One of the secrets to career success is whether or not you have any initiative. Everyone loves people with initiative. They are people that get things done.
Have you ever worked with someone who had no initiative? Have you noticed the difference, when you work with someone who has heaps? Some people are all talk no action and others are all action. They just get on with it.
I call initiative the fire in your belly. How much fire in your belly, do you have? Are you getting what you want done? Are you able to make things happen for yourself? What do you want to get done in your lifetime?
I have lots of fire on some things and then barely any on other things. For example bookkeeping is not my passion. That means I don’t have a lot of energy when it come to doing my bookkeeping. Naturally, you want to get on with your fire in your belly stuff. The good things, that you love and enjoy.
Some people have heaps of fire and it doesn’t last very long.
You know it just goes out quickly. We call that a fast burn. So sometimes I have an idea and you just talk about it for a while and then do nothing about it. Not a lot of heat, but you might come back to it later or not.
Whereas other things like writing a book, this is a very slow burn. You will talk about it for a long time. You will ask others what they think. You research over a long period of time. You will have meetings about it. It can go on and on for years. Nice slow burn, so by the time you sit down to write it, there is heaps of heat, lots of energy. Enough energy to sit down, write it, publish it and get it out there in the world. Others never write their book.
I do like a fast burn on some things but really, we’re looking for heat, long-term heat. You have to have long-term heat for your business goals, long-term heat for your staff, long-term heat for your processes and systems.
If you think something is dull and boring you won’t have any heat on it. You can make it easier on yourself if you know how to turn the heat up and down whenever you need to perform a task.
Spend some time listing out the things you have good initiative on and another list for things that you don’t have a lot of initiative on. See if you can play a mind game with yourself to turn up the heat on activities that you need to get done, but don’t like doing.
The game I play with myself with the bookkeeping is, ‘how quickly can I get it done?’… I try to improve my best time each month, just to help me get it done I make it a game. It gives me just enough fire in my belly to finish the task, so I can move onto other things that I am passionate about.
