Plan your way forward
I’ve just been receiving some mentoring from two relatively well known Internet Marketers, one who sells really good Software Products and one who concentrates, as I do, on creating Info Products.
Mentoring, at my age, and with my experience? Well, yes. For a start you’re never too old to learn and, secondly, working alone doesn’t always let you see your mistakes. You need someone else to point those out and a mentor from an associated discipline is ideal.
Anyway the very act of having these guys look at what I’m doing has started me thinking about how I got started selling online and what made the ‘breakthrough’. And it was this - the ability to overcome ‘procrastination’.
Now, if you haven’t seen that word before you really do need to know what it is and how it affects all of us. Procrastination is our inbuilt ability to put things off for another day.
At the time it all seems quite logical. For example if I apply it to a typical scenario that I meet everyday from would-be Internet Marketers it would go something like this…
"I can’t write a salespage because I haven’t got a website"; "I can’t build a website because I haven’t got a domain name"; "I can’t decide on a domain name because I haven’t got a product"; "There’s no point in having a product until I’ve someone to sell it to"; "I can’t sell to anyone until I have a salespage"!
Do you see how this goes full circle. Every step is a logical reason why it can’t be done until the next step is completed. But, that way, you’ll never do anything.
The point is that, whatever you’re doing, you have to take one step at a time. Then the steps become manageable. The best approach is to plan the steps you need to take, put them in an order which will lead, progressively, to the target, and then start working on the first step.
It’s no good trying to do everything at once. The lack of progress will just become disheartening. So, now you know what procrastination is, make a plan and stick to it. I’ll talk about the next step in avoiding procrastination in tomorrow’s post.
4 comments ↓
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Hi Johnathon,
btw I like the theme. Nice and clean and colourful.
Not only does procrastination happen in the marketing world, but also is the software development world as well. It’s surprising how many large software projects start out in utter confusion, mainly because people procrastiate.
I believe that a lot of it is not only the will to get the job done, but it is also fed by uncertainty. You get a lot of people together to start a software development project off, the starting gun is fired, and all of the runners disperse in different directions.
Result confusion, which feeds the procrastinators.
Wow…good stuff. I find that I’ve gone through the circle of procrastination so many times, with just a few differences that I didn’t recognize it.
I’ve found how to break my circle by just outlining the major things I need to do, starting and finishing them and cleaning up afterwards. I read once how 85% of the work you do takes only 15% of your working time. The remaining 85% of your time results in only 15% of your production or profit. I start by getting 85% done; it sure beats nothing!
Hi Mike
You’re right, starting is the biggest problem and finishing the next biggest!
I think you’re referring to the 80/20 Principle where 20% of your effort is actually productive. I haven’t found a way to convert the 80% yet!
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