When it comes to your business, do you really know what’s important? This may seem to be an insulting question. After all, who would know better than you? You most likely already have goals, a working blueprint and a to-do list of important things.
Then, why ask the question?
The answer lies less in why we think something is important and more in how we think something is important.
Why we think something is important
Why we think something is important usually comes from assumptions that there’s a product, service or action that will be able to:
- Resolve a problem or issue
- Takes things to the next level
- Increase outcome results
- Stimulate activity and engagement
- Increase profits
- Make things easier and more efficient
- Reduce stress, aggravation, and frustration
- Improve any other positive aspect of your business
How we think something is important
However, how we think something is important is different because it implies judgment and action.
When we judge something is important we are basically relying on three types of judgments.
Value judgments, which are subjective. They express beliefs, biases, preferences, habits, feelings and memories. They become what’s personally meaningful when rating what’s important.
Critical judgments are objective. They rely on information – facts, evidence and research and the mental skills of analysis, logic, and reasoning. Rating what’s important with critical judgment increases validity. The perception is that it’s objective and more scientific at the same time.
Judgments of others are external. They are built around the credibility and authority of others who tell us whether something is important or not. It’s usually in the form of professional advice as to what works and what doesn’t work in making a business successful.
On the basis of these judgments, you’re ready to give what’s important greater attention and move it up on your priority list of things to do.
But, let me clue you in. By the time you’ve concluded what’s important, it’s already been initially decided by your brain. It’s your brain’s friendly way of taking the pressure off and deciding for you before you’re consciously aware of it.
Here’s how your brain decides what’s important
The front part of your brain is your prefrontal cortex. It’s the area designated for executive thinking, decision-making and impulse control. As your brain processes incoming information, it’s comparing it to any memories and emotional associations, as well as, ingrained patterns of biases, preferences, and habits.
As an example, let’s say you receive an email from an online marketer you’ve been following for a while. The marketer is offering a new training course on how to take information you already have and will show you how to turn it into a money-making training course. Before you can engage in any critical judgment, you brain is already searching its databases for its value judgments, especially those of memory and emotions.
If any previous association with this marketer is questionable or non-existent, a red flag may go up to indicate some hesitation. But, if a previous association is favorable, your brain is onto its emotional assessment.
What your brain is assessing is a response to the primary emotions of happiness, anger or fear.
As you read the email, your happiness neurons light up because it recognizes the value of this training for your business and therefore tags it as “important.”
Your anger neurons may light up when you find out how expensive the course is and you’re uncertain of where the money will come from. Anger can be a motivator to finding a way to get something that’s important or a demotivator of frustration or disappointment in not getting what’s important.
Your fear neurons may get activated when you find out the course is limited to 50 people who have to submit an application for approval. This may increase the level of importance if you believe you have a good chance of being accepted. Or, fear may limit its importance if your mindset is that your chances of being accepted are slim.
It’s your brain’s memories and emotions that are going to initially determine what’s important. Consciously you can modify that level of importance by rationalizing for or against how taking this course could benefit your business (critical judgment). And, a level of importance can be elevated by expert advice, testimonials or a marketer’s reputation (judgment of others).
What’s important to know is that how you judge what’s important will have more of an impact on your business than what you think is important. And within those judgments, your brain is going to respond to memories and emotions first then logic and reason.
Consequently, the things on your list of important things to do for your business that have the greatest chance of being acted upon will be the things you are most emotionally and logically connected to.
So, how do you think about what’s on your list of important things to do?
Resources: http://www.adpushup.com/blog/stickiness-psychology-how-the-brain-decides-whats-important/
Images: Pixababy 570507
You Can Find Me At -
I never thought about how I determine what’s important in my business in quite much depth. But every point you make rings true. I think we all mean to do our best, be productive and efficient. But things can go astray and many times we have no conscious idea why.
Running a business is demanding and sometimes so much more than we thought. To accomplish the things we want to do, we need to really take care of ourselves. Napping is a necessity with a little bit of luxury thrown in.
I enjoyed this post. There are days in my business when I make decisions, when I strategize, when I decide what is important and what is going to happen. Those are BOSS days. I literally decide to spend a day (or at least a few hours) in this role. I look at the big picture, review my goals, evaluate recent actions, and decide what I need to be focused on to move my business forward in a profitable way. Some weeks need more boss days than others.
