Stop Start or maintaining progress?

As we head into the holiday period it is easy to relax and say make excuses for not making progress towards our worthy ideal.

Therefore this week I decided to explore ways to maintain momentum.

STEPS TO MAINTAIN MOMENTUM

1. Keep the vision and goals out front.

You need to have a burning vision, a reason why you are going to work your business, a reason why you are going to make the next approach and a reason why you will place that next ad for your web site or product. Take this vision and keep it out front. Keep it where you will see it every day, where it will always beyond your mind. Write it down, visualize it and gather photos that remind you of your vision.

2. Remind team members about the vision.

Don’t just keep the vision in front of yourself, keep the vision out front of your whole team, so that everyone knows where they are going, and every knows WHY they are going in that direction. Continually recasting the vision for your team will be an important part of your maintaining momentum.

3. Develop consistency in your efforts.

You need to be continuously moving. Don’t get some momentum going and then think you can stop and your business will grow on its own. You’ve clearly been doing something right to create momentum – so don’t stop doing those things. Set your self a pace that you can keep consistently. Determine what activities you need to do to reach your goals and commit to daily action on those activities.

If you are calling potential customers, determine a number of approach calls that you can make each day and determine a number of follow up calls you can make each day. Then follow through on that commitment. How often will you post to your blog? How often will you work out? Whatever area you have momentum in, determine the activities you need to do on a daily basis; Then don’t stop. You won’t need to work as hard as you did when you were creating the momentum, but you will have to work much more consistently.

4. Beware of the sprint/stop syndrome.

One problem people often face when they create momentum is that they fall into the sprint/stop syndrome. This is when people go break neck speed towards their goals for short time and then stop. This is acting like the hare from the “Tortoise and the Hare fable”. In that fable the Tortoise wins the race by continually moving forward, beating out the Hare who does a sprint/stop style of race.

There are many motivations for this sort of attitude. People may stop because they want to reward themselves, so they take a week off or go on a vacation; they may stop because they get stressed out and need a break; they may collapse from exhaustion; or they may get so many sales they have to spend a week catching up on paperwork that got behind. All of these are equally dangerous. In each case you have broken the consistency of action and put your momentum in jeopardy. Sure it may seem like you are still acting, that paperwork needed to be done after all, right? Even in this case you are moving away from action that moves your business forward and are focusing on action that only maintains the current position.

5. Creating balance in your life.

Working hard and consistent at your business, but don’t burn yourself out. Creating balance will allow you to maintain your energy. Allow time for personal development; allow time for spiritual growth, and make sure you stay physically active. Develop a pace to life, one that is aggressive and forward moving, but one that you can maintain for long periods of time without needing to collapse or take a significant rest. It is good to rest, but take short rests, take a little time here and there, at most a day here and a day there, but you shouldn’t need to be taking days off to recover from you pace – if you do, you’ve been working too hard.

Momentum can be your best friend as you work towards personal or business goals. There are deliberate steps you can take towards building momentum and maintaining it. Now get started!