Business Insight Zone

It’s tempting to hunker down for the next couple of weeks: keep your head down, slog through what’s left of the year, and hope 2009 will be better.

Don’t give in to that temptation. Restart yourself NOW instead.

I haven’t seen a single shred of news that makes me think we’re in for anything besides a long recession. A long recession and the things that go with it (lowered consumer demand, tighter credit, etc.) mean that some things will happen to you and your business that are genuinely beyond your control. But how badly these outside forces will affect you . . . well, that’s largely up to you.

So what do you say we take this bull by the horns? Here’s what I recommend:

–Restart your reading. I’ve been posting more book reviews here lately (look under the Books heading), and there are several more in the pipeline. Dig through these, or through your own reading stack, to find new ideas and new inspiration. Right now I’m getting a kick out of The Snowball, which is the biggest and likely the best book ever written about Warren Buffett. It’s worth it to have your mind stretched as you think about Buffett’s life — especially since Alice Schroeder has done such a good job of writing this biography as an engaging narrative.

–Restart your exercise. After the holidays is a horrible time to start a fitness regime from zero. If you live in the Northern Hemisphere, it will only be colder in January than it is now, and you’ll likely only be doughier after all the holiday goodies and drinking and traveling and loafing. So, sure, enjoy time with your family or watching the Rose Bowl or whatever, but get out and get moving, too. Take a few minutes in the morning to stretch and do some pushups. Park farther from your building so you walk a little more to get there — or just make a walk around the block part of your lunchtime routine. Take a colleague with you and use the time for some uninterrupted daydreaming about how your outfit can succeed as the recession wears on.

–Restart your customer focus. Pick up the phone, put a smile on your face, and call a few extra customers every day. Do they need anything? How are they holding up under the economy? Can you help in any way? Do they know somebody who could use what you have to offer? I’m not talking about a sales call, but a short how’s-it-going chat. Who knows, maybe they have a little bit of leftover budget that must be spent by December 31. Maybe they know they’re going to have a fresh slice of budget to spend come January 2. Maybe there’s something non-monetary you can do for them with no trouble — a referral or the like — that they’ll be grateful for. You’ll only know any of this if you talk to them.

–Restart your execution on priorities. You only have a few working days in the year: promise yourself that you’ll work only on the really important stuff between now and December 31. Maybe you’ll make real headway on it, especially with fewer meetings and fewer interruptions while offices run on skeleton crews.

–Restart your THINKING. Take this recession as an opportunity to examine your fundamental assumptions about your business, your industry, your career, everything. I’m not saying you should ditch it all and move to an ashram — but you should examine your habits of mind and your comfortable certainties. Half a day of hard, fundamental thinking about this market and your place in it might mean a measureable increase in revenue come January.

All this restarting carries two big benefits with it:

1. When you do something new, like learning a new skill or taking up a new habit, your brain grows new connections between neurons — it becomes stronger and more vibrant. Doing this can make it likelier that you’ll have more creative thoughts, and creativity is strong medicine for curing what ails you during a recession.
2. It gives you a leg up on the competition. Somewhere, one of your competitors is telling itself, “Let’s just make it to next year, and then we’ll go at it gung-ho.” But what you do in the remaining days of this year will give you a headstart on them for 2009.

So don’t delay — press the “Restart” button . . . NOW.

~

UPDATE – Independent confirmation of this idea here.

~

Photo by nim, used under a CC-Share Alike license.