I am constantly getting sidetracked and distracted throughout the day and focusing on the tasks that matter, most importantly, those that pay is a key focus area of improvement for me in 2010
This post by Ali addresses the issue and offers some great advice! Make sure you check out her blog after you've read her article!
Jason R. Ayers asked in a comment:
With no sales, a business is just a bunch of untested ideas. So, my biggest challenge is making sure I spend 80% of my time focused on selling my products and services. It’s awfully easy to get sidetracked into operations, technical issues, paperwork, and other non-essential issues.
My questions is this: What are your best strategies to insure you spend the majority of your time selling your products or services so you can maintain adequate cash flow in your business?
I’m going to tackle this with a focus on small business, since that’s what Jason is asking about – but much of what I say will apply to any area where you need to keep your focus on the aspects of a project which really matter.
Strategy #1: Figure Out Your Major Tasks
This is an obvious point, but it’s one that I know I sometimes manage to miss out myself. Before you do much else, you need to be clear about what your major tasks involve. These tend to be the things that are absolutely fundamental to your business existing – the ones which take it from being “a bunch of untested ideas” to a business.
Here’s a couple of examples from my own life:
Business: The majority of my income comes from freelance writing for a handful of different blogs. I write anything from one post a month to two per week for each blog, and I get paid per post. Focusing on my major business tasks means that I tend to do all these blog posts on Mondays and Tuesdays (playing catch-up later in the week where necessary).
Non-business: I’ve been working on a novel for the past year, and I’ve finished the first draft (150,000 words) and am about 55,000 words into the second draft. To get the first draft done, I had to focus on the really major task of a novel – the actual writing! – rather than spending hours researching little details, or reading similar books, or chatting to writer friends.
What are your major tasks, in your business or on a particular project? What absolutely needs to be done in order for that business or project to exist?
Strategy #2: Use Your Best Times for Your Big Work
Use the times of day when you’re at your most creative and engaged to work on your major tasks. Again, this is an obvious point – but an easy one to overlook, especially in the day-to-day minutae of running a business.
For me, that means (wherever possible) doing the bulk of my writing in the mornings, and leaving administrative work like emails, and marketing work, until the afternoons.
I suspect you already have a good gut feeling for when you’re at your best (and worst) in terms of productivity and ability to concentrate on something sustained. Whether you do or not, give Charlie Gilkey’s Productivity Heatmap a try – I found it a great way to get an overall feel for my peaks of energy during the day. (It’s also an excuse to play with crayons…)
Strategy #3: Develop a Routine
The word “routine” can be rather off-putting if you’re a creative, impulsive, follow-the-muse type … and many freelancers find that no two days or weeks look alike:
Sometimes you work late into the night, or sometimes you take mornings off and then make it up by working Saturday afternoon. This does afford a lot of flexibility, but sometimes it’s good to know that you’ve put in a solid day’s work and you can enjoy your evenings and weekends like the rest of the working world.
(Cyan and Collis Ta’eed, How to be a Rockstar Freelancer – reviewed here, p52)
Having a routine doesn’t mean that you should start planning out your life like a school timetable (though that works for Glen); rather, I’m suggesting that you pattern your week so that you’ve got clear and sacrosanct blocks of time for your major tasks.
That might be as simple as spending Monday mornings on product creation, Tuesday afternoons on marketing, and the whole of Thursday on client work.
On a day-to-day level, a routine that allows you space to step back and see what you’re doing (rather than rushing from moment to moment) can really help. I like to take five minutes, first thing, to look at my plans and commitments for the day. Lunch-time is often a good chance to figure out what went right during the morning – and what’s a priority for the afternoon.
