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10 Tips To Stay On Track

Distracted?
Many people, who use the Internet as a tool professionally complain about the ease on how you get distracted. You start out with a task and all of a sudden you are 15 clicks away from your original goal. Well, it's just that you found the trail to some tools or information that could make you more efficient. You follow that trail believing that you will save time in the future. In reality you get off your schedule and it will be hard to recoup that lost time.

Don't understand me wrong: If your task is to find tools or anything on the Internet, then pursue it, but if your task is to complete a simple task, then just complete that simple task.

Later, when you see you need to perform that same simple task repeatedly, then of course look out for some efficiency boosters, or even better, outsource that task altogether.

This was just an example, it could be about chasing info about more profits, less work, better conversion, better rankings, …

I though I write some tips on how to stay on track without getting distracted. But above is not really distraction, it's your choice to click a link that you simply should not click at this time. A real distraction has something external to it, like a coworker or your spouse rushes into your office and … That's a distraction, but I showed you how to deal with that kind of situation in my series of Blog posts about Getting Things Done.

Enough of a prelude, here are the bullets:
  1. Read my post “Touch It - Do It - Get More Done!” again.
  2. Write your task list every morning. First thing to do.
  3. Stick with it, no matter what. Focus on what you are doing.
  4. Most important tasks are tackled first on the day. The fact that they are mostly challenging and important will keep your attention in the morning.
  5. Just write URLs or whatever you find interesting down on the back of your to do list or bookmark them not wasting more than one click. You can follow those in your spare time.
  6. Don't deal with products or information that you do not need at this time. There will be another one time offer from someone else or probably the same vendor in the future.
  7. You should have procedures for repetitive tasks that you can follow. Those tasks should be outsourced anyway. As long as you are doing everything by yourself, you are more prone to get thrown off the track by new information.
  8. Simply don't throw away your strategic plan, after you have learned something new. Keep your business on track and apply small changes at a time. Experiment with new tactics in a separate, new project. But your core business should run smoothly already before you do this.
  9. Limit the number of people, who's advice you are following. That also means you can unsubscribe from a lot of email newsletters and RSS feeds.
  10. A real business should neither depend on you, nor on a single employee nor a single contractor, etc. Strive for that. Then you can surf the Web all day long and it won't hurt you at all.

What are your tips to stay on track?

Yours
John W. Furst

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Guy Cook on :

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Nice list of 'to-do's' I've applied step 5, to step 1, so will read that later. The list is definitely part of keeping on track, get lots more done. In another time, I once read that those in management only get to do what they intended to do 37% of th e time, making for a chose wisely environment.

Guy R. Cook

John W. Furst on :

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It just came to my mind: “Sometimes, we allow external distractions, we even welcome them to hide our incapacity of making a decision. The distraction becomes an excuse then. This usually reveals a lack of determination.”

John W.

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