How to focus on the important work that will bring you leads and clients

If you’re doing busy work you’re not focussing on the important tasks you need to complete to support and grow your business.

It’s easy to fall into the trap:

• Replying immediately to unimportant or non-urgent emails and social media comments
• Trying to get things off the to-do list, but the to-do list just keeps getting longer
• Freebie-hunting and buying new courses without implementing the advice fully

In this article I’m going to talk about how to recognise when you’re in procrastination mode and how to shift your focus to the important work you need to be doing to sustain and grow your business.

^ Look at me there, procrastinating! (Image by the fabulous Firechild)

How to recognise busy work

If your days are full of work but you feel like you’re treading water and making no progress, it’s possible that you’re stuck in busy work.

Busy work is exhausting and a recipe for overwhelm!

There is so much excellent free advice online telling business owners all the things they should be doing for their business it’s not surprising that we stressed out trying to get it all done!

The experts and gurus out there put a lot of work into getting your attention with free content and a lot of it is really excellent, but they’ll only offer you a small piece of the solution for free before they offer you the paid solution.

A lot of people start out by downloading freebies and searching for free advice online, but it can only get you so far. Strategies and advice need to be implemented to be effective, so downloading freebie after freebie and signing up for yet another webinar will simply add more things to your expanding to-do list and generally you won’t see any real results for all your work.

Inbox and social media busy work

Inbox: You don’t have to reply to every email right away! I struggle with this every day! It’s natural to want to be nice and reply quickly and fully, but you can get really stuck in your inbox.

Social media: Social media platforms offer an amazing opportunity to meet and engage with your potential clients but be very, very careful that the time you spend there is used wisely.

To infintiy!

When I read “Make Time” by Jake Knapp and John Zeratsky , I learned the concept of infinity pools. Any place of endless content is an infinity pool:

• social media,
• video streaming,
• internet browsers,
• even your inbox.

You just need to refresh to see more content to occupy your time. Your entire day can be spent “busy” consuming content and corresponding. But unless that work fits into the big picture of bringing you leads and clients, you’re procrastinating.

Instead, you can batch the time you spend there. Schedule it. Time-table it. But definitely be aware of the time you spend there. You can free up a LOT of time by batching similar tasks together. 

Related:  7 Ways to Boost Productivity and Save Your Sanity (no apps required) 

Attract, engage, convert…

These are the 3 important stages of getting new clients.

It’s essential to know how to navigate each stage of this process. If you don’t have a clear picture of what happens at each stage you risk getting stuck grinding away on the to-do list and not seeing the big picture.

Related:  How to really get clients through your website

What do each of these stages look like to your potential clients? When you have a system in place that your clients can flow through you’re less likely to get distracted by the latest freebie or must-have strategy!

Are you spending time Attracting, Engaging and Converting? Do you have tools in place for each stage? When you sit down to work are you reacting to emails and comments or are you doing the work that will bring you leads and clients?

Want to know more?

Grab a free consultation with me and we can map out your system and identify where you need to focus your attention in order to get more leads and clients online.