The last 6 weeks have been pretty challenging for me and our business.
Moving from Canada back to see the family in Australia, then to London to visit some relatives and now finally settling down in our new place in Mexico has been an exciting and rewarding adventure… but it hasn’t been without it’s consequences.
There’ve been a number of days where I’ve only had access to wireless connections at local spots… and poor ones at that. Most of the time it’s been hard to spend more than 2 or 3 hours a day working on the business.
While frustrating many times, this process has been quite the teacher.
If you’re someone who works a full day (which I normally am) it’s a fascinating exercise to ask, if you COULD only work half as long, or less… maybe only 2 hours… what would you actually do?
If you could only perform certain tasks to make sure your business grows, what tasks would you do, and what tasks would you be forced to abandon?
Before you can answer that question, you have to ask some others.
First you have to ask, “What ARE the most important things I do every day?”
And before answering that, you have to ask “How do I define important?”
You define important as the tasks you do that make the largest contribution to whatever end result is the goal of your business. For most of us, that end result is profit.
So now you can go over the things you do every day and rank them in order of their profit generating capabilities. In itself, making a list of what you actually do every day and analyzing it can be tremendous for your productivity.
As you look over your list, if you’re anything like me, you’ll realize that you actually spend a heck of a lot of time each day doing things that really aren’t contributing to your bottom line much at all.
Are you doing anything each day to bring in new customers? Finding new leads, or testing/tweaking your sales material? Or are you bogged down in admin tasks, fiddling with the aesthetics of your website for no reason, or learning about some new method that you’re yet to put into practice?
In fact, the benefit of taking this kind of personal inventory is two fold:
1. It gets you thinking about what tasks you’re doing that are actually making you money on a day to day basis, or what tasks you most need to perform to keep your business growing.
You’ll no doubt realize that the things that you need to be doing, you’re probably not doing enough of. From there you can work on… doing MORE of those things.
2. It makes you see that you might in fact be working far too much, and for no net benefit. When you know what your most important and profitable tasks are, you can work at cutting away the fat, reducing the tasks that are wasting your time and your energy, and having more of your day to spend enjoying your life.
Give it a shot when you get a chance. Maybe even test yourself by picking a day that you’ll work only 2 hours and see what, by default, you find yourself doing. Or if you’re not that game, just make a list of what you DO do on a normal day and go through ranking the tasks by their level of contribution to your profits.
Oh and if you do, come back here and let me know what you learned!
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For me I define things into the following categories.
The Must do’s, Need to do, and Want to do.
I only spend 3-4hrs a week tops managing my domain porfolio having automated systems in place to ensure things run smoothly and backup assistant if things go really wrong to notify me I’m required to fix something.
I know what you mean fiddling with techinques websites etc It can consume your day but I’ve learnt stick it up then change it slowly people will tell you if your wrong.
But how many hours per week did you work, before you got your system in place?
My guess is many very long days and a lot of trial and error.
There is no doubt that one of the biggest challenges is to make sure you are spending time doing things that earn you money rather than not. This is particularly difficult when you are new and find yourself bombarded with the next great system. I think focus is the big thing especially when you are working for yourself as no one is going to tell you if you are wasting time.
Being the perfectionist that I am, I do find myself veering toward things that won’t bring in new customers for the day, instead they are things that are already in place and don’t really need to be fiddled with. Of my full day, I would say I spend approximately an hour re-acclimating myself to the important tasks at hand. Which in turn, if I only had two hours to spend I should take 5 minutes and go over what tasks will get me closer to my goal for the day.
In a sense, it seems you are describing a good “diet” for business. Cut out the “fatty” things that take up your day and your business will perform like an athlete destined for victory. Thanks!
You’re saying I wouldn’t have the time to read this post if I would have only 2 hours per day?
Gosh its so true.
Focus ,Focus , it is the aim to be sure. There are days that you are constantly getting distracted and sidetracked or just firefighting when someone or thing lets you down.
You have given me an idea now to constantly remind myself with an recorded audio message saying ” where is the focus ” i will set this to go off every hour and a half !
Sometimes people appeal to your better nature and you find yourself getting sucked into being the solution to everybody elses problems without even realising it.
I suppose its a case of can’t see the wood for the trees !
Thanks for the mental jogg ! I am recording it now.
Enjoy the sun and if you tilt the sombrero slightly foward it helps keep the sun off the screen !!! oh and I never leave the worm in the beer.
cheers
Peter
Andrew, It has been quite a while since I’ve revieved one of your emails. I I’ve been trying to build up my IRS Site and been stumbling with what is just the right way to spend my time. I’m going to do as you suggest and also reread some of the very good articles you have sent me in the past. I’ve stayed subscribed to your newsletters because I know you know what you are doing. It seems that every now and then we need to look at others that are successful and become refreshed. Thanks for remembering me when I’m long overdue for an Andrew Jolt. Hope all goes well in Mexico. I’m up in La.
‘Cutting out the fatty things’ is so necessary, but somehow the hardest thing to do. I know how distracted I become and how I shoot off on different paths at the drop of a hat.
The problem at the moment is that I’m not making anything at all and I’m going all over the place, trying to learn. I write articles to E-zines quite a bit, but I’m still trying to learn what tags, meta-tags, and hyperlinks are. Keywords, too, I’m having problems with, but I’m slowly ‘eating the elephant,’ as Travis Sago would say!
Excellent blog, though, Andrew, and I’m so happy for you for your success,
Mike
Hey Andrew,
Those are some good points there my friend. It reminds me a bit of the 4 hour work week book, have you read it?
Anyway, yeah I think we could all work less if we focused on the main tasks.
Cheers.
It’s just like the adage that people generally spend up to, or beyond, whatever their income level is. We tend to take as much time as we think we have, to get things done.
