Success 101 Online – A Journey in Internet Marketing

Written by DavidThomas on November 19th, 2008

Are your days as productive as you’d like them to be?

No Comments

At the end of the day are you satisfied with what you accomplished in your business?  Do you ever say “Where did the day go, I hardly got anything accomplished?“.

I know when I first started working on my own full-time from home, I thought my days would be long and I’d have plenty of time to get a lot more accomplished than I did when I worked a full-time job.  What’s funny though is my days go by so quickly now that I can’t possibly comprehend where the time goes.  Does that mean that I love what I do and it’s fun and not work which makes the time go more quickly?  I’m sure that’s a very big part of it.  But the fact remains that at the end of many days, I look back and see that too much of my time was wasted on non-income producing activities.

The first step to fixing a problem is realizing that you have a problem.  At least then you know what needs fixed.  Once I realized I had a problem, I started researching ways to solve my productivity dilemma.  The first thing I learned is that I needed to get good at figuring out what activities were income generating and which were not.  With some activities, it’s very easy to tell.  With others, as you’ll see, it’s not easy at all.

To help give you some guidelines, here are some classic examples of non-income generating activities.  Ask yourself if you’re guilty of any of these?

• Surfing the web
• Getting ready to get ready (aka “Saddling Up” which is not riding)
• Reorganizing something that doesn’t need reorganized
• Chatting with business partners about non-critical things
• Reviewing company material
• Checking email
• Cleaning up your desk or your office
• Attending conference calls or webinars
• Growing your social network on sites like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, etc. (disclaimer-this can be income generating but it’s longer term income, not much short-term income potential)
• Reading a self-development book (this activity, like the last one, will definitely have an impact on your income but it’s just hard to measure since it will be much longer term)

What are income producing activities?:

• Calling prospects to set appointments or send them info to review
• Doing 3-way calls with your ME’s
• Prospecting / Generating leads
• Presenting the opportunity to prospects in person, on the phone or in a webinar
• Following up with a prospect
• Following up with a new customer or ME
• Training a new ME so he gets moving out of the gate quickly duplicating proper activities

80% of your time should be spent on the above types of activities

Dramatically Increase Income-Producing Activities — Alex Lopez with Sydney-based Quantify Corporation uses a simple technique to double his income-producing activities.  He divides his to-do list into two columns.  Column one is labeled “Non-income Producing Activities” (Red) and Column two is labeled “Income Producing Activities” (Green).  He then forces himself to place a to-do item in one of the two columns.  When he first started, his non-income producing activities outnumbered his income-producing activities by a two to one ratio.  Over time, he’s been able to flip that ratio.  This is an excellent exercise for ALL of us to follow.  As Quantify Corporation’s tagline says “If you can’t measure it, you can’t control it.”

The trick is to create your task list for tomorrow as the last thing you do today.  When you get up tomorrow, you can charge head-on immediately into the tasks that you need to accomplish for the day without even thinking about them.  Try it, it REALLY works!!

Some thoughts from others on the importance of their daily agenda…

“The secret of a person’s success is discovered in his daily agenda.” — John C. Maxwell

“The whole purpose of time management is to enable you to have more time to spend with the people you love, doing the things you enjoy.”  — Brian Tracy

“Perhaps the most valuable result of all education is the ability to make yourself do the thing you have to do, when it ought to be done, whether you like it or not.” –  Thomas Huxley (1825-1895)

“Every morning when the alarm goes off, we have a totally new opportunity to do what we want with the hours we have been gifted. And we are gifted with that clean slate every day for the rest of our lives.”  –  Hyrum Smith, Originator of the Franklin Planner, 2000

So what are you going to do tomorrow?  Make it count!