I know from personal experience that ‘information overload’ can seriously set you back in business instead of take you forward!
If you find that you are spending most of your day being distracted by social networking sites, phone calls, general web surfing, keeping tabs on what everyone else is doing, reading magazines or maybe just checking your emails every 10 minutes then your day could end up being very unproductive, even though you may think that you are actually working you are not really adding to the building blocks that will create your successful business.
Now don’t get me wrong here, yes, social networking is an important part of your business for traffic reasons, among others, and you need to answer phone calls and so on, but you need to define exactly what you ‘need’ to do and what is just eating into your time.
You will very quickly learn in business that your time is very precious and you need to use it wisely, so what you need to do is to ‘control’ your information overload and start doing the things that really count!
So what do you need to do?
Firstly, you need to eliminate all of the things you are doing that are not really necessary to building your business, this includes all the non critical information you get in emails, social networking, chatting on the phone and so on. If you find yourself spending a long time writing emails or articles then look at outsourcing the work at Elance or Scriptlance so you have more time to concentrate on building your business.
Next, I think it is important that you do not take in more than you can handle at any one time, try to be selective in the information that you purchase and download. Getting the same material from multiple marketers serves little purpose than to confuse you. Pick a chosen handful and stick with them, you will become more familiar with their ideas and techniques and it will make it easier for you to decide if this is what you want.
This goes without saying, but, ‘automate’ as much of your business as possible, the main one here being an email autoresponder, this is an absolute must, and only use a top notch one like AWeber or Getresponse.
Even if you are only at the ‘idea’ stage of a project, start thinking how you could automate it, remember, you may have many different projects on the go in the future, so think ahead.
Finally, Set yourself a task that actually builds upon or improves your business each day and stick to it, try and get your task done early on in the day as this will give you a confidence boost and prevent you from being side tracked into non-productive tasks.
I hope this helps some of you out there!
As always, let me know your thoughts on this.
Dave.
Yes Dave, I completely agree.
I have lost count of the number of times I have been diverted onto things that were completely off the task at hand, only to find myself wanting for more time when the task should have been completed.
I tend now to search for some sort of automation, as long as it’s not too expensive.
I also find that making myself some sort of time table helps a lot, this seems to concentrate my efforts and try to ignore the TIME STEALERS.
Regards
Ken.
Hi Dave,
Great post. I totally agree with what you said here.
I just need to start implementing it myself.
Thanks, Sarah.
100% correct.
Hold on ….
I’ve been distracted again – I was doing something else when this email arrived…….
@ Ken Yeah a table will help, if you can stick to it! 🙂
@ Sarah Start sooner rather than later!
@ Clive LOL Exactly!
Hi Dave,
One of the biggest time wasters is the Over-Promotion by affiliates when a new product is launched, particularly if it is a high ticket item (larger commisions). I have had as many as 12 offers for the same product all offering huge bonuses. A total waste of time.
I just delete the lot of them now, I can usually tell from the subject line it is the latest once in a life time offer for only $297.
One of my tips is to go through your op-in list at least once a month and unsubscribe to all those which you don’t feel are offering anything of value or are sending you too many emails, twice and sometimes three times a day. You can always subscribe again if somthing important comes up.
Reg Warden.
The Quality Information Centre,
Where Quality Counts..
Hi Dave,
Information overload is most certainly a serious problem for anyone on the internet. This is compounded by umpteen business ‘opportunities’ promising immeasurable riches from yet another secret never before revealed.
Then there are marketing newsletters, free ebooks, free downloads, free video, traffic exchanges, viral list building and several more creatively designed programs and tools to succeed online.
Information overload will be much less of a pain in the lower extremities if only there was a way to identify and ignore the 90% of pure drivel that finds its way into cyberspace.
And social networking — the key word is ‘social;’ definitely not the right arena to market a business. Forums are much better for this as people there are looking for solutions and answers to their problems, not to chat about the romantic escapades of Hollywood personalities.
I have just spent 3 minutes of my life that I will never get back reading a blog post 🙂
However, it was 3 minutes well spent as it has reminded me how easily we can be distracted from doing productive work
Information is a good thing as long as it doesn’t interrupt our daily schedule. As long as you take the time out to read your emails they won’t distract you.
It’s when I you leave your email client open when working the distractions appear.
Great post Dave.
Hi Dave,
Concentrate on one project at a time and stick to it. In my opinion juggling 2 and 3 projects in one go is hard.
Take your current and most important project to hand and give it your full attention. This goes for both learning new skills and producing products. This will increase your knowledge and product turn around 10 fold. Once done start on your new product. Production line products:)
Very true Dave, I know this is what I am needing to do but I just find it hard to find the time to organize it!
Hi Dave,
As everyone else has said information overload can be mind exploding. I am so guilty of going of the track I feel I need to give myself a good slap. I follow you, John Thornhill, Daniel Sumner, Jim Cockrum and have bought just about everything. Now I am not quite sure where to start first.
