A New Restaurant

In his Planning, Startups, Stories blog, Tim Berry brought up a point that I had made several weeks ago, but for a different reason.  I wrote that you should limit the number of things listed in your business plan as priorities because listing too many could be seen by investors as having a lack of focus.  If you can’t target in on a few things that you absolutely want or need to accomplish, you will allow yourself to be spread too thin.  You ability to do a great job on any single thing is reduced.

Investors want to see that you are focused on just a few things, and that you can do them well.  There are only so many hours in a day.  If you have 10-15 things on your list that you say are very important to you, what are the chances that you will really get them all done?  It’s a recipe for failure, or at the very least, considerable frustration.

Which leads to Tim Berry’s point; the more priorities you have, the less chance that you will actually implement any of your priorities.  He writes that in his experience there is an inverse relationship between the number of priorities and implementation.

Part of the problem is being overwhelmed with the amount of things to do, but part of it is lack of focus.  People with too many things on their priority list may have a hard time focusing, and a hard time deciding what is really important.  That lack of focus makes it difficult to concentrate on any one task, so you jump from one item to the next, not getting anything completed.

Focus in on no more than 3-5 priority items.  Commit yourself to completing those items, and doing it well.  Once those items are done, then you can refocus on new items.  Eventually you will get all of the things done that were on your original priority list, but that will not happen if you try to take them all on at once.

There is an old saying that goes, “How do you eat an elephant? One bite at a time.”  You can get a lot done if you do not try to bite off too much at one time.  Take smaller bites and make sure you chew it well.