Ready for a great year?  Your best year ever? That’s the spirit.

For high-performing entrepreneurs, a new year feels a bit like the excitement you feel at the start of a marathon. You’ve dreamt about it. You’ve told your friends. You’ve trained. You’ve got the right shoes! Most importantly, you’ve made a commitment to go the distance.

The excitement is palpable and in January, you take those first critical steps.  As you begin, I want you to think about January as the first 10 miles of a marathon.  And I’ve written four posts to get you out of the crush of the starting crowd and put you in a position to break your personal record.  Think of me as your coach, giving you a friendly “shove” in the back just when you need it. 

Mile 1 – The Warm-up

As you begin to find your pace for the year, I want you to set yourself up for success for the long haul.  That means organizing yourself, and not falling back into 2014’s bad habits.  Amazingly productive entrepreneurs (and elite athletes) form new, better habits that force them to continue on the path of constant improvement.

One immediate change you can make as you settle into the year is to adopt the discipline called “touch everything only once.”  Your inbound emails, to-do lists, follow-up work and new project details can quickly overwhelm even the most organized person, and you need a discipline for managing all of that. 

For instance, instead of reading an email and skipping over it for later, spend another minute or two tackling it or assigning it to someone else (if there is someone else!).  Make the tough decision now.  Say ‘yes’ to the opportunities that you can address within the next three months and that are core to your 2015 strategy.  And say ‘no’ to those you can’t. 

Try not to say maybe.  The word “maybe” is what fills up your time and causes things to be touched, bounced around, considered and then most often left for dead.  Don’t do this.  Great entrepreneurs are disciplined…they know their optimal pace and they don’t say; “Well, I’ve got a lot to do…I’ll just run this next two miles at double the pace and then slow back down.”  Or worse; “Yeah, I’ll carry this additional 10lb. bag of supplies with me just in case I need it.” 

These modes of thinking are a great way to take yourself out of contention.  Consistent, disciplined pacing is what helps you break records.

(This is the first of three parts of Craig Wortmann’s series “And They’re Off!.” See how to get through miles one through five in Miles 2-4 Finding Your Running Buddies and Miles 5-7 Stretch Yourself.)