Then there are EMPLOYEE days when I arise knowing that I’ve already decided to be in “employee mode” and thus, I don’t second-guess what I’m working on. If the “boss” told me to make sales calls from 8 – 11 a.m., then that’s what I’m going to do. I don’t even have to think about it. I have a list of tasks to take care of and I can happily check them off without worrying that I should be working on something else. Sometimes it is kind of a relief to be in employee mode.
You bring out a good point about running your own business, Rachel. There are times when you need to wear the BOSS hat and there are times you have to wear the EMPLOYEE hat. And, I agree sometimes the EMPLOYEE hat is definitely easier. Thanks for commenting. I always appreciate your input
I”m definitely one to listen to my intuition/feelings when making a decision. On the other hand, I am very orderly when creating plans of action to make those decisions happen. I suppose we are all a little bit of each. I think for a while I had gotten disconnected to my intuition and that was during a time when I was overloaded and overwhelmed. When you’re feeling like this, it’s very hard to listen to your emotional reasoning.
It’s apparent that you know yourself well, Lisa. Not everyone can trust their emotional/intuitive side. But, if you are able to listen on a deep level everything you need to do is there. And, you’re right about pointing out a balance and becoming more logic oriented when it comes to action. Knowing when you’re overwhelmed is a good indicator to wait it out because the brain needs time to process its overload. In this week’s post, I write about how to solve the brain overload problem with napping – always a good thing to do. Thanks for sharing your thoughts.
I’ve heard that most people make decisions emotionally, as you’ve said. Then, for some reason, they feel they must justify the decision with logic. There’s really nothing wrong with making decisions based on emotion, as long as they’re good emotions like happiness and encouragement, rather than fear.
Agree, Carol. Positive emotions have a more beneficial effect. The only thing to watch our for is when there is excessive or unrealistic optimism. Ideally, it’s nice to hit a balance between our emotional response and our logical take.
A lot of food for thought in your post, Joyce. Our emotions do trigger our spending and of course we then justify it with our own values and third party evidence in the form of testimonials. If we we would only step back and apply critical judgement, a lot of buyer’s remorse and running after shiny objects could be avoided. Thanks for the insightful post.
You point out a key problem, Vatsala. Customers can be easily triggered by emotional buying. But, there’s also a problem for online marketers. Do they go after the emotional triggers to get customers to buy or do they stress features and benefits? I think it has to be a balance of both – emotion to move a customer to commit one way or the other, and the critical judgment of seeing the value of what is being offered. And, I agree with you customers need to wise up and recognize emotional hype and ask some critical questions when they buy.
Hey Joyce,
This is a very important topic especially for how we think and feel in our businesses 🙂 If we have an emotional attachment then it is of utmost importance and needs to priority on our list of important things to do 🙂
Thanks for sharing! Excellent post 🙂
Thanks for your insightful comment, Joan. I didn’t really go into this in detail in the post, as emotions can be both a driver or inhibitor. Getting someone to move on something important can be a challenge if there’s procrastination with its own deep-seated emotions at play. It helps if we allow ourselves to become more emotionally aware so we can use it to our advantage.
You have no idea how relevant this question is to me at the moment, Joyce! In January I took a 4 week “advanced” blogging course and while it was awesome, it completely threw my schedule off coming into the new year! Instead of the things I had planned, I ended up doing things like creating cornerstone content, redesigning my email marketing plan and conducting an article review of all 200 articles on my site! There were other things, but basically, I went back to the drawing board to create a solid foundation for my online business.
On the one hand, it was frustrating because the “perfectionist” in me felt these were all things I should have somehow figured out on my own before, so keeping myself motivated was tricky at times. But now that it’s done, I am SO happy I invested the time because my articles are consistently popping up on page one of Google searches, my subscriber list is growing faster than ever before, and now that I am finally ready to move forward with my new book and training program it’s with total confidence that my foundation is well-and-truly in place.
Congratulations Marquita. It’s not unusual for the most important things that we do to be frightening. Now, you have a good sense on how to judge what important for you and your business going forward.
For me, I always thought I was a very analytical thinker, always weighing each fact and detail before I made a decision. Somewhere along the way, I realized that my inner voice, my intuition was actually much more accurate than what my brain/mind was telling me. I still have moments when I act on what seems best at the time. Then my “gut” speaks to me and I take time to see which voice is actually in my best interest. When I act only on logic or reason, it isn’t always the best option. We are such interesting and complex beings, Joyce. I love the info you share, as it offers us an opportunity to self-reflect and change in places where we might be stuck or not paying attention.
