Procrastination Fascination
2013/06/06 6:00 AM
Do you procrastinate?
I have never ever ever ever ever ever…..been a procrastinator ……..until recently. I have found myself whiling away the time gardening, puttering around my new house, hiking, biking and frankly behaving like an alien has taken over my body and mind. There is part of me that loves it as it is so FUN, and then there is the “normal” part of me that is horrified that I am wasting even one second of my precious work day while my kids are in school.
Well, I have had to rein myself in and get back to the tasks at hand. I want to share some of the things I do to avoid the act of procrastinating while sometimes really wishing I still was!!!
The first thing I do to get back on track is to get up early (like 6 am :O)) and have my coffee while I answer emails, read the paper, read (or skim) any online subscriptions I receive (sometimes they give you great ideas first thing when your brain is not clogged up) and then make my kids lunches! I do all this in one hour.
Once I start my actual workday after the kids are in school (and I possibly exercise) I attack in hour intervals – it is hard for most people to stay focused for longer than that. Set your timer…..seriously!
- Make a list of the most important 10 things that YOU personally have to do yourself.
- Make a list of the next 10 things that someone else “could” do for you if you desired to job it out. These things can usually wait a bit.
- Spend the first 2 hours of your day answering email, doing any office-y things like processing orders, accounting, emails etc. Just get it out of the way. ONLY do that for the first 2 hours. (if you are like me, you got one hour done already at the crack of dawn).
- Start working on your to item task list spending one hour at a time and just keep plowing through. If you are designing that day, then just do that and don’t let other things distract you.
- Take a 15 minute break every hour. I suggest walking around, shake a leg, get a snack, and if you must……check your email but only for 15 minutes.
- Be nice to yourself for 30 minutes each day and procrastinate!
I think you will be surprised at how much you get done each day by chunking your time and tasks into bite size morsels……
If you have other great ideas – share them in the comments….love to know about it.
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There are 6 comments
Vicki Butler-Hagen says: Thank you, Sarah! The timing on this was SO perfect! I got your email when I should be doing “other” things and it made me realize that I MUST get serious about getting MORE accomplished in a day than I am getting done.
I am going to implement this schedule and see how it goes.
Love you!!
xoxoxo
Excellent advice, Sarah. One tip I found useful, back in my Civil Service days, was to identify those times of day when I was best at certain types of activity. So, there would be times when my creativity was at a maximum, and that’s when I would tackle the jobs that needed really creative thought. Whenever possible, this was best aligned with those times of day when I was least likely to be interrupted. Which brings me to another point… I found it really useful, over a period of a week or two, to compile a chart of what tasks I was working on, and when – a sort of time-and-motion summary – but with a column for identifying interruptions (what they were, and how long they lasted). Then when I had a reasonable set of data to analyse, I worked through it and planned how best to avoid such interruptions in the future. It wasn’t always possible to do so, but this certainly did reduce their impact quite considerably, by being prepared for them in advance. 🙂
Great practical advice, Sarah. I too, love to use a timer, and work in 1/2 to 1 hour segments. I’ll add my trick for doing lengthy tasks: if I am designing (or any task requiring more than 1 hour to get done) I set my timer for 1/2 hour intervals, and when the alarm goes off, I stop working and take 3-5 minutes to blast out a set of squats, push-ups or sit-ups. I’ve found this to be great way to energize myself for the next round and also not feel like I’m ‘procrastinating’ on my exercise routine, but squeezing it into my schedule instead.
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Building an email list can be tough, I totally agree. But an email list is just as important as social media in my opinion. Social media is fleeting. Your customer might not see your post flash by, the FB or Instagram algorithm changes all the time so you never really know if anyone is seeing your posts (as much as you hope at least), and unless they purchase, it’s hard to tell if it is driving traffic or not.
When I started my handbag line, the internet was just getting started, and people were just beginning to get online for the first time and the biggest thing since sliced bread was www.match.com.
Note the www…… everyone used that back then so you’d KNOW it was a website. LOL.
And to get on the website, even just to learn more about it, you needed an email address to get past their “paywall”. The Paywall was a pop up of sorts that asked for your name and email in order to “grant” you access to see what was behind the curtain. They built a list of millions in a few short weeks and that was more valuable than anyone just “knowing” about their company because they could market to them incessentanly.
Daily. And I mean sometimes multiple times a day. I’d never seen anything like this.
They were the first company that I knew of who “collected” emails, then turned around and marketed to you to get you to sign up for their services. And they were relentless……
I’m not saying you need to send emails daily, or emails multiple times a day, but if you don’t email your list at least weekly, they will forget about you and end up buying something similar chez someone else who is sending them emails.
So Why are Pop ups so important? Pop ups are a way to collect emails via your own “Paywall” and continue to market to potentially interested customers. If they take the time to sign up (first baby step) then they are showing you that they are on the first step of the staircase and want to keep walking up. It’s your job to keep enticing them to the top! AKA buy something.
Step 1: Sign up with a content management system like Active Campaign, Mailchimp, Klayvio or whichever one you like best. I like Active Campaign and have been using it for over 10 years. Some people choose to use the forms that come with these programs and I have too in various situations, but I also recommend Privy if you use Shopify, and Ninja Pops if you use Wordpress. They can easily be installed and connected to these CMS systems.
Step 2: The first and easiest way to collect emails is to have a homepage pop up with an offer for a % off the first order. That is a way to ‘collect” emails and give something in return. It’s the first step in building rapport with your potential customers. It’s like saying, let’s be friends, I’ll give you something you want, and you give me something I want, your email.
Step 3: Make sure you have an automation set up in the CMS system. This is an automated email series that will be sent to anyone who gives you their email address on your pop up. I call it the Hello Series. The idea of this series is to again, build rapport, and tell the customer a bit about you and your company over a 2 week period. This series has nothing to do with your regular email marketing emails. This is a sole and separate email series to build rapport so just set it and forget it. Yes customers will probably get some of these on the same days as other marketing emails but just don’t worry about it.
This is how it works:
a: The first email to go out immediately is the one with the coupon code they just signed up for. Add something about your brand and photos of your products linking to your website.
b: The second one goes out the next day and asks them if they had a chance to use the coupon yet, and then tells them to whitelist your email so they don’t miss your promotions and special offers for people on your list. Always have images of products that link to your website.
c: The third email goes 4 days later and in this one I like to tell a story about how I got started with the business. Add images and links here too.
d: The fourth email shares something cool about your business. Could be some nice stores you are in, a press placement, a celebrity who has your stuff or perhaps posted about it on Instagram. It can also be a tutorial about how to use your products, or a blog post you wrote on a topic they’d be interested in. Share something that will make them feel happy for you, and encourage them to hang with you.
e: The fifth and final email in this sequence encourages them to follow you on social media. I like to entice them with “doing” something in exchange for a gift. Could be something like “post your photo using or wearing our product, and be entered in our monthly drawing for a free X”.
Step 4: Now that you have collected more emails with a pop up, your ongoing marketing efforts will start to pay off faster. As the list continues to build, you’ll have more people to market to, invite to events you do, and share your good news with. Hopefully they will become loyal customers, share your site with friends, and continue to be an active part of your social media channels. Keep sending emails weekly ( at least) to your list so keep them active and engaged. I’m sure you’ll see a big difference.
If you want ideas to help you fill in the blanks about the above, drop me a comment below and I’ll be happy to help out.
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