Are you a chronic procrastinator?

An unproductive business owner can weaken a business and its potential to grow

 One of the important qualities a business owner needs to have is to be decisive and resolute. It means being able to come up with decisions confidently and relatively quick, as compared to sitting on them for an indefinite period of time. It also means not having a tendency to change minds especially when it’s already too late.

Efficiency in making decisions and acting upon them are important because it means that the response time is faster, problems are resolved earlier, and as a result, the business can adjust to new circumstances without raising more complications.

Being decisive and mentally strong also increases your authority as a leader, earning you your team’s respect and allowing you to set a good example for them to follow.

On the other hand, a chronic procrastinator will find being decisive a great challenge. When faced with a hard-hitting decision, an indecisive leader might delay his answer as long as possible or avoid making the choice altogether.

As a Business Coach, my goal is to train you into becoming a more efficient and smart leader, and to achieve that, one of the tasks is to help you become more decisive and efficient.

Indecision is a harmful disease

 Before we start working on changing your attitude on decision-making, we need to understand the factors that lead to indecision. There are several reasons why you might procrastinate, but one of the most common reasons is analysis paralysis. The things is that when leaders overanalyse a problem, the harder it becomes to find a solution, which causes the delay to make a suitable response. They end up running over the same options, hoping for some new information to appear, or toggle between two choices, unable to decide which is better.

So what is the antidote for indecision and procrastination?

Understand that it’s not always about perfection

 Winston Churchill once said that perfection is the enemy of progress. What often holds us back from making a decision is the obsession towards perfection. In any situation, we want to choose the “perfect” route, the one with heaps of gains and no downsides. Unfortunately, such choices aren’t realistic, so we’re left instead with a handful of alternatives that aren’t particularly good or bad.

To really resolve the situation, you’ll need to let go of any notions of perfectionism that could cloud your judgment and decision-making capabilities. Understand that business decisions are fundamentally flawed, and that the most that can do is find a reasonable, rational path to coming up with a fix.

Start working on something to move forwards quickly

 You can’t always finalize your decision right away, so in the meantime, commit to making some kind of progress with your decision. For instance, if you can’t decide what activities you want to carry out in an upcoming event, write down a handful of potential ideas as early as possible. This gives you a chance to follow your instincts and delay the finality of your decision, but at the same time it will also motivate you to take a step closer to that crucial objective.

This may not be ideal when an urgent decision is needed, but if you have some time to play with, it will offer a creative spin on your usual procrastinating habits.

Don’t focus too much on the worst-case scenario

 Our brains are hard-wired to overemphasize the negative consequences of our actions. This prevents us from taking huge risks because we always tend to anticipate a bad outcome.

As a business owner, blowing up your expectation of risk can make you worry unreasonably about how your decision might be mistaken no matter what choice you make. Recognizing this, you might try to compensate for your disproportionate anticipation, and normalize the way you think.

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