One of the great stories in business was when the Kimberly Clark company decided to sell off all of it’s paper mills and focus on their consumer products in the 1971. 

All of business told them that they were absolutely crazy.   The result was a focus that allowed them to chase after, catch, and trounce their largest competitor.  Procter and Gamble.  Within a short time period they were so profitable they were able to buy back their paper mills at a fraction of what they sold them for.

Image that.  Sell you manufacturing capabilities.  What kind of crazy person does that?  What has that got to do with you, the average Joe?

If you are average (and thank heavens for average) then you spent 70% of your waking hours last year consuming information.

That is right.  That is 11.8 hours a day of reading, viewing, or listening to what our world calls “content.”  If you were to convert all that information into words it would amount to over 100,000 words a day.   That is about 3 books a day with each containing 150 pages.  This information comes to us from a University of California, San Diego study that indicates we are consuming about three times the information today that we did in 1980.

So are YOU any smarter?   Or are you any smarter than those in 1980?

The information and opportunties continue to roll in front of us.  Like a personal trainer on the first Monday of January, the opportunities are awesome.

So what is keeping you from having a Happy New Year?

Bandwidth.

Bandwidth.

A fresh new canvas of another 12 months and you are there with all those plans lined up and ready to go.  Do you want to make a REAL change in your world?

Then don’t START doing things but first STOP doing things.

Michael Porter of Harvard said that planning is all about what you are going to stop doing.

Since the 24 hour a day thing is fixed; you have to ask how you are going to get more done in the coming year.  The answer is to stop doing things that are not important.  Then move that time and resource over to that which you want to focus on.

Example: Weight loss

If you are like me you need to loss some tonage.  I can start working out more frequently, or more intensely.

OR, I can stop drinking milk and replace that water.  I can stop with the carbs and move to green vegtables.

Example:

I need to increase my sales and revenue.

I have to stop surfing the internet, turn off the TV, consuming my 11.8 hours of content each day and focus on creating new customer relationships.

We think that the down of the economy has pulled out all the fat and excess.  I don’t think so.  As individual business people we can still re-evaluate what we are doing and STOP doing things that don’t really have an impact.

Answer this question. . . .

What do you need to STOP doing to move to the next level?

So write the answer down. . . stop doing it . . . and have a Happy New Year.