Procrastinators (like me) fool around with virtually anything – “researching” and getting distracted for ages, and then the “skill” is to then work like a fiend to get the job done.
It actually works well for me when I have an offline client to whom I have promised something.
However with internet marketing for yourself there is no-one to tell you when something must be done, and so one small project simply rolls over from one day to another, ad infinitum, unless we’re super self-disciplined.
Thanks Andrew, for the butt-whooping! I need to take a moment whenever I sit down at the computer and think, “What MUST I achieve here in the next two hours?”, and then focus to get it done.
Great post Andrew. This is such a good topic – time management and internet marketing seem to be mutually exclusive terms!
It’s so easy to get distracted and pulled off course by the various emails, courses and materials we are sent or come across. Many of this activity drain our time, our productivity and our profits.
I found myself thinking about what I would do in 2 hours per day as I read your post. What an eye opener! I must admit that I do spend far too much time on non-income-producing activities. Time to re-evaluate and adjust.
Thank you as always for your excellent content…
Best to you,
Scott
This is a great topic something I been trying to figure out for the last year. I am a part-time online business owner work a full time job plus family with 3 kids. I get about 10 – 15 hours a week on my business so 2 hours a day is about right. Your need to really focus on what matters to you. Your not going to be able to accomplish everything. Having a plan and goals set it good so when you do sit down to focus you don’t waste time trying to figure out what to do.
Andrew,
Great post and a good kick in the ass. You’re right that if we only had 2 hours a day, I think all of us would be much more focused on what is really important and productive. The problem we have is we do become good time managers for awhie and then lapse back into poor habits.
Thanks for slap up side my head. Enjoy your time in Mexico.
Rick
I was able to cut my emails down from over 125 every-other-day (some of these ‘Gurus’ just can’t help themselves and send a bunch of “must-need” products/services referrals) to about 20 a day. A major accomplishment for me and a successful New Year’s resolution. So I suppose a quick skim of the email box would be a good place to start.
Ignoring the newest, shiniest “bait” offered by the maverick marketing marvels would probably be another good way to cut some lost time. And so on. . .
Hi !
Its really good post, as most of the new bloggers like me will definetly find useful from this.
I am also from one of them who is looking for an good traffic on my blog http://www.best-reviewed-products.blogspot.com.
I just want to ask one of the simple question, as to start an successfull blog we need an piller/solid content, but most of the bloggers who are not so well and good in english and want to start blog in english then what would be the solution to this problem ?. As most of the new bloggers having same problem. So I expect an answer on this question?
Hey Andrew..wow Mexico!! sounds unreal. where can we see some pics of your new pad?
but yes, I often have only a few hours some days to ‘work’ on my business. It really makes you cut out the crap and get things done.
I think it’s actually better to limit the time we use to work…as you know, work expands to fill the time…and who wants to work more than we need to anyway?
Live it up mate!
Stuart Stirling
Excellent points to be sure. Personally, I would like add that it is also important to consider your customers and what you can do for them, even if it takes your more time. Sure you can do better in the short term trying to make the most money in the least amount of time. But unless you also take into account how you can improve your customer support, your customer’s experience, etc, it is simply a false positive that will hurt your customers and your bottom line long term. Be careful you don’t confuse efficiency with shortcuts.
Good morning from sunny Chapala, Jalisco, Mexico.
Andrew, I want to welcome you to Mexico and hope you enjoy your experience here as much as we have. We moved from Alberta, Canada to Mexico 15 years ago. Our first place of residence was Puerto Vallarta. Since then there have been many adventures. For the last ten years we have lived inland at Lake Chapala. There is a large expat community here, plus we are only 30 minutes from the large city of Guadalajara. Anyway, I am writing for a couple of reasons. First thanks for all your valuable help and information. Yours is the only information that ever made me any money online. I thank you for that. Second, my husband and I are going to be in Puerto Vallarta, actually Nuevo Vallarta from Feb. 6-13 and we are wondering if you would have time to get together and let us buy you a cold one. It would be our pleasure and you could pick our brains about living inland in Mexico.
Hoping to hear from and wishing you the best.
Hasta Luego,
Penny Howe
Hi Andrew,
I suffer from this consistently and have to remind myself that a lot of the things/tasks in my business are just not worth that much of my time and effort, and that I should focus more on more important things such as lead generation and conversion.
Another great post mate!
Welly Mulia
Hey Andrew
Some very sound advice and a timely reminder.
For 25 years I was in the financial services industry. Each year I made it a practice to analyze where I had spent my time in the previous year. I then over layed this with where I earnt my money. This process was a simple way for me to see where I was most productive regarding hours spent and dollars earned.
It always seemed to work out that 80% of my income came from 20% of my efforts.
When I realised this trend I outsourced what I had to do for compliance and concentrated my time on doing more of the 20%.
The upshot was I doubled my income and cut my workload by 50%
I have never done this for my internet marketing business. Will be an interesting exercise I’m sure.
Cheers
Simon
I have a similar philosophy; if 20% of what you do produces 80% of the results, just focus on 20%. By doing this you will dramatically reduce the amount of time you spend working.
Always remembering the story of the tortoise and the hare (along with sticking one’s neck out). Slow and steady wins the race, so GREAT article, Andrew. Yes, fiddling with the visuals is counter-productive after a bit of time. It’s all about building the links back to the blog and having a product to sell that will give a chunk of proft with ONE purchase. Doing a minimum of 1-2 tasks a day is ideal if you’re lazy or just busy with another job. Build those links, build those links, I will try to remember this. Thanks again.
Paul
very scary thought…yet crucial
20 % of your actions result in 80 % of your profit…
because we get sidetracked…
a great exercise in productivity
thanx
pj
Thanh, Andrew ! Very, very thank !.