Traction Stops When Action Stops

Can you be an effective entrepreneur in only 60 minutes? YES!

What is this post? When I started coaching entrepreneurs the conflicting priorities they had starting, building and running a business caused me to come up with this one question to unblock them. “If you only had 60 minutes this week to focus on your business. What would you do?”

In this week’s post I go over one of the toughest problem you’ll encounter, maintaining traction.

Traction Stops When Action Stops

When was the last time you had a week when you felt you couldn’t gain traction. This was one of those weeks for me where the bright-eyed goals from Monday continued to slip into Thursday. And, when Friday finally arrived it felt as though little traction had been made towards the goals of the week.

When Friday arrived I found myself at a crossroads, could I find a way to pull something out of the hat for the week and feel as though I’ve accomplished part of my goal or should I throw in my hat for the week and start again next week.

I’m not alone in experiencing the frustration of this type of action crossroad. These types of experiences come to all of us, they are temporary, but at the time we’re unsure how long the temporary frustration will last.

As I sat contemplating these feelings over coffee I realized: Traction Stops When Action Stops.

Three Steps To Right Action

With this insight I was in a better mental state to get started, but I also realized I wasn’t going to be able to finish all the goals I had from earlier in the week. I needed a way to prioritize and hold myself accountable in order to continue the traction I had been making over the past several weeks. I needed to take action, but not any action. I need to take Right Action.

Many times when we want to make progress we start taking immediate action because action feels like progress, but this isn’t right. Action is doing something. Progress is forward motion toward your destination.

When I was experiencing the conflicting emotions from a lack of traction I used these three steps to immediately move into action on my goals.

• The first step, start by looking at your Why. (Read more here on how to Clarify Your Why.)

• The second step, determine if the action you are about to take supports your Why. (Read more here on how to Align Your What And What.)

  • If the action supports your Why, then do the next step otherwise look again at your action.

• The third step, put an Accountability Practice in place to be sure you do it.

  • An Accountability Practice is a process you setup to ensure you take an action. These might include setting aside time in your calendar to work on your goal, setting a reminder to start at a specific time, etc.

We all experience those hours, days and weeks where traction seems to be slipping away. It’s times like this when we need to leverage techniques that will help us make progress and traction towards our goals.