I know I talk a lot about how important it is for entrepreneurs and others to make room for failure in business, but when it comes to letting your children fail, I’m having a harder time of it. Read my recent blog post on Working Mother Magazine about the challenges I’m having with my daughter and failure.

Sometimes I swear I am ADD. Ok, most of the time. In fact, in the time it takes me to write this blog, I bet I do at least 4-5 other things, too. I know that multi-tasking is not unusual, but sometimes it is imperative that we look past the distractions of a cat in front of the monitor (yes that is my cat in the photo below) or a holiday looming in our future to focus on what we really need to achieve. Do YOU know what you really need to get done today?

I was talking recently with a friend who is the Director of Manufacturing for a nearly $1B snack food company. He noted that if you walk onto their manufacturing floor and ask an hourly operator about the three things he absolutely needs to do today, he can tell you. That is a company that works to stay focused on their goals, and they’re actually hiring right now. Coincidence?

For those of us with attention issues or what I call shiny penny syndrome, it’s hard enough to focus. At this time of year, it feels nearly impossible. The only way I’ve found ANY success with this is to visibly post my priorities and goals in front of my face as a constant reminder. Just to be clear: your goals are what you want to achieve, your priorities are those things you need to focus on to achieve them.

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If you’ve been following me on Twitter, you know that I have been less than impressed with the press coverage of the economy lately. Every time I turn around, there’s doom and gloom and the ‘R’ word (recession). It’s not that I don’t think there are some serious problems and difficult times ahead. As an entrepreneur, I have certainly seen a lot of business-related activities slow down or in some cases grind to a halt (specifically where the government took over a potential client – go figure!). Undoubtedly, Americans have been spending way too much money and going too far into debt. In reality, I think a correction is needed. My question, though, is how much does the media play into the hype and make it worse?

Case in point: my husband had some interesting discussions at a recent casual get-together. One gentleman is in the mortgage industry. The question was asked: do you guys have any money to lend? The answer: absolutely! We just can’t get people in the door. They’re too afraid. Same with a friend who is a car dealer. They have had to cut back on their inventory of cars (which shrinks their profit margins) but they have plenty of money to lend…just no one to lend it to.

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