One of my favorite TV shows is Bones. It’s funny. It’s smart (at least to me) and it’s entertaining. I was preparing to write today’s post when I thought of something that should work as a good metaphor.
On the show the characters often examine a human skeleton to figure out the story of the murder in the bones. To do this the team looks at the overall skeleton with their naked eye. They also look at things in more detail with crazy science-y microscopes.
I’m sure the show is mostly fiction, but I think we can pull something out as far as life and business from the way they examine those bones.
In our lives we spend too much time with the microscope. We look at things in too much detail. We also perform our work in tasks that are too small.
Of course, these small tasks and details are important. Most of them do have to be performed in order to get things done, but some of us completely ignore the work that has to be done with the naked eye. We don’t look at the high level, big picture part of life and work nearly enough.
Early Days Of GBW
When I first started writing for other clients I would focus about 90% of my time on writing. In the GBW world, this is working with a microscope. We’re heads down at the laptop doing research on one blog post and typing away prose that will be interesting to the target reader.
To grow the business I would simply take on more clients and keep my head down. I would write to capacity and then I would write some more. What I found out is that this wasn’t sustainable. And when I look back on those days the business really wasn’t growing and really had no direction.
So I was kind of forced to take a more naked-eye look at things. I had to step back a few magnifications and look at the business as if it were a skeleton on the table and I was trying to figure out the basics of how this thing was going to work.
That’s when I found a way to scale the company and also figure out what tasks were most important. It gave focus to the business and it allowed me to realize the importance of taking time to look at high level business tasks as important.
High Level Business Thought Time
It’s hard to convince yourself to take a step back and think about your business for a while. You don’t get paid directly for thinking about your business. It’s hard because you could be doing a task for a client and getting paid for your time.
But you have to think about business thought time as making you money in the long run. The ideas you have while thinking can lead to more money or more productive tasks in the future. You have to make high level business thought time part of your regular tasks.
I find that I can mix these times in throughout my normal life. I might have a brainstorm while on the golf course. I read books to try to put ideas in my head and it gives me time to reflect on GBW and on life. I also semi-schedule time like this, usually on a Friday, to just kick back and have some alone time with my thoughts.
You can do it a number of ways that might work for you. Maybe you could even meet with a friend or with another person you trust to just talk shop for an hour every month at the coffee shop.
You’re not getting paid for it in the short-term, but you will in the long-term. Not every idea you consider will pay, but you only need a couple or even one good idea to save you money and to make you more money.