Too Many Ideas – Too Little Time

Sunday morning and it’s 6:00am. No alarm is set and the baby is still sound asleep. Still, I wake up and my head is buzzing. First to mind pop in a few tasks that I didn’t get to last week that I wanted to. My mind races over when I can squeeze them in for the upcoming week. Then, it happens. I get an idea. First one, then another and another. By 6:15am I know there is no way I will ever fall back asleep. I grab the first clothes I can find in the dark, head down the hall and fire up the computer. While it boots up, I pull out a notebook and start scribbling down the various ideas as fast as I can. Twenty minutes later, I’m registering domain names, picking templates, trying to find that article on something called Blueprint, which is kind of a pre-setup template for CSS that you can use to quickly build website, once you understand it that is. My blood is pumping through my veins and when the baby cries out at 8:20am, I’m stunned at the amount of time that has gone by. This is why I am in business for myself. This is why I work from home and eat away at my savings while I build up a client list. As I lift my baby up from her crib I remember, “I still don’t know what the hell Twitter is for, or why anyone cares.” (I read lots of blogs and SEO type stuff, and those guys love Twitter for helping to build traffic.)

It’s Work, But It’s Not WORK
Time management is all about doing the right things at the right time. It sounds easy but everyone, entrepreneur or not, wages a daily battle at getting it just right. There are hundreds or even thousands of systems out there. Each of those systems has a hundred products you can buy or forms you can download or programs you can run. The problem is always comes down to prioritizing. In business you should always have more to do than you can get done. Otherwise, you are either magnificently successful and improving is just so very difficult, or you aren’t trying to improve. So, how do you decide what to do now?

As a freelance writer and business consultant every day is filled with possibilities. Among those possibilities almost all of them can be considered “work” and that is a poison tipped dart ready to fire at the person who tries to take the golden idol off the pedestal. My greatest talent in life has always been procrastination. I could be the world’s foremost procrastinator if I applied myself (assuming I ever got around to it.) Let’s be clear, being late, and missing deadlines is NOT procrastination. That is a whole different thing. True procrastination means on-time completion–BARELY on time.

The problem is procrastination doesn’t pay well, and it is stressful. Racing on Friday afternoon to complete a two-week project before 5:00pm and knowing that it simply cannot be done in the twenty minutes you have left is stressing. You’ll yell at your spouse or significant other when they call to say “Hi” because you don’t have time to stop and say, “Hi.” You’ll bounce your legs instead of “wasting” time going to the bathroom, and you’ll swallow harder to avoid getting up to get something to drink. (which would only lead to more wasted time in the bathroom anyway.) This is no way to run a railroad. So we need a system.

If you are a real procrastinator, sending you out to buy a book or read another web site would be like a doctor telling a cancer patient to start smoking before sex in addition to after. With a nine page technical whitepaper due tomorrow afternoon you would be at Barnes & Noble looking for the book instead of working on the whitepaper. (“But this is important too.) Tomorrow morning you would be setting up your ninety-one file folders or whatever until you looked up at the clock and saw you only had forty-five minutes left. No, instead I’m going to break it down, entrepreneur style.

First, forget about what is and is not work. If you love what you do (and if you are running your own business I hope that you do) then the line between work and not work is blurry anyway. If I had a nickel for every time someone met me at Starbucks while I was furiously typing away on my laptop and said “Oh, if you’re working we don’t have to…” I wouldn’t need any more clients. I love writing. Ideas come to me all day and all night. I can’t wait for my cell phone contract to expire so I can get one with a keyboard so I can write while I wait in line. That means there are all sorts of things I could be writing about instead of working on getting new clients, all of which would be considered “work.” It is way too easy to look yourself in the eye at the end of the day (Warning: Use a mirror) and say “Well, I didn’t get that project done, but I worked hard all day.”

So, here it is. The crash-course do-it-now no-fuss time management system.

First, list five goals to accomplish for the day the night before. Why? Have you ever noticed how you ALWAYS have good intentions when the thing you have to do is far off? No one on a diet ever says “I’m going to eat half a chocolate cake tomorrow afternoon.” They say “Tomorrow, I’m going to eat all vegetables.” It is only with immediacy that the little devil shows up on your shoulder.

Same thing works for business. With a clear head and no work to actual be done right away, your brain will logically choose the best things for your day. So, grab two sheets of paper and a Sharpie. Write down the five things on both pages (you have two of the same page now.) One goes near your workspace so you don’t “forget” anything and the other goes where you end your day: the spot you put down your briefcase, on your dresser, whatever.

What’s the point? No one likes to fail. When you finish your day and look at the five things in big black letters and realize that you didn’t get four of them done, you’ll give yourself a little mental kick in pants. When this happens enough times, you’ll start to look at the clock and see that is after 4:00 and realize you haven’t done anything on the list. For the next twenty minutes, or forty minutes or whatever, you’ll bang away at those five goals just so you can look at the piece of paper with some dignity. It’s still procrastination, but at least you are moving forward on a daily basis.

The second part of the plan is the priority list. Don’t worry; you don’t have to make it. It is the same every day and you already know it, you’ve just been looking for excuses to make a different one. So, print it out, write it down, send yourself the same email every day, whatever works for you.

My Priorities (All Day, Every Day)
1) Get New Clients — No Cheating. Doing things that “help” you get new clients do not count. The only acceptable activities for this priority are calling, meeting, mailing, or emailing. Nothing else counts.

2) Do Two Things to Help Get New Clients — Ok, now you can improve your website, write a new phone script, or update your alumni directory page. You can even figure out Twitter (then email me and let me know).

3) Work On Your Project With the Closest Deadline — No exceptions for being “hard” or “easy”. Work on it before any others.

4) Work On Your Hardest Project — Who cares if it isn’t due for six weeks? If it’s your hardest then you’ll need the time.

5) Work On The Rest of Your Projects — After you put in solid time on the first four, keep working but now you get to go freestyle. Even if you are working on your most fun project first you are still moving ahead. Meanwhile the first four give you the power boost you need to stay caught up.

6) End Your Day — Ending your day when you get ready for bed is not allowed. Again, if your work and your interests and hobbies happen to be the same thing, you can still work on those things. But, make sure that you have a real break that separates your “work day” from the rest of your day. If you are messing around with CSS templates until 3AM, go nuts, but it is important that you have a definitive idea in your mind of when your work responsibility ended and pursuing your interest began.

7) Use a notebook, online list, or planner (I use Zoho Business. I highly recommend it) to dump all of those things that you think about while you are working (or when you wake up early Sunday morning) so that you will remember them. That way, you won’t feel like you have to work on them right now in order to make sure they don’t get lost in the shuffle.

Follow this priority list and your business will work out just fine. The rest of your life is up to you. Go buy one of those books if you want. Either way, your Friday afternoons will be less stressful. Now stop procrastinating and go get some new clients.

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