“This year’s race has already begun.  It’ll be over in record time.  There’s no time to waste.  There is need for purposed haste.  You are either Do-ing or Don’t-ing every minute.  Fighting each day for your agenda or surrendering to someone else’s.  Bending people and circumstances to your will or succumbing to theirs.  By your results we see your resolve”

What Dan describes as Do-ing or Don’t-ing is exactly what I was talking to a group of Jr. High kids at our church’s youth group last week, in relation to being Active vs Passive about life.

So much of life is passing us by as we passively watch and mutter in amazement about all the things happening around us, that we wish were different.  When if we are honest with ourselves, we realize that it’s “our own darn fault”.

The thing about the battle between being Active or Passive in our daily lives, is it’s a minute by minute battle as Dan describes.  Forget about useless resolutions.  What safeguards and boundaries do you need to put into place immediately just to start to take back control the areas in life and business that have gotten away from you.

I use a timer on my desk, and I have found that setting it at 25-30 minute intervals is a good starting point to purposefully work on ONE thing with no interruptions during that time.  That means no emails, texting, phone calls, surfing the web!   When I do this, I can get more done in three or four 25 minute sessions, than I would typically get done in a day.

Scalability is very important. You can’t do everything by yourself as you only have 24 hours in a day. Can you leverage or outsource your tasks?

In any business model, you must be able to find a business model that scales upwards. In other words, it means that the business will earn you more money the longer you are in that industry.

If the business or the market that you are in requires you to work longer and longer for the same amount of pay, then you either need to innovate a new idea or get out of it as soon as possible.

Nothing is permanent in the 21^st century. Now it is not about the strongest that survives but rather the one that adapts to changes quickly!

You must be able to adapt quickly to market changes like rising costs and changes in the demand. If you are not good at adapting, you will miss out on a lot of opportunities.

You don’t want to start changing only when you are running out of money or when all your customers have ran away to your competitors! By then it would be too late!

For example:

- A feature that wasn’t originally listed on the e-mail advertisement or sales page because
you didn’t have room.

- A way to combine the product with other related or unrelated product to get an entirely
different benefit.

- A benefit that you that you didn’t even know existed until one of your customers wrote in
and told you about it.

- A certain way to use the product for another niche, situation or dissimilar customer
problem.