Prolific Quality Output
I have a question for you: do you know why certain people become really, really good at what they do? It’s because they focused on something called Prolific Quality Output. I actually heard about this for the first time from an amazing book called High Performance Habits by Brendon Burchard. Prolific Quality Output is the one thing that you need to do in your industry to become number one. It’s something that you put out – what makes it prolific is that you put out more than anyone else in your industry. Why did Seth Goden become so incredibly successful? Because he published book after book after book after article after article. Why did Michael Jordan become so good at basketball? Because he took more shots. If you are looking at your business and you possess the feeling that you want to be at the top of your industry so much so that you are famous for it – you can! You can build a brand and exceed your competitors. You can build a life that you can really value. You just have to produce more than anyone else in your field.
So many people spend their time on anything but their PQOs – they’re rearranging their emails into folders, which science has proven actually makes it worse. If you’re one of those people that spends two hours rearranging your Gmail folders, you’re procrastinating. There are two things that will get in the way of how you spend your time: procrastination and perfectionism.
Procrastination is not a mindset. Procrastination, at its lowest common denominator is fear. And because we have fear or we don’t believe in ourselves, we procrastinate. Another big reason for procrastination is that we don’t love what we’re doing. I ran an agency for seven years. I closed it down because I didn’t love the work that I did. I started to procrastinate so much so that my clients weren’t getting a level of service that I would be happy with providing to them. I really had to take a hard look at what really drives me, meaning what makes me feel fulfilled, what gives me energy when I wake up every day. It took some time, but I discovered that what gets me up every day is high performance coaching.
Finding your PQO is not exclusive to those who want to start their own business. This same methodology can easily be applied and translated for those who want to climb the ranks of their organization.
Some people ask me how much time should they spend on their PQO in order to achieve success without burning out? The answer might shock you. 60% of your time in your whole week needs to be focused on your PQO. If you want to be a writer, then 60% of your time has to be focused on writing, editing, promoting, launching your book. If you want to be the top salesperson, 60% of your time must be focused on acquiring, meeting and following up with those qualified leads. Imagine if you spent 60% of your time on the one or two things that are going to move your business forward, that are going to make your life better, that are going to increase the meaning of what you are doing to yourself and to your clients, how much more energy would you have? How much better would your life be? And when you focus on things like this, like impact, the income will follow. So many people freak out about money – they forget about whether or not what they’re doing matters to them. Most often those people focused on income are spiraling on things that won’t actually foster their business.
They’re willing their time away in their emails. They’re checking their notifications, they’re scrolling through their social media, they’re wasting their time with hour and a half lunches with people that aren’t going to move them forward. In the end, they get nowhere.
Focus on your PQO. Find out what yours is and how you can make that 60% of your work week. If you want to challenge yourself, put your PQO down below, I’d love to hear what is it you’re working on that you believe that if you could spend 60% of your time in your whole week it could transform your career and life.