Marketing gets a lot of attention when it comes to where business owners should put their efforts (aside from providing a high quality experience for the customer or client, of course). In fact, it gets so much attention that oftentimes business owners overlook an entirely crucial business system that doesn’t take that much time to set up or maintain, but can have a much higher return on (time, money, effort) investments than straight-up marketing efforts.
Who among us doesn’t have a pile of books that we’ve read, with little stubs of paper scattered throughout them marking the reallygood stuff? Or pages of notes from conferences, which, after we get home, just kinda languish uselessly in a notebook, growing dust?
But the process of going back through all of that information and turning it into something actually usable can be a major pain. Even if you know that you need to do so to turn your knowledge into action (action that’ll grow your business!), it can be overwhelming when you don’t have a process.
Many business owners have a love-hate relationship with their to-do list – they know it’s a good idea to have one, in theory, but in actuality, they struggle with it. They feel stifled- or, just as often, intimidated and overwhelmed – by it, they feel like it messes with their focus, is too hard to manage, and so on.
We’re almost a third of the way through 2013 now (yikes! can anyone else not believe that?!); you’ve done your planning for the year, and you’ve got your home office set up for success, but you’ll probably run into some stumbling blocks when it comes to keeping your good planning habits going. It’s really easy to lose momentum when it comes to “maintenance” type tasks, especially if you aren’t a big nerd that enjoys the process of planning and prioritizing (like, uh, me).
Does my workspace really matter?
A lot of people don’t think much about the physical space they’re doing their work in, past making sure that it’s not terrifically cluttered. We all love looking at office decor inspiration on Pinterest, but is that really the most practical space to put your attention? After all, things like design and aesthetics are often regarded as fairly shallow in regards to the big picture.
