How to the Find Time to Finally Start Your Business

You’ve got a plan in mind – writing a daily email, a weekly blog post, a couple of guest articles for content marketing.  Plus you’ll share a little on social media, and you’ll devote each week to creating a product from your blueprint.  One problem – you’ve got another job.  Or you have to take care of your kids, or your aging parents… life is packed…

How are you going to be able to get all of this done?

You must prioritize.

If you have a 4 hour time to work, and you sit down at the computer, and you spend the first 45 minutes reading all the emails that marketers send you, and all the jokes that your family sends you, and reading all the different sales pages, of all the different things you could buy that would help you out, you’re 45 minutes in the hole.

Then, if instead of following my directions, you try to go to YouTube to search for a video of how to do something that I’ve given you specific instructions to do (click here for exactly how to create 4 products in one month).  You spend another hour looking at different videos, and now you have 10 different ways to do it, and you don’t know which one to do, now you’re an hour and 45 minutes in the hole today.

Now you’re discouraged, and you think, I can’t get everything done today, maybe I’ll wait until tomorrow.  Then you finally read my instructions for that day, and you go wow, there’s no way I can do this in 2 hours.  I guess today’s gone.  You go back to your email, and there’s another 20 minutes’ worth of emails.  You know how it is folks, because I’ve been there.  I’ve wasted time online.  I still do it.  I get stuck in the trap folks.  I’ve set down, and said today I’m going to create a product, and 3 hours later, I’ve answered email, and I’ve studied how to get more traffic, and I’ve studied something else.  I’ve searched for another silver bullet.  I’m trying to make things perfect.  And lo and behold, at the end of the day, I haven’t created a product.

What would I have been better off doing?

Would I have been better off answering a bunch of emails from people who don’t know me really.  Trying to find ways to drive more traffic.  From studying these things.  From searching for another silver bullet.  Trying to make things perfect.  And, at the end of the day, have nothing to show for myself.

Or if I had just sat down and took 3 hours and recorded a new product, and then tomorrow I could sell the product and make lots of money.  Which would be more effective?  For me, creating the product is more effective.

Please understand, I fall into the same trap that you do.  The internet is just so easy to get lost in time.  Before I start Googling, I want some information about something, I have all the information I needed in about 5 minutes, but I get curious about this, and I click on this pay-per-click ad because it looks really interesting and I click there and I give my name and email address and I get a new download for something, and it’s a 50 page ebook about something, I’m like, Wow! I can’t believe somebody else is teaching about this.  So I read the whole ebook, so now it’s another 25 minutes.  And I say, wow, that’s some really good information.  What am I going to do with it?  Well, I’m probably not going to do anything with it, because it really doesn’t apply to me.  It’s just useful information.  Then I go back to my email.  There’s another follow-up email from the person I just gave my name and email address to, and I read it because I’m interested.  Then, somebody else has sent me something, and then I read something else.

Before I know it, 2 1/2 hours later, I have not accomplished anything.  And I started out with a 5 minute Google search.

I know how it happens, you have to control it.

I don’t have a silver bullet for controlling it, however, I’ve gotten pretty good at controlling it.

You need to prioritize your actions – do what’s most important first. If you’re the kind of person who really has a hard time with time management, you’ll find that you’re not focusing on what you should be focusing on.  If you find that you’re the kind of person who makes lists of things to do.  You know how it is, you make a list of 20 things to do, and 3 of them are really important, and 17 of them are not, but they all need to be done.  This is classic, it’s hilarious to me, this is what I do, I write this list of 20 items.

The right way to do this would be to go in and do the 3 things that are important first. Human nature as what it is, what I do, and what you probably do, is you want to cross off as many items on the list as possible, as fast as possible.  So you feel very productive for the day.  Anybody felt like that before?  That’s what I’ve done.  I go in, and I just start doing the easiest things first, because it allows me to cross things off.  Do step #1, ah, cross if off!  Next thing takes 2 minutes, cross it off. Now, in an hour, I’ve done all 17 things.  And I look at the list and I feel really good, because I’ve crossed off 17 things, and I’ve done it in an hour, and I’ve had 8 hours to work, and I’m excited about it.

Then I look at the next thing to do, and it’s a higher priority thing, and it’s going to take 2 hours to do.  Well, now I’ve been working really hard for a whole hour crossing off these 17 items, I’m tired.  So now I go and I get off, and I grab a Coca-Cola, I take a little walk, and I relax, and I come back 20 minutes later, and I look at my list and I say.  Well, I’ve done 17 things today, I’ll just do those 3 things tomorrow.