Do you ever find yourself getting distracted when working on your business? You’re responsible for what seems like a million things, and you’ve only got so much time — where do you start?
In my career, I’ve learned that the most successful people are skilled at shifting their attention at the right times in order to focus on the right things. They seem to understand how to learn about, improve upon, and create a mastery of the most important aspects of their lives — including their businesses.
These people know who they are. They understand their impact on their business. They’re focused on improving and developing themselves by looking backward just enough. They reflect just long enough to understand what may not have worked in the past so that they can create a better future.
It’s an act of understanding how to manage one’s thinking and one’s doing into three distinct categories: transactional, transitional, and transformative thinking.
I call this the principle of the 3 Ts.
Transactional Thinking
Transactional thinking is granular. It’s repetitive. It’s your intuitive actions that are focused on short-term accomplishments. If you’re in transactional mode, you’re grinding your way in the business.
This is really all about you or your team’s daily execution in the business. This doesn’t mean mindlessness, though. What separates average contributors from top contributors is the overall quality and results of their execution.
It’s also, of course, in finding ways of working smarter vs. harder. Reduce the number of activities you’re giving attention to and reallocate that energy to where you can (individually and collectively) create the highest level of impact.
Be aware of how you’re prioritizing and applying your overall efforts and energy to maximize impact. Are you doing a lot of work but achieving very few results? Then you need to reevaluate how you’re spending your time.
Transitional Thinking
Transitional thinking is that struggle spot where you’re beginning to move away from your repetitive, intuitive actions and closer towards your ideal, future self.
You have the awareness that you need to evolve — to learn, improve, and grow — but you’re still in the middle of figuring it out. When you’re in the midst of transitional thinking, it’s easy to find yourself consumed by negative thoughts. To feel defeated. Or to go back to the status quo. This is draining not only to you, but to others around you.
But you need to stay the course. You are changing. You are improving. And you’re almost there. Keep going. Tell yourself that though you may have tried something and failed, that you’re still going to seek three other solutions to try. Tell yourself that while time constraints are always an issue, that you’re going to prioritize time to try these new things. You’re going to take a breath, give yourself some credit for actually trying, and come back to it with a new mindset and try it all over again.
Commit to being in transition. You’re moving toward transformational results. Never forget: Your doing follows your thinking.
Transformative Thinking
Transformative thinking is when your actions ultimately lead to your ideal personal, professional, and financial state of being. You’re focused on the things that will create the highest level of impact in your life and in your business. You’re no longer distracted by the little things. Your perspective has changed. And so have you.
Simply put, you see yourself as you want to — it’s the ideal picture of your future self, and every ounce of energy you exert is striving to make that happen.
You’ve mastered your contributions in your work, you’ve demonstrated your operational efficiency and effectiveness, and you’re finally accomplishing your goals. You’ve transformed.
But it’s not over yet. The ultimate level of transformation is by investing in others around you. You’ve found people in your life or in your organization who would benefit from your mentorship, and you’re actively working to help them improve themselves and their thinking so that they can in turn do it for others.
Transformative thinking is all about paying it forward, because you finally understand how to manifest your vision of success — through picturing, defining, and acting on those things that truly matter to you, and you want others to experience the same.
10X-ing your business takes more than the right operational process. It takes the right thinking. If you want to learn more key business concepts for achieving your vision of success, attend our next 10X360 event! Invest in yourself. Invest in your future. Everything is possible. Take that first brave step.
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