photo credit: kalidoskopika
It’s awesome to have a solid process scheduling system, but the point is to streamline production, not manage 1000 tasks. Ever feel unproductive despite your best efforts? There should be a built in alert for calendar and task systems that simply says, STOP! finish something first idiot.
After finally identifying that this past week, I was able to free myself and get something done. A refresher in singular focus and the visual below really set me straight. I’m finally doing the actions that will actually propel me to freedom income, the stage we’re currently in. It’s not building websites, or tweeting, or stumbling, and it’s especially NOT creating a product. It’s pinpointing my ideal customer, finding a pain or need, and mock testing ideas for realistic results on profitability. The content I’ve been talking about recently, but sluggishly acting on. Here’s how I, and you can realize what mode of process your stuck in and how to move past it and get something done.
Okay so, confessions first. I’m not nearly as far along as I’d like to be in mock testing my first product idea. I don’t have any grand excuses except that life’s hard. I haven’t “geo arbitraged” my way across the world. I’m still hustling the 9-5, creating an infrastructure of tools, documents, and sites to launch products and services while tracking everything I do. I promise to bring you that raw reality with the notes on exactly how it all goes down, screw ups included. You don’t have to repeat them though. I’ve simply been focusing on the wrong tasks and stuck in the wrong mindset.
How to Identify Where You are, and Move On. A Visual.
There are 3 modes of processing life. You are either taking something in, (reading, watching tv, smelling) thinking about something, (in your head, planning, organizing, scheduling) or you are putting out (typing, jumping, producing). I know these are loose definitions, and the realists here will argue they are blended but from a holistic view, these principles apply.
Click to Enlarge
The key to productivity as a whole is in our ability to cycle through the necessary modes until a task is done. Awareness of this is the big first step, identifying if you’re stuck is the next, and moving on is what makes things happen.
STOP, take a good look above.
We often don’t know how to approach a big goal, and struggle with the long list of tasks that need to happen in order to complete something like “sell a product” which consist of hundred of tasks. Don’t ever tell me it’s as simple as a website and some SEO. I will kill you! We naturally hover to our strengths or preference and get stuck there.
1st. Lesson Learned
I’ve probably spent more time on building out a website to launch my ideas from, than I have actually testing my first idea (Backup Informer) to see if it’s profitable. I’d recommend not doing that. Along the way I pretty much paralyzed myself with analysis. I allowed the amount of business ideas, post ideas, feedback, e-mails and general planning to lock myself up. Time wasted planning and juggling instead of taking in fresh content, or producing something. It’s important to have sustainability, but if you’re not focusing on profitable content, you’re kinda just twiddling your digital thumbs. Seek balance, the visual above will help.
2nd. Lesson Learned
The whole point of the freedom business isn’t to build an empire, it’s to turn easily managed money on an idea…apparently that got away from me. I believe my freelancer background had something to do with that. You might use plenty of shared skills that a freelancer uses, but you want to be an entrepreneur.
“If you act like an entrepreneur, but work like a freelancer, sooner or later you’ll go nuts or work yourself to death.” – Seth Godin
Entrepreneurs build things that can live or die without them, they build projects that are bigger than themselves. Working through Ramit Sethi’s earn1k.com content actually helped me with that. Although his program is more about advancing your freelancing skills, it made the difference between freelancing and being an entrepreneur cut and dry. I never had that distinction before. It’s okay to wear both hats sometimes, but I believe the whole concept behind freedom businesses and automation, heavily suggest moving from freelancer to entrepreneur, or straight to entrepreneur. (I could ramble on about this but I think it’s clear here)
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The graphic above really put me in my place. I was so blindly struggling to plan out months, or even just the next 20 tasks I wanted to accomplish in various projects that I have going on that I consistently failed to act. I stopped reading, I stopped doing, I was in an iCal cloud. I finally moved past that when I got this. I hope these thoughts and graphic will help you do the same. Again, perspective reigns supreme and clarity creates a path for moving forward!
Go forth and produce, updates on freedom business results later, comments welcome.
PS. On a tech side note, I’ve heard one or two comments about my site loading slowly, if you’re experiencing this, can you let me know in the comments? Thanks!
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