You Don’t Need More Ideas! You Need to Follow Through

Show Notes

You don’t need more ideas. You need to follow through. You need to finish some of these ideas that you have got. Direct your energy into what you really need to do, not just spreading it so thin. You are not stuck for lack of ideas but you are tired of not getting them finished. Why do you feel so drained? Why do you feel like things are not happening? You are not as far along as you would like to be.

Train Your Mind to Focus

Things seem to be taking forever. Even when you book it on your timetable. You book it on your calendar and you have blocked out that time annd it just seems to grow into it, doesn’t it? Quite often it’s not about what we are doing. It’s about what we should not be doing or what we are not doing and the one thing that we generally not doing is focus.

We need to get really focused on what the task at hand is. You have no doubt heard me talk about the Pomodoro Technique, where you set your time at, and it can be 20 minutes. I personally like 50 minutes. You set it for 50 minutes and you have one task to do. You can’t get distracted. You can’t go anywhere else.

A notepad on the side of your desk is a great thing. So when your mind does wander off and wants to do something else, just scratch down those couple of quick notes and get back to your task. When the timer goes off, that is it. Time is finished.

Get Ahead

You wanted to record a podcast, and now it’s the last minute before you’ve got to do it. Note to self: it’s not actually today, which is amazing because it has been in the last few. So getting in and doing things early does give you that extra time. And by having that extra time, when things do go off the rails just slightly, you do have time to fix it.

If you are running at the last minute all the time with all those unfinished things, then you don’t have the time to fix it. That can make things worse as well. Content. So getting those little things that are basically lacking your momentum, it’s just disappearing into the day and you really don’t know where it’s all going. So making sure that you are being consistent about what it is you are going to do.

Plan and Prioritise

Start mapping out your day in your calendar before the day starts. Preferably the day before or the beginning of the week, so you know exactly what you’ve got coming up. That can be a big game changer as well. Then sticking to it. I’ve done a few podcasts in this series about trusting yourself. Get doing goals, sticking, making sure that you’ve got your big rocks.

And that could be where you decide. Is it part of my big rocks? Is it something I really want to go? I’ve got this amazing opportunity this week, but it wasn’t part of my big rocks. So it it’s really easy to say no. And when you know where you are going for your year, your quarter, your month, your week, then it is much easier to pick these opportunities and go, yes, this is amazing.

So it’s really great to revisit and make sure that you are getting to those big rocks, putting them in your diary, your calendar, so that you know where you are up to and then following through. So you need to trust yourself. You need to put those blocks into your calendar and make sure you trust yourself.

Check out Small Business Talk episode 330: Accountability Without Shame

Done Beats Perfection

We are all very fine and great at starting things, but nobody gets paid for the things that are still sitting in our inboxes are still sitting in our back catalogue.

How many books have you started and not finished? How many revises? How many great ideas have you got? What we need to be doing is finishing them. So this is definitely better. Don’t put an extra ten pages in that book. Don’t get the email perfect before you send it. Just send it because it is far better out.

There is B-plus work then? Not done at all. So make sure that you are saying what you are going to do and then doing it rather than getting everything perfect and then suddenly it’s a week, two weeks, three weeks and the person at the other end thinks that you don’t care because you haven’t done it. Whereas in reality you were trying to get it perfect for them.

Also, having a system can make such a difference to being able to follow up there as well. And if it’s automated, that’s even better because you just get the first step of the system and then you don’t have to worry about it anymore. And you know that it’s going to go back. And the person at the other end knows that you are thinking about them because they are getting these emails, they are getting these touch points, they are getting what you said that you were going to do.

So perfection is definitely not our goal because it creates so many more problems. So get it out there, press send and let’s go.

Finish One Rule

A great rule is to do the one finish rule. So you can only pick one thing to do for the next hour and you need to complete it. As I mentioned, I hope that’s already on your diary and you’re just doing the next thing that’s there.

If not, maybe it’s time to stop, refocus and pick one thing and you need to finish it in that time frame. So if it’s a bigger project, if you are redoing your website and your website, it’s probably okay as it is. So that can be a procrastination until. But if you are, then what is it that you can do?

Could you redo the about page? Is it something you need to tweak there? Or are you redoing your emails sequence? Whatever it is, just make it so that it’s only an hour long so that you can finish it. So finish the email before you start writing any new content. Make that offer page before you start tweaking your branding.

Follow up before you start planning your new launch. Get people to help to spread the word on your webinar before you start redoing the slides ten times over.

Stop Chasing Shiny Objects

Stop shiny chasing those shiny objects. Stop reacting to everything in your inbox and looking at it ten times. Maybe stop subscribing to things. Maybe spend an hour unsubscribing so you are not seeing all those shiny objects and getting tempted to jump on that webinar or this webinar, or doing this that really isn’t that useful, and stop chasing all the different directions. Yes, most marketing things do work as long as you follow them through.

But the problem is we start with one, we get a little bored, and then we add something else in and we have not completed that either. And then we think this marketing stuff doesn’t work. So pick one thing and follow it all the way through. Only do it in small constraints. If it’s a bigger project, then maybe you need more hours, so it might be an hour every day of the week.

Start, Finish and Celebrate

Make clear end points. Make sure that you have a start and a finish date on things. If it’s doing a new e-book, when is it going to be finished? Are you going to give yourself a week? Maybe a month? What is it that you need to do? Remember, doing the e-book is the first step. You also then need to have your system so that people can download it, so that you can collect their emails, so that you can build your database and so that you can nurture those potential clients and that audience as well.

And making sure that you are getting that sense of progress, because that can be a real dopamine hit as well. Knowing that you have done that task, remember to celebrate. We quite often go from one thing to another without celebrating. Celebrating could be anything from going for a walk or taking a few hours off.

Taking a bright, going down the beach, going and working in the garden, or maybe going to the movies on a week. There can be lots of different ways to celebrate. So you choose something that works for you and making sure that when you are achieving those things, you celebrate them. And if you are a bit stuck and you are not achieving so much, just take off your to do list and give yourself a break and celebrate the fact that you did one thing or two.

Links

Coaches Marketing Roadmap
Cathy Smith Coaching

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