I love the wisdom contained in the expression that we overestimate how much we can achieve in a month and underestimate how much can be achieved over a year.
We live in a culture where instant gratification is all around us. When we go on a diet we want results in days. When we appoint a new sales person we expect orders to start arriving by the end of the first day. When we take up a new hobby we want to be good at it straight away.
Whilst we should always look for positive signals or indications to show that we are headed in the right direction, it’s worth bearing in a mind a few things. Success comes out of forming new habits, and habits usually take around 30 days to form. Whether that’s stopping smoking, eating more healthy food or playing the piano, it takes about a month to get into the habit. Once you have created that new ‘groove’ in your brain, you start to do it automatically. In effect you have created a positive new habit.
But that’s just the start. In order to become good at something, or to develop expertise, it takes a lot longer. But if you keep up the habit, the practice, carry on developing that skill set, you will amaze yourself with how much can be achieved over the course of 6 months, or a year. For example, people can go from being non-runners to a marathon runner in 6 months or less, but only if they develop the habit or regular practice.
So if you are looking to develop some new habits in 2015, don’t be dejected if the world doesn’t change in the next few weeks. Stick with it and prepare to be amazed this time next year at just how much can be achieved by incremental improvements over the year.
So applying this idea to marketing, how many extra connections could be made through LinkedIn?
How many different new networking events could you attend and how many new contacts could you meet?
How could you improve your online presence – does your website need refreshing or replacing?
Review how effective your marketing is – what could be added to your mix, what could be replaced?
What are you good at doing, what do you need help with doing?
If you were to get in outside help with your marketing, where would you focus it?
If you’d like help with any of these areas or marketing in 2015, remember we offer a free 1 hour no-obligation marketing review to help you develop better clarity on what you could achieve for your company in 2015 and beyond.
