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.
Write your task list every morning. First thing to do.
Stick with it, no matter what. Focus on what you are doing.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
I warn you at the beginning. This will be a short article. Why? Because everybody of us has work to do. No matter in what position you are. So I will quickly give one of my popular “generic - this helps everyone in every situation” rules. It's not limited to business. All you need is the drive for “getting results”.
Here's the tip:
“Implement your ideas as quickly as you can!”
Are you
A business owner (home based, small or large, …)
A manager (first level, middle or top management)
A freelancer
Or simply an employee
Even if you are a student or if you are unemployed, you should get out something from this lesson.
Ask yourself, how many times in your life you had a “great idea” or a “great opportunity”, but you didn't really follow through. Instead you switched yourself into “research mode”. Or in “waiting mode” and never switched to “taking action”. Later you simply dropped the idea. Another, “what would have been, if this had worked …” story is born. Think a little:
An important aspect is setting your priorities straight and if done right, you are able to get the “most” out of your time. What is the “most” for you? Money, better health, less stress, growing your business fast, or working less?
In Part 4 I am putting all loose ends together, do a recap of all steps, and tell you, what I am personally using to keep myself organized.
Since this article has 9 pages, I don't publish it on the blog. I have created a PDF document that my newsletter subscriber can download.
If you enjoyed reading the first 3 parts of this series, you definitely will not want to miss the last issue.
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Update: Part 4 of this series is finally available again for my newsletter subscribers, as of March 07, 2008
Another week is almost over. I hope you can look back and say to yourself, “That was a good, a productive week, and I even had enough time for my family and friends.” So far we have learned that a stronger focus does help you being more productive, which in turn helps you being able to spend more time with fun things.
Now a question,
“Do you already have an outline for a plan of actions for the upcoming week?”
Today's lecture deals with that, “Priorities and Planning”.
A short reminder: You should assign a time slot of one (1) hour each week to assess the status of each of your impact areas and define actions for further improvement during the following week. In a large corporation you will go into meetings with your team, in a small home office situation you analyze your stats by yourself.
The advantage about focusing on impact areas is that you are less likely to miss something.
Last week I introduced the “Touch It - Do It - concept for more productivity.” It basically requires that you stay focused and complete a task, once you have started working on it. No more task switching! It always takes ( = wastes ) some time to get tuned in for the current task in front of you. Don't switch it. Start and complete it. Then the next one, and the next one, etc.
But how to deal with all the interruptions during the day?
The phone rings, a co-worker comes into my office, …
If it happens that you work in your home office, your kids or your wife may come in, … How are you dealing with it or how should you deal with this?
When you are reading articles from successful business people, artists, managers you quickly see that they value their time highly and don't allow interruptions. They have certain time slots during the day, when they don't pick up the phone and have the door to their office closed.
Some may have 1 hour, some even 4 or 5 hours depending on the kind of work they do. They only deal with the most important tasks of their business. This is not limited to business it could also be the daily training for an athlete, or practicing for a musician.
How many times do you think did the following happen to you?
You think about something like getting more traffic to your Web site, or finally writing an article. Then you start doing it, but next you bail out at the first opportunity. You stop and do something else. You dig even deeper into the next task just to create an excuse and gain confidence that you are doing the right thing.
Most likely this next task is more enjoyable and less important at the same time. You get it done, but you don't achieve as much, when you repeatedly put off more important tasks.
The more often you put off the “first” task, the more difficult it will become next time and instead of working on it, you probably start to look for another “less important” task right away.
Today I am releasing the final issue — Part 4 — of my series of articles about time management.
Last week I introduced the “