Mastering distraction

There is a better way to focus your time on what you value the most - and say no to the rest. It begins with a mere 18 Minutes.
By Marla Tabaka | Sep 26, 2011
Do you ever get to the end of a busyday only to realize that next to nothing has been taken off of your “to do” list? What if you could take back
some of the hours in your day? What would you do differently? The problem is that manybusiness owners don’t know what to do about their lack of
productivity. Or, like everything else, they put off their commitment to get things under control.
In 18 MINUTES: Find Your Focus, MasterDistraction, and Get the Right Things Done, author Peter Bregman delivers a series of quick-hitting
chapters that teach us how to navigate through the never-ending chatter of emails, text messages, phonecalls, and endless meetings that prevent us
from focusing our time on those things that really matter.
Today, Peter has answered some of my questions here at The Successful Soloist and he will bejoining me for an in-depth interview on The Million
Dollar Mindset at 2pm ET. Make sure to join us there or download the podcast at a later date.
Q. In 18 Minutes you encourage your readers to focuson things that matter to them; things that have specific meaning. You suggest exploring what
matters, what’s working well, what we feel neutral about, and what alienates us. What choices do you feel asolopreneur has if certain aspects of
managing his business don’t appeal to him?
A. One of the great advantages to being a solopreneur is the ability to structure the business to match - almostperfectly - what I call the 4 elements:
the particular strengths, weaknesses, differences, and passions of the solopreneur. And with the accessibility and availability of outsourcing, that’s
never beeneasier. The first thing to do if an aspect of your business doesn’t appeal to you is to ask whether it’s essential to the business. If it’s not -
or if you can change the business to make it less...