One of the biggest mistakes that I see business owners making is spending all of
their time on the short term tasks that feel urgent or feel important, and
not making any time for the things that will actually move their business forward,
not just keep the lights on and keep the business running as it is.
Welcome to Imperfect Action. I'm Steph Taylor. For years, I read all
the books, downloaded all the freebees, and did all the courses, but
it wasn't until I started taking imperfect action that my business had its first million
dollars year. Imperfect Action is about doing things before you're ready, prioritizing consistent
action over perfect action, and moving forward even when you're not sure you're doing
it right. On this show, you can expect mindset advice, actionable marketing
tips, and strategies to build a business that brings you more profit, more
freedom, and even more joy. Are you on the list to get my
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help you grow your business in a more intentional way. Sign up at Steph
Taylor dot com, forward slash DBB, or the link in the show notes.
Hey, Welcome back to im Perfect Action. This episode six hundred and
seventy How to choose where to focus your time and energy in your business when
your to do list is overflowing. This is something that pretty much every business
owner is going to experience at some point in time in running your business,
and I know it can be so incredibly challenging when you feel like you are
being pulled in a million different directions in your business and you just don't know
where to focus. Next. Do you try and keep the lights on,
do you keep the wheels running, or how do you even find the time
to invest in the things that are going to grow your business. So the
very famous thing I want to talk about before you really jump into how to
focus or where to place your focus in your business is this concept of short
term gain versus long term gain tasks. Now, running your business is a
little bit like gardening, So short term tasks are the things like watering and
weeding the garden. You have to water your plants every day otherwise they die
right otherwise the weeds will take over. And this is like dealing with the
day to day operations your emails, client needs. All of the things that
keep the lights on in your business, the things that are working in your
business versus the things that deliver a long term gain, things like planting new
seeds, fertilizing your plants, pruning them. You don't necessarily see the immediate
results and they don't feel as urgent. But if you skip these things in
your garden won't grow. These are things like creating a course so you don't
have to work with clients as much long term, designing a new lead magnet
to grow your email list, starting a podcast to attract more of the right
people into your business, the tasks that are working on the business, but
when your to do list is overflowing and feel really hard to create time for
those longer term tasks, when you don't even feel like you have time to
stay on top of the short term things. And one of the biggest mistakes
that I see business owners making is spending all of their time on the short
term tasks that feel urgent or feel important, and not making any time for
the things that will actually move their business forward, not just keep the lights
on and keep the business running as it is. But that's easier said than
done, right, Like, how do you choose where to focus when there
are just so many things you could focus on at any given point in time.
So here are sort of rough five steps that I would take. Step
number one is I would get really clear and where my business is heading.
Often we can get caught in just running the business and you just end up
peddling this bicycle with no real idea of where you're going or what you need
to do to get there. And if you don't know where you're going,
you're not going to wind up anywhere in particular, or you're going to wind
up some where that's completely different to where you want it to be. Now.
I created a free workbook called Escape the Messy Middle that I designed to
help you to get complete clarity on where your business is heading, so that
you can grow your business with intention and focus rather than trying to do all
of the things and exhausting yourself in the process. If you want to copy
of that free workbook, send me a DM on Instagram with the letters EMM.
You can find me there on Stephtaylor dot co on Instagram EMM, and
it will send you the link to that automatically. All right. The second
thing, the next step, capture everything that needs to be done to keep
your business running. So write down all of those short term gain tasks all
of the things that need to be done to keep your clients happy, to
keep the lights on in your business, and write them down, whether it's
a physical planner or a digital task management software like click up. We use
click up, I love click Up, Asana, Monday, any of those
one so you can see in front of you. These are all of the
things that need to be done, and then ask yourself, do I really
need to do this task? Is this task moving me closer to my bigger
vision for my business? Or is it actually just taking off my time?
A lot of the time we can fill out to do lists with things that
make us feel busy, make us feel productive, but don't move our businesses
any closer to where we want to be and that we don't really want to
be doing. So ask yourself, do I want to be doing this task?
Then step three? What bigger projects need to happen to move your business
closer towards that long term goal. So go through the exercises in the Escape
the Messy Middle workbook. If you haven't got that, dm me on Instagram
EMM I'm there at steph Taylor dot Co. And once you've figured out those
exercises, You should then have a rough idea of what needs to happen to
achieve that bigger vision, right, whether that's launching a podcast or finally creating
that membership, or building out that funnel to fill your coaching program, whatever
it is. These are all big projects and you might feel like you want
to do them all at the same time, but you're actually a lot more
effective if you just focus on one at a time rather than constantly switching between
all of these different things. Dive headfirst into one, complete that, then
do the next one. And I know it's so hard. Like that entrepreneurial
brain, I get this as well. We want to do all of the
things and we want to do them yesterday, but sometimes slow and steady is
the easiest way to get to the finish line. So pick which one you
need to focus on first. Pick which project you need to focus on,
or which project you want to focus on first, and start with that one.
Then step fourth, what needs to happen to make this this first big
project a reality. This is where you want to capture all of the tasks
that need to be done and put them side by side with wherever you captured
those other tasks that you needed to keep the lights on. So if you're
putting them an all in, click up, keep it all in, click
up. And remember these tasks that you are putting in to make this bigger
project of reality, they aren't going to feel as urgent as the others that
keep the lights on in your business. So rather than relying on urgency to
make these things happen, you're going to need to be intentional with how you
prioritize them rather than just working on them when you have time. Okay,
you're going to need to make time to get these done, and this might
look like getting up an hour earlier every day, or skipping Netflix at night,
or setting a boundary around how often you check your inbox every day and
then using that little bit of extra time to work on your business instead of
just constantly being available in your inbox and being really reactive with what you are
doing. And then step number five is be realistic with your daily to do
list. This is hard, I know, I get this. How often
do you actually complete everything that is on your to do list? If you
are an overachiever, you probably overestimate how much you can get done in a
day. I do this too. And then when you roll your to do
list, the left over tasks on your to do list over onto the next
day. You feel like you're behind, You feel like you haven't been as
productive as you should have been. You guilt yourself about it, and then
you end up constantly carrying over these tasks and never actually ticking off the entire
to do list. So instead of trying to do everything, how can you
try to do less but only do the things that are really important. Time
blocking has been a really great tool for me for being realistic with how much
I can get done in a day, because I will put it in my
calendar how long I think it's going to take me to do something, and
then I realize, oh, I'm trying to like budget ten hours worth of
work here, and I'm only going to work four or five hours today,
so there's no way I'm going to get this done. Let me now prioritize
what is the most important things that I need to get done with my limited
time today rather than what are all of the things that I can get done.
A tool that I've started using for this is called sun Sama sun Sama
and not sponsored at all by them, but like, this is something I
just discovered this year, and it integrates really nicely with click up, so
that I've now got every day, I can look at all of the things
that need to happen in the business that's in click up, and then I
can put into my own calendar, my own personal to do list, all
of the things that need to be done, and I can also schedule in
things like exercise and the various things I need to do around the house,
so I know this is what I'm getting done, this is what time I
want to shut down my day, and I'm being a lot more intentional with
where I'm spending my time. So those are the five steps that I would
go through. I get clear and where my business is heading. Capture everything
that needs to be done to keep the lights on in your business. Identify
what those bigger projects are that need to happen to move your business towards that
long term goal. Identify what needs happen to make the first big project a
reality, not all of them. We just want to do one at a
time, and then be realistic with that daily to do list, intentionally create
that time to work on the tasks that will make that big project a reality.
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Thank you so much for listening. Catch you next time.