Strategy #4: Use the One-Two-Three Method of Prioritising
When I start losing focus, or when I’m staring at my task list trying to figure out where to begin, I shove an asterisk against the most important thing (not necessarily the most urgent), two asterisks against the next, and three against the third. Here’s part of my task list from Monday:
Part of Monday's task list
(I wanted to give a real life example, so excuse the messiness!) If it helps you to what’s going on, I cross out tasks when they’re complete. I wrote two posts for Diet Blog, and had a lot of other paid work – and some household, admin and volunteering tasks – on Monday. To make sure I could focus without feeling overwhelmed, I took ten seconds to mentally and physically prioritise the rest of my paid work.
I find that thinking three tasks ahead is comfortable; going up to four or five makes me feel overwhelmed again.
Strategy #5: Avoid Distractions and Interruptions
This is yet another obvious one, but it’s one that I find myself struggling with most weeks! When you’ve blocked out time to get the major tasks done, you need to actually do those tasks. Phone calls, checking Twitter, answering emails, and tidying the kitchen aren’t going to get you any closer to completion.
You know what distractions you give in to – especially the ones which tempt you when you’re working on something that requires a lot of energy. You also know what interruptions tend to crop up. Don’t be afraid to tell colleagues, family members or housemates that you’re busy.
There’s another, slightly less obvious point here: an unattractive working environment is a distraction in itself. (For a tongue-in-cheek look at this, try my Dumb Little Man post on 10 Ways to Create a Work Environment That Drags You Down…)
Strategy #6: Create a System for Routine Tasks
In any business – and probably in any big non-business endeavour – there are going to be a lot of little tasks that you do on a regular basis. The effort of simply remembering all of these can drain your time and energy. Taking five minutes to schedule them into your calendar, diary or planner means they’re off your mind and into your workflow.
Mark Forster’s Get Everything Done and Still Have Time to Play has some very useful thoughts about systems in the chapter “Structuring Your Work”:
Do you wonder why your correspondence always ends up in a pile of unactioned papers? It is because you do not have a system for dealing with it. Do you wonder why you cannot keep up with your e-mail? It is because you don’t have a system for dealing with it. Do you wonder why you are always having to waste time popping out to the shops to buy something you have run out of? It’s because … well, you’ve got the picture by now!
(Mark Forster, Get Everything Done and Still Have Time to Play – Amazon.com / Amazon.co.uk, p13)
Beyond that, many tasks can be partially automated. That might mean using template emails for contacting clients, rather than typing out information each time. It could mean having a particular time slot in the day – perhaps when your creative energy is low – to check various stats.
Don’t make things harder on yourself than they need to be. Get all your emails coming into one place (I used to have four separate accounts – now they all direct into my Gmail inbox, and I can send and receive from each different address there). If you manually visit a bunch of blogs trying to keep up with them all, then start using RSS. If you have routine formatting tasks – like getting your Word document or blog post to look right – then see if there’s a more efficient way. Nine times out of ten, there is.
If you’re struggling to find a quick, workable system to catch up with a backlog and stay on top of your email, I strongly recommend getting your hands on Charlie Gilkey’s Email Triage – reviewed here.
Strategy #7: Separate Work Tasks and Home Tasks
I’m far from perfect at this one, so I hesitated to include it – but I will as an encouragement to myself. ;-) And if you have any particular advice or tips on this, please do leave them in the comments…
If you run a small business – or if you’re still in the fledgling stages of starting one – then there’s a good chance you’re working from home. This has many advantages: I love being able to take a shower in the middle of the day, for instance, or pick up groceries when the shops are quiet. However, it’s also incredibly easy to end up spending time cleaning, tidying, washing up, shopping online and so on… and this doesn’t make for a productive work day.
I’m not sure I’ve found any perfect solutions yet! One solution is to grab your laptop and head to a coffee shop (I use my university library) – then you can’t go and put a load of laundry on when you’re struggling to keep up the motivation to work. You could also try working set hours, or working for time blocks (such as 9am – 11am).
If you’re a small biz type yourself, how would you answer Jason’s question at the start of this post? What strategies do you use to keep on top of the work that actually brings in the money? And if you’ve got a solution to working from home without letting a dozen household tasks creep in, let me know…!
Big Thanks to Ali for such great advice!!
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