allows you to maximize your selling potential by doing the selling while you can.
Time management is a constant battle for me and minimizing distractions can only help towards improving my practices there.
What steps are you taking to minimize a weakness?
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