OK it’s not December and Santa isn’t bringing you gifts, but this is the best time of year to pay attention to you.

Give yourself a gift – focus on you.

Instead of running in place or running away, stop and make you the focus. Because all that running or busyness isn’t serving you and isn’t bringing you any closer to the goals you set up at the beginning of the year.

Sometimes it feels good to run and play busy. That way, if someone asks you how your business is doing, you can say:

I’m so busy!

I bet you are busy! But busy doing what?

5 Ways To Play Busy:

1. Staying on top of your email at every moment.
2. Always being available for every phone call, email (see #1) and meeting.
3. Doing the exact same things you did last year.
4. Going to networking functions without a purposeful outcome — in other words, you don’t know why you’re really there.
5. Reacting to what your competitors are doing.

I bet you’ve got 15 more ways you play at being busy. It’s just not doing you any good.

Remember at the beginning of the year the goals and resolutions you created? Or, if you were really ambitious you created them at the end of the year. Around Christmastime. Do you know where they are? Do you even remember? Things like:

• Increase sales by 15%
• Add new product or service
• Spend 20% of each week on marketing
• Go to the gym 3x a week

How’s that working for you?

If you’re on track — congratulations! If you know where you are in relation to your goals — great going!

But the sad fact is that most people aren’t on track or don’t know where they are. Why? Most people set up overly ambitious goals at the beginning of the year. Then when they start to fail, they just shove the whole thing in a drawer and go back to what seemingly worked in the past — playing busy.

Today pledge to think differently — even if just for today — and make a list of 5 ways you play busy. It’s a tough thing to look at sometimes — but we all play busy at some point. If you can identify it, then you can catch yourself the next time and get back on track. It’s a great gift you can give yourself.

Next time I’ll focus on conducting a mid-year review. There still is time to get where you want to go before the end of the year — without running in place or playing busy.

How do you play busy? Please share!

Photo Credit: jurvetson