Dave:
You pushed the correct button. I suppose what you wrote about is what happen to many of us surfing and trying to make money out of the internet marketing. A time comes up when you don’t know where to start off. So many things in our HD, many of them just getting dusted. I can’t see a correct formula to solve this in spite your own advice. Thank you anyway.
@ Reg Dead right, there is not much point in subscribing to too many newsletters if all they do is throw offer after offer at you, sort out the wheat from the chaff.
@ Dan J. Yeah, the hardest part is finding the right people to follow, I suggest you choose the ones who offer the most advice or help. I hear what you are saying about the social scene but it is too good an opportunity for marketers to pass up, so again, choose your friends wisely.
@ John T. Yeah, information is great once we have it controlled. Guilty as charged, I am typing this out with my email client open, I will slap my wrists! 🙂
@ Daniel I know what you are getting at, I myself, sometimes try to run multiple projects all at the same time when I really should finish one before starting another!
@ Francis If you find the time it will save you time!!
@ Jo Pick one project that you would like to complete and do not stray until you have it totally complete, try to automate it as much as possible.
@ Jesus Like I just said to Jo, take it one step at a time!
Hi Dave
Very good post here,
There are SO many things that can distract you as you mention in the post AND as the commenters here mention too….
Although, not to forget your home office…
If you work from home and don’t have a dedicated office, turn off ALL distractions and set yourself “business hours”.
So that’s no TV or Radio, no kids etc to distract you during YOUR time of work, then reward yourselfd AFTER you have completed your working day.
Not only will you not be distracted but your productivity will soar too.
Regards
Ray
Hey Ray,
Yeah, good point!
I work from home but luckily I have no distractions apart from the usual phone and email etc.
Dead right in what you say, you must teat it like a normal day at work and be totally focused with no interruptions.
Funny, the same issue was troubling me lately. I’m doing research on marketing methods and in the process subscribed to ton’s of mailing lists. It looks that all (or almost all ) marketers there always jump on any new affiliate offer, so I receive usually al least a dosen offers, promoting the same book, course, video, etc. And I have to say – most of them just put together bits of information that you can fing on the Internet for free.
The last offer i got was for $1997 course (8 emails), I bet it isn’t worth 1/20th of that. But – it pays commissions, so all affiliate marketers promote it.
Hi Dave,
You have hit on the number 1 issue that every internet marketer struggles with in my opinion.
I know from my own experience that I have signed up with so many lists over the years, partly because I wanted the info. but also partly to learn by watching how they ran their business, that I can get very easily distracted by the sheer number of mails in my inbox each day.
My solution is to only check my email at the beginning and end of the day and in between to try and focus on just one project at a time.
Great post – and a great reminder to stay focussed!
Regards,
Dave Ovenden
http://GeneratorSoftwareHQ.com
Oh Dave this is so so true.
At present I have 809 email unread in my mailbox. I have subscribed to so many lists and freebies over the last few years that not only have I got information overload but so has my inbox!!!
I think this is a major problem, especially with newbies, we tend to want to know more and more and forget to what we should be doing. I have now been looking at a few blogs I have subscribed to which I do every few days which has taken me about 45mins already, so yeah we do get distracted – um let me think what could I have been doing in the last 45 mins – probably writing another article and submitting it.
But hey never mind if we didn’t have information in the first place we wouldn’t be where we are now – but yes too much can be toooooooooooo much.
Keep up the good work Dave
Elaine
http://resalerightsexplained.co.uk
Hey Elaine,
You are dead right, we do need information to get to where we are going, we just need to filter out what we REALLY need.
Excellent reply!
Dave.
Hi Dave, your posts are worth reading for and this one is so true… Lately I’ve been doing my projects… lots of projects and I think with those tons of information in my head I think I am going to explode… and yes you are right again, to set yourself a task and try getting it done early on in the day.
Hi Dave,
very good advises in your post here.
It’s difficult to concentrat on one task with all the information we are getting from every where. But I think focus is a matter of training. If we push our self to prioritize the tasks and work on them one by one we can progress. As well outsourcing is a good idea to reelly concetrat on the mos important things to improve the business.
Thanks for giving us valuable information in your blog
Hi Dave
I cant agree with you more the time I have wasted surfing the net ,reading emails,and trying to be sociable I should be a millionaire by now , instead I still have to get up 3:00am every mourning leave my house to go drive a truck to make somebody else rich I get on this computer and do about a half hour of serious work and 2 hours of BS ing.
The last few weeks with Alex and the rest of you guys have been the most productive I’ve been in quite sometime. I got my blog up I even got a few sign ups , obviously I got a lot of work to do but it feels good to see my work paying off at least a little.
Great post Dave
Alexis
Hey Alexis,
I’m pleased my advice helps you to realize a little.
Pleased to see you are making progress, my best advice to you now is to stick with it!
Good luck!
Dave.
Hey Man, excelent post
Excelent blog, nice information that you have.
I will put a link back to you in my blog
Best Regards
Hector