How to Finally Stop Wasting Valuable Time Doing “Tail Chasing” Activities

What You’ll Learn…

• How to avoid the disappointment and frustration of not being able to complete your entire list of “To-Do”.
• General guidelines successful people, like Brain Tracy, uses to actually accomplish more with their time.
• And How to utilize those guidelines to insuring that what you’re doing is actually moving you closer to your desired goals.
• Plus What critical thing  solo business professionals should focus on right now.

Image Source :graur razvan ionut / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

Have you ever written long To-Do list thinking that you can complete it all in a day’s time?  How often do you ever accomplish everything on the list?

Here is a deeper question.  Do you have a ‘time till completion’ column next to each activity?  It is not very often that you can find an individual with this on their list.

How often do we write these long lists of activities with no idea of how long it will take to complete each activity?  You may have two activities on your list and each requires 4 hours of your time, energy, and focus.  That is 8 hours gone from your day, and completing two activities will not put a dent in a long list.

“Creating an unrealistic To-Do list leaves you to feeling unaccomplished, inadequate, unproductive, and stuck in the endless cycle of To-Dos; aka, “I’m busy.”

Don’t Expect To Fly To The Moon and Back In One Day.

You do not have to place a time on each activity in order for you to be effective, but it does bring to scope what you can actually accomplish today and what needs to be set aside for tomorrow. The objective is to know approximately how much time, energy, and focus is required to complete each task on your list.

If you are the only person operating your business, then that means you are the I.T. guy, tax specialist, sales rep, networker, marketer, website designer, media personnel, lawyer, consultant, and everything else.

You cannot wear all those hats and expect to fly to the moon and back all in one day. Learn to delegate and build teams around people whom specialize in specific categories of your needs.  Set realistic expectations on what you can do in a day. Starting out solo is tough, but focus your efforts on the things that matter first.

It’s Critical That Solo Business Professionals Focus on Bringing in More Business First.

Before you build a team of people you pay to take over complete projects on your list. You need to have certain systems already in place. Assuming that you have systems such as a product line and sales funnel then the bulk of your activities should be marketing and sales.

Numerous successful business professionals repeatedly say that an individuals’ primary focus should be getting in front of people whom can benefit the most from what you have to offer. This is one of the most important start-up activities for a starting business. If done right, the mystery can be take out of the marketing and simplified into a concrete formula.

Example: If you attend multiple business events and after attending three of those events, you notice a pattern.  Every time you attend an event, you meet 10 people and on average, three of those people become customers and one a partner.

“Your marketing goal is to put a relevant offer in front of a relevant customer at a relevant time, track the results, and make the necessary adjustments along the way.”

The Brain Tracy’s A, B, C List That Can Eliminate 90% of Your “Tail Chasing” Work

Some days you’ll find yourself trapped taking care of the urgent and immediate things. I call this tail chasing. I call it that because you’re busy but you don’t actually accomplish anything worth while. At the end of that day you should be able to chart how far you are from your desired goal.

A General Explanation of How The A.B.C Process Works

I got this process from Brain Tracy ,a personal effectiveness speaker and author. I applied this to my life with great results so I wanted to share it with you today.

• 1. Answer: What are your objectives?  (Be very specific in writing your objectives.)

Example: My objective is to help 100 people become better at writing.

• 2. Prioritized what activities you need to do to reach your objectives.  (You can use this labeling system: A, B, C, D, and E. and place numbers to prioritize A labeled activities such as A1, A2, A3, B1, B2, B3, etc)

Example:

A1.develop a course for aspiring writers.   A2. build relationships with aspiring writers.

 A- Core Activities:

• These are core activities, which positively influence your future.  They are the most important activities you can be working on right now. For a business professional with goals of growing there business pass start up phase, thier A- activities will be things such as: networking, sales presentations, advertising, speaking engagements, coaching, consulting, co-hosting, and many more.

These are just general activities and is up to each individual based on there objectives to define what activities will be considered core activities

B- Urgent Activities

• These are urgent activities that must be done immediately and can influence your life only today.  They are administrative-based activities. For a business professional these activities will be: blog posting, answering customer service calls, writing proposals, pay hosting invoice, have team meeting, project planning, and many more.

It’s Important to note:  most of us get stuck right in these category of activities. This is what I refer to as tail chasing activities. These are urgent but don’t quite move you closer to your desired goal like your core activities.

Prioritizing helps to insure that these activities are taken care of in a timely manner. Other activities we haven’t yet discussed will help alleviate you from doing all these task by yourself. Read further to see how.

C- Must Do Activities

• These are activities that would be nice-to-do if you have completed activities A and B on your list. For a business professional these will be activities such as: read article about stock investing,  send interview questions to for interview next month, organize office space, redo filing in business drawer, correct image off setting on website, and many more

Again these are general, and notice that they don’t have to be done immediately like A and B task. So these can be put off to another day if you don’t have the time to get to them.

D- Delegate Activities:

• These activities do not require your attention. You can delegate them to others, while you spend your time on A and B activities. For a business professional these will be activities such as: send over PDF file, email meeting notifications, upload task manager, fax copy to XYZ Company, and many more

As you build systems soon you will be able to delegate A, B, and C activities. If you really want to eventually remove yourself from being the center piece in your business then learn to build systems that accomplish task that anyone can follow and duplicate.

E- Eliminate Activities:

• These are activities you can eliminate from you list. Most of the time we think that something is important and that we need to do them. But as you prioritize your list you realize that either isn’t not a core level activity, or  It’s not as immediate as paying invoices due, organizing your office desk space. It’s not worth delegating, it’s not really impactful toward my goals and should just be eliminated.

Conclusion- Prioritize and Organize

If you’re frustrated because you know you can do more in a day but you just can’t seem to cut it. Then follow the general A, B, C list and make sure you prioritize your task. So that you insure what you’re doing is actually productive. You can do 100 things in a day but what did you actually accomplish that moved your goals closer to realization? Remember not to make unrealistic expectations without accounting for what it would require to complete a task.

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Founder of SelfSuccessMastery.com. He is focused on applying scientific knowledge, mathematics, and ingenuity to develop solutions for self and business development problems. He is also a certified life coach whom has developed an deep insight of "Self" and the importance of spiritual values in life and business. He is naturally inspirational, grounded, blueprint based and always finding ways to make content, words, and ideas applicable to everyday life.

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