Are You Micromanaging Yourself?

Monday, June 18, 2007 at 10:36am by Gina Laverde in Operations

Oh, to be more organized� it�s one of my greatest challenges. I dream if a day when everything in my office has a space, and every project has a set time. But, thankfully I�m a hippie at heart — because if I spent all day organizing, I may not get any work done.

How do you balance the need for organization and planning with the practical need to get stuff done? If you�re running a one-preneur show, like many of us, you�ve got to be the boss, the secretary and the janitor at the same time. And, it�s so easy to get caught up in the paper work and theories.

Overanalyzing your every business move can be a huge disservice to your company. The fact that you are still young and slightly in-experienced, gives your business the fresh face that the world needs. We are all expecting you to make SOME mistakes. So lighten-up man!

Yeah, right! Even good or simple advice is usually easier said than done. When you�ve backed yourself into a corner, it�s kind of hard to think about changing your ways. So, you must always start slowly and with the most important concept.

When I find myself doing too much research or color coding my pens, or some other anal retentive task�I attempt to remove the individual distraction. For example: I have hand-written charts of each section of my magazine that include themes, content, art and my personal notes. I had more charts than pages of the zine. If I wanted to make actual progress I needed to trash the charts. And I did. And, it was hard because I felt like I needed the safety net (the reassurance that I was doing it correctly).

But, we need to replace our old ways with new ones, or we�ll be lost. I replaced my charts with a mock magazine. Why didn�t I think of this in the first place? I�ve worked in the magazine industry. Maybe it was my need to be ultra different from my previous employers. Take a look at some of the protocol used by your previous employers. Have they taught you any short cuts?

You probably can�t stop yourself from thinking about your business, so it�s easy to overanalyze and want to achieve perfection. But thoughts do not make a business. Analysis does not make a business. Action makes a successful business.

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6 Comments

Sharat Thakur

June 18th, 2007 at 10:51 am

Very true. In pursuit of ensuring that whatever action we are going to take, we tend to go overboard with the time spent in planning. Eventually we dont have enough time to implement what we had planned. But, when I say so, it is also important to note that if we are not sure of where we are heading, then our actions wont achieve anything. So, basically we need to maintain a right balance between time spent in planning and implementing.

Mark Bowness

June 18th, 2007 at 11:31 am

Yeah really good. It is that place of finding a balance between having some structure but not too much structure that you cant be free and creative. If anyone has any good tips of their planning it would be good to hear, whatever industries they are in.

David Askaripour

June 18th, 2007 at 2:14 pm

Great points, Gina. I feel ya: we need to focus on action and not get too caught up in the spell of over-analyzing and thinking too much about organization, efficiency, and such. BUT… one needs to understand and accept that every starts in our minds. Our daily routines and the way we run our businesses will be direct reflections of 1.) our thoughts and 2.) our past experiences stored in our minds. Organization and efficiency must first be worked out in the mind — we need to be thinking that way constantly — and everything else (in the material world) will fall into place. People get caught up trying to do the exact opposite: changing the material world hoping to change the mental (mind) world. That’s when you begin to lose time. Great article

lawrence

June 18th, 2007 at 3:52 pm

everybody has their own style of working, you know

i say whatever is working for you - stick to it, and more power to you

each extremes has it’s poisons…so it’s just more or less, finding your own, unique balance

managing yourself is good, micro-managing yourself can be better…but beyond that, that’s just borderline craziness now

Shane

June 19th, 2007 at 2:22 am

When I’m starting something new I like to apply the 50/50 rule and do a lot of planning.

The goal is to move towards the 80/20 rule and get a lot more “doing” done. Once you’ve got enough experience, you can slide right into 90/10 pretty easily.