Hi everyone, it’s Pat here, and I’m back again this week with a few tips to help you grow your business, improve your life, and just get on with things. So today is a little more lighthearted than some of my recent posts, and this is a topic that I know is very popular out there among entrepreneurs, solopreneurs, business owners, you name it. It’s the topic of procrastination. Here’s one thing I know for sure. Procrastination is a poverty mindset. It’s also a poverty habit. Take that in for a minute and think about it.

Anyway, I had a great experience this morning, and that’s when I decided, on the run, to change my topic today, because I believe it’s relevant, it’s timely, and it will help you out.

Let me tell you what I did. I made a commitment to my accountability buddy, Carrie Greene, and for those of you who know Carrie, she is the master of productivity. She really is. I met Carrie about seven or eight years ago. We were in the same mastermind group together and we stuck it out for years in mastermind groups. We became good friends and we’re still connected. Carrie and I had a chat last week. We both had projects that we’re working on. Both of us had things we wanted to get done, and we know that there is one secret tactic to productivity, and that’s having an accountability buddy. That’s my first step in getting past procrastination, to be sure that you get an accountability buddy. Get somebody who is committed to getting something done, somebody who’s fun for you to work with, and third, somebody who is in business and it is aligned with that whole mindset around the fact that “get ‘er done” and get to the end result, and that progress is what it’s all about.

The first step is to get an accountability buddy. So Carrie and I had the conversation last week, “All right, let’s do this together.” Then what we did was we identified our projects for what we wanted to work on, so the second step was to schedule time together. Here’s what we do and how we do it. We agreed that at 10:30 Eastern today, we would connect on Skype video, so we could see each other’s eyeballs. At that time, we would both have our project identified and ready to go, and we committed to blocking off an hour in our calendar. So we did a check-in at 10:30, we shared what “it” was that we’d be working on, and then agreed to doing a check-in an hour later to see and share progress. It was so much fun, it’s so effective, it’s so easy, and it is about progress.

Step number one, get the accountability buddy. Step number two, schedule a time, and I would say part 2B is getting into a different location. What I did was I moved out of my office and I moved here into my dining room, and that way I can just totally focus on the project at hand, what I have right here on the table in front of me, and it worked. It’s so effective. I was delighted to check back in with her at 11:30 and say, “Check, check, check, check,” and so was she and so did she, and again we’ve scheduled more times on our calendar to get ‘er done.

So that’s it, pure and simple. That’s all I wanted to share with you today. Keep it light. Keep it easy. You know my motto, the ELF Formula – easy, lucrative, and fun. All right, get yourself a buddy, schedule a time, pick a project, do a check-in, change location so you’re not distracted by everything else around you, and just get ‘er done, and keep scheduling times together until you’ve completed a project or identified other things that you want to work on.

That’s it. All right, I’m out of here. Go do it. Let me know what you’ve done. Post some comments below there and hit share. I know others love simple steps to solutions, and that’s what I’m all about. Hit the share button, and I thank you, and I’ll be watching for your comments. Bye everyone.