As a small business owner, I’ve learned that my single greatest daily obstacle to success is my perception of how busy I am. It’s only a perception, but this frantic need to get a hundred little things done each and every day can bog me down to the point that I often have days where no large-scale projects are completed. As chief blog writer at Ion Leap, my daily blogs are part of what hangs over my head and adds to the sense of busyness.
On Monday, I posted a blog entry of a quality level that made me extremely proud. This was a major achievement. I also made major advances on two different issues for clients. And I managed to deal with about 6 other smaller issues that popped up. It was a big day, and there was a technique I used to get these achievements done which I’ll share with you, even though I’m sure most folks already know it.
Like many people, my life is cyclical. Some days I am disciplined enough to remember what works, do it, and reap the rewards. On other days, the phone rings off the hook, the home schedule is chaos; I’m dealing with surprise issues and forget that one, all-important technique that has never failed me – the morning to-do list.
The list starts in my head as I wake up, crystallizes in the shower and often gets plugged into the online calendar before I leave the house for Starbucks and the office. Those days, like every day, are full of surprises. I get ambushed by someone, have urgent requests, have to resend an email, dig out another one from 3 months ago, etc. But if I’ve done my morning to-do list, I can always get the small requests dealt with, and then refer back to the list to get those priority jobs done.
My to-do “list” isn’t really a list. A list implies a hierarchy from top to bottom and that just doesn’t fit with reality. New calls come in with new priorities and a list can’t easily accomodate those rapid changes. My to-do format is in quadrants like this -
Click here to launch a print-able PDF of this
As you can see, the format forces thinking that mere list-writing does not demand. And it gives you a vehicle for immediately deciding how critical something is to the growth of your business that day.
The difference between ‘urgent’ and ‘important’ and putting them in context of your business
“Urgent” is often a criteria decided by someone else who desperately wants to drop a hot potato into your hands. But for something to make your urgent list you need to decide the difference between the two. Important stuff is often mistaken for urgent when, in fact, it can usually wait a day or even more. It’s just can’t be forgotten.
I invented that circular area at the top for the stuff that’s both urgent and important. That’s the stuff I do first thing. Then I switch over to the urgent quadrant and knock that off. I try to focus a bit each day on something in the important quadrant as well, though I may put it off ’til the next day. The bottom two quadrants are things I might save for the weekend.
This kind of a to-do list gives me a great deal of peace of mind. It helps me focus and prioritize, and that’s very relaxing.
Newer technology that helps
Years ago, I was inseparable from my Palm. Now I use Google Calendar because everyone in my family has access privileges to update it AND, the best part, it sends SMS to my wireless with reminders. Many mornings, I’ll plug my to-do list in to ping me at 8:30 a.m., transfer that to my desktop or to a paper list and I’m set for the day.
Of course, the iPhone helps tremendously. Check out Tungle which lets you sync calendars and more – http://bit.ly/MTVPK and there are new ones about every week.
I’m actually thinking of making an iPhone app of that quadrant format above. It could be programmed to be very simple, but feature rich and force the user to qualify each entry into its appropriate quadrant.
My obligatory pitch
If one reason you find yourself feeling terribly busy is that you have to write blog entries every day and deal with SEO, you’ve found the right blog writer / SEO experts to help. Ion Leap will connect you with a subject matter expert and manage the process tirelessly. You’ll know you’re building valuable content that’s key phrase and keyword rich. And, best of all, you don’t have to do it yourself.
You can get a good example of a company our blog writer Carol O’Dell and others are helping to sell stair lifts. And the guys who own this company find us helpful in more ways than just blog writing because a great blog writer is more than just a writer. We regularly think up important marketing ideas that impact entire companies. Dig around the site a while to learn more about us and give us a call at the Contact link above.
