The SUCCESS TRAPS: Stop Thinking About "NEXT" & Find Excellence "NOW"

The SUCCESS TRAPS: Stop Thinking About “NEXT” & Find Excellence “NOW”

When you’re on the journey to success, either personally or in business, it’s natural to always be thinking about “NEXT”. For example, you just received a promotion and you’re thinking about how to get to the next level. Maybe you just closed a big sale so you’re thinking about finding the next one. That’s pretty normal and we all do it, but it’s also a “success trap”.

The tendency when we think about NEXT is to put NOW behind us. That sale is done or a goal achieved. Focusing on the future sometimes means that we treat the “Nows” as ancient history that don’t really need our full attention. The result is that we can fail to apply real excellence to the tasks before us.

Let’s put this in real terms. Suppose a company hires me to deliver a training program for them for a fee of X. Great, that’s now a “done deal” and the money will definitely be paid to me. But of course I will need income after this project so I am already focusing my mind and attention on finding the “Next” deal (more so than planning how to make the current training program a real success). What I should be focusing on (at least 90%) is completing the task at hand – the training project I just closed – with exceptional excellence and creating an exceptionally satisfied customer.

I’ve always tried to run my business this way, believing that if I did a great job at what I was doing today then the tomorrows would take care of themselves. Some years ago in a job interview, a hiring manager asked me that standard questioin, “Where do you want to be in 5 years?” My answer, which confused him no end, was “I have absolutely no idea!”.

“Don’t you have a career plan?”, he asked.

“My career plan”, I answered, “is to be exceptionally successful at the job I’m hired to do today. If I do that I’m confident that there will be no shortage of career opportunities for me in 5 years.”

The Bottom Line: Your future successes are more the result of making your “Nows” successful than worrying about what comes after them.

Today’s Pix: Violent summer thunderstorms passed thru New Hampshire yesterday in the early evening, but as the skies cleared and last rays of sun appeared, the departing thunderheads illuminated …