#one task

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Discover How Doing One Task at a Time Wins the Day

One of the many challenges facing Internet marketers is time management, and doing one task at a time  and doing it well.

By its very nature, those who are involved in marketing on the Internet tend to be flighty, and to suffer from the shiny objects syndrome… Where they are constantly distracted by new techniques and ideas, at the expense of investing sufficient time in things they know work!

The problem is, most people are not able to multitask to the point where they can do many tasks well. Some people can do many tasks, but some of them tend to be poorly done or rushed through, rather than doing a single task at a time and doing it exceptionally well. Yet increasingly, the quality of the content that we produce is being compared to others who are experts in their field, so producing low quality content is actually counter-productive even if you produce a lot of it.  You are better doing one task at a time than many tasks badly!

The answer to this time management question is to choose one thing and make sure you are doing that one task at a time really well. That is not to say that you cannot have many projects on the go, but choosing one thing and concentrating on that is key to an ongoing strategy of excellence in your online business.

I have always been someone who’s done many things fairly well, and also someone who is innately curious about new techniques, ideas and software. Thus I can start a project than do it to the best of my abilities, only to find myself Lord away and distracted by some new piece of software often unrelated to the tasks that I’m actually doing online. I found myself confused and frustrated when I look back on my productivity and realise that rather than seeing something through to excellence, I have settled for half baked, or even unfinished productions.

Doing One Task at a Time is Essential for Excellence

As a person who takes on many tasks and probably over works and over taxes himself, I have found that slowing down and concentrating on doing one thing well has been a key ingredient in allowing me to produce quality work.

But how do you achieve this in a world where so many distractions are thrown at you constantly, especially on the Internet?

Let me ask you… Do you find yourself sitting down to write a blog post or produce content, only to find yourself reading Facebook posts or reading emails of the latest software available? If this sounds a little bit like you, be encouraged because there is a way out.

Studies show that over the last decade or so the attention span of people on the Internet has been drastically reduced. Most people would recognise this phenomenon in their own life, because when we find a site we are not interested in, or one that looks average, we tend to click away from that within two seconds. We have become a generation that skims rather than reads content, and in our defence we are really good at skimming content. This enables us to get an idea of what is written without actually taking the time to read it.

However, this behaviour also makes this flighty and inattentive when it comes to pursuing our own goals and the tasks that we face in online business. This phenomenon cannot be underestimated, because most of us don’t even know we are doing it. We just get to the end of the day look back and ask, “What have I achieved today?”

While discipline might be a dirty word for some people today, excellence is always going to be a great word! To achieve excellence, we need to be diligent and disciplined when it comes to producing quality content.

Here are a few suggestions as to how you can produce quality content without getting distracted…

1. Prioritise

Before you start into your day’s work, write a list of the tasks you hope to achieve in your day. The next to each task write a number that represents how important the task is for you to achieve in the time you have allotted. None of the most important task number one, second most important number two, and so on.

2. The Good, the Bad and the Ugly

Have a close look at each of these tasks and decide which of them you like, which of them you hate and which of them you don’t really like but can tolerate. Write a second number next to each task, with one for the task that you despise, 2 for one you can tolerate, three for the ones you like, etc. Remember, you are going to be doing one task at a time, so you will need to focus on the activity sometime, whether you like it or not!

3. Decide how much time you have available in any given portion of the day.

For example, you may have three hours available in the morning and only one in the afternoon, so you need to fill up those four hours as productively as possible.

4. Add the Numbers and Choose the Lowest

Now have a look at the numbers you have written next to the tasks. Whichever number is lowest is the one that you should attempt first and give the most time to, when you are at your best. So if you are freshest in the morning, your first task should be the one with the lowest number written next to it.

5. Decide to Put Blinkers On

Have you ever seen old Western movies with horses drawing buggies, and they are wearing blinkers? Blinkers are small strips of leather that cover the side of the horses I so that they can only see in a forward direction. That is a great analogy to you as you set about the important tasks of your day… Put your blinkers on, and do one task at a time!

By putting your blinkers on I am referring to doing one task well, and not allowing yourself to be distracted by the many things that are thrown at you while you’re on your computer.

The reason you start with the lowest number, is that you need to not only do the most important tasks, but you also need to prioritise in doing the tasks that you do not like first. It’s not that you have become a masochist or are keen on inflicting pain on yourself, it’s because if you do the things you like you make it engrossed in those and never get around to doing the things you don’t like!

By choosing the things you do not like to do, you tend to press into those and make them happen early in the day. That means that later in the day, when most people are getting more tired, you are able to do the tasks that you enjoy, and not only are you doing one task well you don’t like, but you can follow it up with doing one task well that you love to do… it’s a win, win situation.

By applying this simple formula many people are found that they have been able to change the way they behave when it comes to work, especially in the Internet marketing space. It is far preferable to find yourself doing one task at a time well rather than many tasks badly, and this simple formula is an ideal way of making this happen.

So my challenge to you today is this… Set yourself up to do successive lots of “one task at a time” activities.

Try writing out a list of tasks you need to achieve in any given day, rank each for importance with number one being the most important, rank each for how much you enjoy them with the highest number being maximum enjoyment in the lowest being no enjoyment, then add the numbers up. See if this method works for you, because if it does you can greatly increase your productivity in the same amount of hours, and at the end of the day that can mean money in your pocket.

"I should do dishes...(does a few) meh maybe I'll do other tidying for a while and come back to dishes...ooh ooh what about that lip balm I forget how it smells (sniff) oh like that, huh. I should really be working on my poetry for the lit mag. How big is a monkey like your average monkey? How many kinds of monkeys are there? ...I think I want soda. ...no I don't! ...oh but yeah I do, like an orange soda? Yeah. ...shouldn't I be cleaning? (stands up) I like my tape dispenser. (sits down)"