Today we have Guest Speaker, Glen Hopkins. Glen Hopkins is Best Selling Author, Information Marketer, Speaker, And Consultant. Glen specializes in teaching struggling entrepreneurs how to turn their small Online businesses into thriving money machines using specific systems that will allow you to work less and earn more. Get his List Building Report and Web Traffic CD (valued at $97) for free at
http://GlenHopkins.nameMultiply Your Productivity By Becoming Laser Focused
By Glen Hopkins
Experts who utilize the power of focus effortlessly attract very targeted customers to themselves and their businesses.
Do you feel a sense of overwhelm every time you open up your email client and see all those email messages waiting for your response? Every day, there are more and more and more! All just waiting for you to take some sort of action! If you answered yes, you're not alone. Heck, we live in the information age and we work Online. Everyone, including you and me, wants everything immediately.
Do you feel stressed about it? Maybe even overwhelmed? I'm guessing that you have felt this way at least a few times -- if not on a daily basis.
More often than not, most people attempt to tackle several of their daily tasks all at once. Doing a little bit of project A, then a little bit of project B, then a little of project C and so on. Then by the end of the day, week, month or even year, they have done a little of everything but have not completed any one task in full.
As a result, nothing substantial gets accomplished, which often means no profit-generating projects were completed either!
You've Been Lied To
The ability to multi-task is NOT an asset. It is NOT something you want your employees to effectively do, nor is it something you want to do. Listen up... if you are multi-tasking you are wasting your time and it's eating up your profits!
The Secret to Working Less and Earning More
Work less and earn more. Yeah right. You hear that all the time but nobody ever actually shows you how it's done. Well, get ready, because I'm about to. And when you see how simple it is, you might just kick yourself!
The secret to working less and earning more is focus. With concentrated focus you'll get a great deal more accomplished in a much shorter period of time. What's the quickest way from point A to point B?
A straight line, right? It's not rocket science. So STOP multi-tasking. Multi-tasking just means meandering aimlessly without focus. Doing so gets you nowhere fast.
Don't believe me? Take a look at the chart below and follow along. In the example, you'll see there are three projects at hand. Project A, Project B and Project C.
In BOTH scenarios, each of the three projects requires a total of three weeks of time for completion.
In the first scenario, titled "Focus Equals Productivity", each of the three projects are tackled one at a time with a focused effort. As a result, Project A is completed in 3 weeks and in theory should start making you some money.
Now, while the cash flow from project A is coming in, you start project B and work on it for three weeks until completion. Now, after six weeks, you have two projects completed and cash flow coming in from both. So you start project C and complete it in three weeks.
In this scenario, all three projects were completed in full in just nine weeks. Furthermore, you began to see the results after just three weeks from project A and then after six and nine weeks for project B and C respectively.
Now let's look at the second and, unfortunately, all-too-common scenario titled, "The Multi-Tasking Myth". In this scenario, you begin by working on project A for one week, then you move onto project B for one week, then you do a little of project C for one week.
Therefore, at the end of three weeks of 'multi-tasking' you have done a little of each project but you have not completed any. Therefore, nothing is complete and you have no new cash flow. So you repeat this process spending one week on each project again.
Now six weeks have passed and still, none of the projects are complete, and you still have no new cash flow. So you continue on with each of the projects, spending one week at a time on each until all three projects are finally complete.
As you can see, when multi-tasking, it takes an entire seven weeks before just one task is completed and has the potential of earning you money. To get all three projects completed takes you twenty-one weeks. That's four weeks of lost productivity on EACH project!
But wait, it gets worse. Do you really think you can go nine entire weeks without a great new idea coming your way? Seriously, we all come up with brilliant new ideas and projects all the time that threaten to take us off course. The result? Half-finished projects get pushed to the 'back burner' and never actually get completed. Before you know it, the entire year has gone by and you've accomplished very little.
TIP: Turn off your email! Email is the biggest time killer there is. Every time you look at your email you'll get side-tracked from the task at hand.
Stay focused and only check your email during set times each day. I review and respond to email for one hour each morning then I turn it off and get on with my ONE project. Then, at noon or after lunch, I'll check my email for responses to any communication that was opened in the morning. After that, I turn it off for the rest of the day and, if I get a chance, I'll take one more quick look in the late afternoon.
Anything more than that is too much. If you need more time than that, I recommend you consider hiring some support staff to help you take care of support issues, set up meetings for you, and review joint venture proposals.