What is the Unseen Work Factor?
I’ve said for many years that I’d rather be bored and rich than excitable and broke. To achieve this, you need to execute the critical few and put aside the meaningless.
Unseen work is the work only known by you that you are accountable for. You take responsibility and ownership for it – sometimes you love it and sometimes you hate it. It’s the work you do in preparation, anticipation, and acceleration towards your goals.
You see, it’s in the unseen work that you get to truly confirm your progress. During this time, you confirm your level of grit, grind, resilience, and pressure. Your bad habits become good habits. Our actions are at their highest performance when we’re on our own.
When you meet people who are exceptional on their journey, they’ll share how lonely it can be, and the importance of pushing through. How much unseen work does it take for sports players or musicians to be the best of all time? Their level of grit and resilience is incredible. The majority of the population would give up.
Many of you, including myself, have committed to a journey of personal development. Part of that journey is managing the conversation in your head at a personal level.
Whether you are, or are not, achieving breakthroughs weekly/monthly/quarterly, your responsibility is to self-diagnose and assess where you’re leaving productivity and/or growth on the table.
Therefore, unseen work is a huge factor in your continued success.
Where are you currently bypassing the point of discomfort and minimising the opportunity for a breakthrough, because you don’t have the level of push-through needed?
Consider how much of your week is taken up with unseen work. Jot down a percentage and keep it in mind as you read on…
The reality of Unseen Work
In reality, 90% of our work every week is taken up by the unseen!
So, if the majority of your working week is taken up by unseen work, where is it showing up for you?
Think about it for a minute. You are putting in a considerable amount of time, effort, energy (mental and physical) into this, and it has to be showing up for you somewhere!
When I spoke with our clients about this, they suggested you should see it in your grit, resilience, and habits.
While they’re not wrong, the only place that matters to measure your unseen work are the numbers on your scoreboards.
So if you’re not keeping an eye on your scoreboards, or you don’t have KPIs, then you’re not evaluating where 90% of your effort is going!
Have weekly check-ins of your numbers. Remember, what gets measured gets managed. You can get better every week if you know where you’re at compared to where you want to be.
What would the best year ever look like to you? If you’re like our clients, it’s:
- Building a trustworthy team you can rely on.
- Being off the tools more and having your team take the lead on projects so you can focus on growing the business.
- Consistency of discipline with putting in business owner time to work ON the business.
- Consistent profiting by getting ideal clients.
- Taking every Friday off and spending more time with your family.
Your unseen work is the determining factor in whether you achieve your goals. So I want to leave you with this nugget…
Dreams multiplied by your goals, multiplied by the plan, times the actions = LIFE SUCCESS
For more insights into how to grow a successful Trades and Construction Business in Australia and New Zealand, join our Facebook Group.
Power to you this week!
Stefan Kazakis
CEO & Founder, Business Benchmark Group
