Professional or amateur. Which are you?

Amateurs dabble in their passion, do it on the side, and never fully commit. The reasons are many, and I won’t cover them here.

Suffice it to say, amateurs aren’t professionals. Professionals play to win. They do their passion full up and are fully committed. They get results.

Your problem may be that you have passions that you aren’t addressing as a professional would.

One way to figure out which one you are is to take this short self-assessment:

1. Do you “clock in” to your work and remove distractions?

2. Do you prioritize the tasks that will lead to specific, measurable outcomes?

3. Do you have business cards, a Web site, or some other platform to connect what you do to the people you do it for?

4. Do you talk about your work like a hobby or like a job?

5. Do you talk about your work at all?

6. Do you feel guilty when you don’t do your work?

Professionals would say yes, yes, yes, job, yes, yes. Amateurs, just the opposite.
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The gap between where you are now and where you want to be may be as simple as getting your mind right about which one you are.