180: 📉 Diminishing Returns and the True Costs of Shiny Shoulds

Written By Jenny Blake

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What business best practices drive you nuts? What are the best practices you wish people would follow, but they don't? These are clues to things you can be doing differently or stop doing altogether in your business.

Today’s episode starts with a few of my pet rants—err, peeves—followed by six specific examples of activities with diminishing returns in my business, ending with one big question antidote for when you, too, find yourself Sailing the Sea of Shiny Shoulds.

🌟 3 Key Takeaways

  • Shiny Shoulds and diminishing returns obscure the true opportunity cost of what’s really at stake, and they can quickly lead to finishing returns in terms of focus, energy, and output.

  • Consider the data and your intuition: Sometimes it’s hard to go a different way than “what everyone else is doing”, even when you know it’s what’s best for you. Only you know what’s at stake if you continue down a path that doesn’t resonate or produce the ROI you need.

  • Look for asymmetric upside when considering what’s possible when creating space: What if I stopped this altogether? What’s the worst that could happen? What’s the best? What else?

📝 Permission: Stop working on projects and with clients who are no longer serving you, that don’t meaningfully contribute to your revenue and joy.

✅ Do (or Delegate) This Next: Audit your business; what areas are past their prime or no longer aligned? If you’re being truly honest, which ones never were?

🔗 Resources

📚 Books Mentioned

🎧 Related Episodes

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Jenny Blake

Jenny Blake is a career and business strategist and international speaker who helps people people organize their brain, move beyond burnout and create sustainable careers they love. She is the author of PIVOT: The Only Move That Matters Is Your Next One (Portfolio/Penguin Random House, September 2016). Jenny left her job in career development at Google in 2011 after five and a half years at the company to launch her first book, Life After College, and has since run her own consulting business in New York City. Find her on Twitter @Jenny_Blake and subscribe to the Pivot Podcast. 

http://PivotMethod.com
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