Just a Little Bit More: The Motivational Power of One More

Motivation is a funny thing. Sometimes it all comes down to the mental games we play with ourselves to get things done. That little extra nudge we give ourselves that allows us to push past the fatigue and fuzzy brain, and continue doing what needs to be done to achieve our ultimate success.

One such game is the power of one more. It’s borrowed from fitness training where you get to the end of your reps and instead of collapsing in a heap (like you are dying to do), you try to get at least one more (excruiatingly painful) rep in before finally calling it quits. It usually sucks at the time, but the reward is worth the effort.

Now imagine that principle applied to everything you do in your business.

Just a little bit more means sitting down for 5 extra minutes at the end of the day to wrap up and get organized for the next. One more means picking up the phone to make one last relationship building call (maybe the one that lands you a big contract). One more means instead of doing the required three blog posts to keep up with your marketing calendar, you write one more so you are working ahead of schedule.

Multiply that by 5 days a week. That’s 25 minutes dedicated to wrapping up and getting organized. It’s 5 extra opportunities to expand your business or close potential sales. And it’s 5 extra blog posts putting you weeks ahead of schedule so if everything goes completely haywire, you still have a backlog of content to draw on.

It doesn’t take a mathematician to figure out that when you start multiplying these small efforts by weeks, months and years that the power of one more can drastically change your results. The reason is because while marathon efforts can boost our success in the short term, it’s what we do on a daily and weekly basis that truly shapes our outcomes.

5 Things You Should Do One More Of 

#1: Connect with ONE MORE Person — Reach out to someone new via social media, reconnect with an old coworker, introduce yourself to a potential strategic partner. It’s our connections that drive our success so invest in making just one more each and every day.

#2: Organize ONE MORE Thing — Take a look at the current state of your business, your systems, your office, and organize whatever isn’t working smoothly. Sometimes that may mean cleaning up your inbox, other times it may mean reworking entire internal processes.

#3: Eliminate ONE MORE Hassle — Get rid of whatever hassles are causing you grief and/or wasting your time! For example, doing something as simple as setting up your bills on an automatic payment system may save you the time and headache of remembering to pay them on time.

#4: Generate ONE MORE Lead — Make it your daily goal to generate sales opportunities (over and above whatever is automatically generated by your marketing systems). That could mean attending a networking event, building relationships with strategic partners, or creating a special promotion to entice past customers to buy again.

#5: Take ONE MORE Big Step Forward — Focus your efforts on implementing your strategic plan on a daily, weekly and monthly basis by taking one more big step forward. Remember, it’s the cumulative effect of all your steps forward that will ultimately lead to you achieving your big audacious goal!