Time Management Tip 3: Head v Gut

The day of the launch had arrived. I was bang on time and as promised, on April 29th, my e-book, Clockwise - 5 great time management principles went live on Amazon, iTunes and Noble and Barnes.  

The temptation to hit the publicity trail was huge. I was excited about the book and chuffed with how the final draft looked but something was nagging me. My gut was telling me to hold fire on the publicity and check first that the e-book had converted properly, before encouraging people to buy it. 

So I encouraged close family and friends to buy a copy so I could check how the final result looked and it was quickly apparent that there were issues ... many, many issues!

• The ebook could only be read in landscape not portrait.

• Errors and typos had been added to the text through the conversion process.

• For iPads, the presentation of all colour text was fuzzy.

As much as it pained me and in spite of my publisher's assurances, there was only one right decision. I  pulled the e-book from the shelves and sent it back to the publisher to be reconverted. I'm glad I listened to my gut.

So what's the moral of the story? 

1) Perfect products produce premium results. As Steve Jobs would have told you, if you are going to launch something, it has to be awesome and perfect ... anything less is simply not good enough. Sometimes that means making tough decisions and putting your natural excitement to one side in the pursuit of excellence.

2) Good time management relies on wise decision making and wise decisions require you to listen to your gut. When it comes to making key decisions, our minds weigh up the variables, the analytics, the conditionals and logical reasoning. As a result, we can easily get stuck and struggle to move forward due to the numerous angles to consider ... unless of course we consult our gut instinct. 

Our gut instinct operates at a deeper level than our minds and is more concerned about what is right or wrong. It also has an uncanny ability to steer us away from making big mistakes and into the path of great opportunities. If you feel stuck with a home or work-based decision, it's useful to do a S.W.O.T. analysis, or a list of pros and cons, but listen also to what your gut is telling you ... it's usually right!

Thanks for reading

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