Completing Tasks

10th July 2014

Are you ever guilty of not taking things as far as you should or can? In other words do you allow yourself excuses for not finishing things because you are able to blame others for not doing what they should be doing?

Recently I had a very interesting coaching session with one of my clients who was extremely frustrated because he couldn’t seem to move things forward to where he wanted them to be. So first of all we needed to identify what it was that was stopping him from delegating more, and thereby freeing up time to achieve his targets. It quickly became evident that there were three key things which had to be sorted out, and the rest would then fall into place. One was to chase up on an outstanding debt, second was to employ an extra person in his workforce, and the third was to automate a system which would speed up invoicing and free up time. In each case he had initiated actions, but none of them had been properly pursued to their conclusion, and as a result they were all constantly on his mind, and that was stopping him from fully concentrating on anything else. The trouble is, when you have key things like this hanging over you, you tend to flit from one thing to the next, not completing anything, and gradually becoming more and more frustrated.

So the key is to take these big issues to a conclusion or, at the very least, as far as you can, and make sure you have done everything possible to sort them out. Don’t just send an email or make a call and wait for something to happen, allowing the fact that they didn’t reply to be an excuse for you not to take things further. Keep on calling, keep emailing, look into other options ,and ensure that you leave nothing undone which could be done. That way, at least you can rest assured, that whatever the outcome, you have covered every aspect you could to achieve your aims.

As I said to my client, when I next call you, ask yourself if you can honestly tell me if there is anything more you could have done. If the answer is yes, do it and you will feel a lot happier.

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