One of the most damaging things a business owner can do to themselves is to get so caught up in busy work that they’re working all the time yet not making a profit. It’s especially easy to get dragged down the social media rabbit hole, and before you know it, you’ve spent an hour or two talking about how cute that doggie is in the window.
We all know that’s not work, but it happens to the best of us. The best way to ensure that the work you do is effective is to use the data you collect about your audience, your products, and so forth to guide your goals, inform your tasks, and then schedule every action you will take in your calendar, so you know what you’re going to do each day and for how long.
- Write Out a Daily Action List – You can use a calendar or software like Basecamp.com or Trello.com to organize your daily action or task list. The list should be organized with the money-making tasks, the most challenging things up top, and then anything else should be for later or for someone else to do.
- Include Breaks in Your Schedule – No one should work 24/7 without a break, and neither should a business owner. Set up your day with chunks of work time that include decent breaks. You should try to get up and walk every 90 minutes for about 5 minutes if you are sitting a lot. You should also eat your meals and stay hydrated.
- Focus on One Thing at a Time – When you look at your task list, it’s essential to focus on only one thing at a time. If the task list says to upload and schedule 30 memes to your Facebook Group, all of which have calls to action for your latest promotion, you should do that all at once.
- Put Money-Making Tasks Up Top – A money-making task is anything you do that can directly put money in your bank account. So those 30 scheduled memes that all have calls to action that take your audience to a sales page, or get them on your list, or otherwise move them closer to earning money from them, is imperative to do first each day.
- Start with the Hardest Tasks First – Everyone has a task they don’t like doing, but if it’s a money-making task that you must do yourself, then do it first to get it over with. You may not like the task of uploading all that marketing collateral to your affiliate program, but this is a direct money-making thing because your affiliates will make you money from it, but this could be outsourced to someone else. That Facebook Live you need to do to tell everyone about your new promotion though no one else can do that because your business is your face.
- Delegate Non-Money-Making Tasks – When non-money-making tasks get in the way of your money-making ability, it’s time to start outsourcing what you can. At first, it might not even be business related. Mopping your floor makes no money for you, so why not get your spouse, child, or housekeeper to do it? Then you can focus more time on making money.
It’s easy to get caught up in simple busy work, particularly anything to do with social media, instead of learning more or working on harder marketing tasks. The best thing you can do is set up regular breaks so that you can do something that isn’t money-making throughout the day and focus better when doing those important money-making tasks.
When doing something, stop and ask yourself if it’s on your list, if it’s a money-making task, and what would happen if you did not do it or had someone else do it. If nothing will happen negatively, then it’s not an important task to do right away. You can do it later but focus first on the most critical tasks, and the way to determine that is to ask whether it leads to a paycheck or not.
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