setting priorities and using to-do lists in your internet marketing

Priorities & To Do Lists

When youre your own boss, it can be awkward knowing what to prioritise.

There almost certainly arent enough hours in the day to do everything, especially when youre not just the boss but the sole employee of your business.

So how can you make sure that the important stuff gets done? Preferably on time!


To-do lists are one option.

Personally, I dont like them as for me at least I find that more things appear on them than get crossed off.

The lists can be good for making sure that small things happen.

But for major items, I find that theyre less useful.


One way to get over that is to have a relatively short list of things that need to get done revamp your website, create more content, do some promotion, that kind of thing and then have a separate do this today list that has shorter tasks that can actually be completed today.

So if your main task was creating content, you might decide to split it down like this:


Decide on topics (remembering not to use that as an excuse to procrastinate)

Pick one of those topics and decide on some sub-topics

Write content for a specific amount of time, even if the piece isnt finished in that time

Stop writing mid sentence, mid paragraph. This is a technique I learned recently and it works because our minds generally hate things that are incomplete. Stopping part way (as if the buzzer has gone off on that quiz show you used to watch) accomplishes this neatly.


You can do the same kind of list for any big task on your to-do list because every big task is just an amalgamation of lots of smaller tasks.

So you could have a master to-do list, pick an item from it and work on that for a few days (or weeks) until its finished.


One snag a lot of people find is working out the priority of the things on their list.

Its tempting to mark everything as a number one priority. But when you do that, the effect is for nothing to stand out and (assuming youre human) theres a good chance youll pick off the easier tasks first.

After all, youve marked them as top priority so they must be important.


Using an Important/Urgent matrix can help overcome that.

Split a piece of paper into 4 segments so that it looks as though youve drawn a giant + sign on it.

Label the top columns Urgent & Not Urgent.

Label the side rows Important & Not Important.


Then assign your to-do list tasks to one of the boxes.

Get this as right as you can but go with your first instinct on each task.

Youve then got your priority list.

Anything in the Urgent Important box is high priority.

Anything in the Not Urgent, Not Important box can safely be left undone, maybe forever.


Another way some people sort out their priorities is to pick just one thing to focus on for the day or the week or until its finished.

Its not something Ive personally used but I know quite a few people who do use it very successfully.

Theres a book called The One Thing that goes into the idea in a lot more depth. Check it out on Amazon and use the Look Inside feature to decide whether its an idea that will work for you.


The big thing with all these methods is to actually do something.

Its all well and good having a list of things to do.

But if thats all it is a list, quietly nagging you somewhere then its not much use.


Its far better to take action on your list.

Set aside some time each day to work on your internet marketing business.

Even something as seemingly small as an hour a day can work nicely. Especially if its focussed.

Its generally thought that a lot of people who work 8 hours a day in offices dont actually spend much more time than that on productive work.


Meetings, reports, checking & answering emails and all the other things that happen in office life take up most of their time.

So even if an hour seems far too short a time to make a difference, do it regularly and youll be pleasantly surprised how much it mounts up.


For instance, if I spend an hour on my internet marketing I could:

Write upwards of 1,000 words of content do that for 4 or 5 days and youve got some massive content

Create a slide show video like this one it takes me maybe 40 minutes to write the content, 10 to record it and another 10 to upload it & do all the behind the scenes tasks to get it live

Add useful replies to forums and Facebook groups (taking care not to get side-tracked and think youre being productive when youre not)

Outsource some simple tasks on Fiverr to get them off the main to-do list


So spend a bit of time on your to-do lists and prioritising them in a way that works for you.

Then make sure you do the really important part actually doing something towards your internet marketing business.

You can have all the plans and ideas in the world but if they stay as that, youre no further ahead.


Do something.

Even if its not perfect (it never will be perfect anyway)

And if youd like more practical, real world help with your internet marketing, join my list by clicking this link.

setting priorities and using to-do lists in your internet marketing

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