I usually avoid talking about intuition, because it’s such a personal thing. Analytical thinkers dismiss it and intuitives wouldn’t make decisions any other way. I’m all for running on the system that’s proven to work best for you. Personally, I’m on your side.
Joyce – I think the critical judgements are so overlooked in business. When I went to my first nursing convention to peddle my book, I tried to research everything I could about successes from a vendor booth. I can’t remember the source or the exact #s, but one researcher found that companies often send representatives to “man the booth” – interact with the public, exchange business cards, demonstrate their company’s latest wares, etc. But the thing that really got me was that the great majority of business cards collected were thrown away when the convention ended! What in God’s name would even be the point of, say, GE putting up a $40K display with a floor that changes colors – if the vendor reps don’t even make the effort of following through with potential clients? I wonder how many advertising/promotion dollars are simply squandered because businesses don’t rely on data-driven evidence to guide their spending!
Having done some vendor events myself, I couldn’t agree with your more. You’re there to make connections and get leads, that’s your primary function. When you hire other people to represent you, it’s a job not a commitment to your business. That’s why sometimes you need to make a critical judgment call and decide if it’s better to do it yourself.
Great post that resonates with me this week. One of the things I’ve learned (there’s that brain thing!) is that I am a lousy employee of my own business. As an employee — hell, the only employee! — it’s my job to bring in the revenue so my business can fulfill it’s mission, which is to help women succeed. That means I need to focus my time and energy on those activities that have the highest ROI. I can’t help anyone if I’m not successful myself.
Funny you should mention that Jackie. I was just thinking about if I turned my mindset into being an employee would my business be successful. I’ve been spending a lot of time researching the topic of what’s important in business, and the focus of time and energy are critical factors. And, there’s lots of argument about do you focus on just one thing to promote your business, or do you diversify and increases your chances. Not sure, what’s the right answer but the only thing I can do is to persevere.
Interesting post. For me it is important to know what the big picture is. Then I can breakdown the steps to get there. It helps me be less emotional and more practical.
That’s a good plan for big picture thinkers, Sabrina. Breaking it down into strategies and tactics makes things more doable. For some, their emotions run away with them at the thought of all that needs to be done. Then, basically, nothing gets done.
I tend to have more trouble with the stupid stuff that isn’t important because I get distracted. lol This was a great post about how to keep focus on what is important and why… good stuff.
Heaven knows there’s an abundance of stupid stuff to distract us. I’m thinking of scheduling it into my calendar and freeing up the rest of my time for the important stuff.
I love the idea of anger being a motivator. It makes sense that decisions revolving around what’s really important stem from our emotions, though that can, I guess, lead to some not so wise decisions. This is a good reminder to examine why we’ve chosen what’s important.
Yes, Tami emotions can trip you up as well. But, if you start making yourself more aware of what you are emotionally feeling as you’re in the process, it can help to steer you back on course.
Ah yes, very interesting and goes along with why will our brain is always seeking to move us more toward pleasure than pain. Thank you for a very insightful post, I enjoyed reading it.
Glad you enjoyed it, Teresa.
Oh dear. For sure I spend way to much time on replying & commenting- connecting to people on Facebook. I value the relationships but is it cost effective. Like now- I have a replay I want to listen to about a platform I could be utilizing more. And yet I’m visiting people in groups, commenting on pages posts & blogs & I’m nearing my 3:30 tired slump. So I’ll finish my current tasks & either attempt the webinar later after refueling or early in the morning. I think I’m being logical & reasonable, but maybe my emotions are getting the best of me.
Roz, you’re the best online relationship builder I’ve ever met. Part of our business relies on building relationships, and I know how time-consuming it is, as I can echo your sentiments exactly. Before this group, it was a real struggle to get my blog posts and business page noticed. I’m grateful for the exposure and love reading everyone’s posts. And, that means that I have to refocus my energy, stop wasting time and be more productive.
This is fascinating, Joyce! We’ve known for a while that emotion trumps logic when making decisions, and I love the scientific evidence.
What a great prescription not to just be caught in that: “by rationalizing for or against how taking this course could benefit your business (critical judgment). And, a level of importance can be elevated by expert advice, testimonials or a marketer’s reputation (judgment of others).”
Love that!
Most people don’t realize how much emotions come into play. You have to love the brain for wanting to step in and make things easier, although not always with the best result. That’s why you need the critical judgment backup.