Here are a few suggestions to help you focus on completing tasks rather than managing your to-do list:

1. Pick a tool and methodology. I’m not going to dictate a specific tool, because the tool you use has to fit your needs, work well with the type of job you do and make it easy for you to get things done. The important thing is to pick a tool that works for you. For years, I used the task list in Microsoft Outlook because it was convenient, and when I switched to a Mac, I tried a bunch of different tools before eventually settling on Hiveminder. When I was consulting, I found a task list wasn’t suitable, so I used shorter lists of the next three things I needed to do. Experiment until you find a tool a and methodology that you like, and then stick with it!
2. Keep it visible. The advantage of having a task list that is integrated with your email, like Gmail Tasks or Outlook’s task list, is that every time you look at your inbox, you have your tasks right where you can see them. With my web-based task list, I keep it open on a tab all the time, and I can quickly glance at what I need to get done. If you use a standalone task manager or a simple text document, you can keep it open on your desktop and easily accessible. By keeping your tasks visible and easy to access, you’re much more likely to see them and complete your tasks.
3. Create tasks from email. One of my favorite email productivity tips is to get task items out of your email and onto your task list; having an efficient process to create tasks from email content is important. In Hiveminder, I can forward email to a special Hiveminder address with a subject line that includes commands for things like due date and priority, and the email appears as a new task in Hiveminder right away. Other task list software lets you drag and drop email onto your to-do list, or is integrated into email clients. The important thing is to have some kind of process that allows you to quickly create new tasks from email using a method that works for you.
4. Prioritize. You’ll want to use prioritization to distinguish the tasks that are critically important. I tend to use three categories — high, medium and low — which lets me quickly scan down my list for the highest priority items. While some people argue task priority should be based on the importance of the task alone, with a due date to signify urgency, I take a more pragmatic approach and set priorities based on a combination of importance and urgency.
5. Due dates. I give every task a due date. Even when I need to arbitrarily pick a date, it helps me make sure I don’t lose track of anything. I sort my task list by date and then priority, so all of my tasks for the day are at the top of my list, in a rough order of importance. This helps me stay focused on what I need to accomplish today, and it helps me get more done. For those tasks that have arbitrary due dates, I can at least look at the task on the day that I’ve marked it as due, then decide whether I should do it right away or look at it again in a few days or a few weeks.
6. Daily reality check. While you should look over your task list throughout the day, spend a minute or two every day doing a quick “reality check” on the tasks you have scheduled. First thing in the morning or at the end of the day are good times for this. What you want to focus on during the reality check phase is how much time you really have to work on your tasks and which ones are the most important. For any tasks that you know you won’t be able to do, you can bump the due date for that task out into the future or just move it way down the prioritization. Some tasks will have increased or decreased in priority relative to other tasks, so you’ll want to adjust those priorities, too. The important thing is to get rid of the clutter so that you can more easily see which tasks you need to focus on now.

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The bottom line for every business owner is this. If you can’t keep customers and clients, your business will fail.

Ironically, we tend to forget this fact by getting caught up in the “busy-ness” of running a business. We have to-do lists that are a mile long and, for a lot of us, don’t include real steps to move us any closer to securing new business on a regular basis.

I’m always working to get my business off the ground. I say “working”, but for the sake of this post, I’ll be real and rephrase: I’m always [absorbed in busy work that I think will somehow, by some random law of physics I can't explain, result in a Big Bang of sorts] to get my business off the ground.

Fortunately for me, I occasionally come out of the trance-like state caused by busy-work long enough to gain a little traction with my business. Yesterday was one of those times.

Last month was hectic, lots of personal challenges that kept me away from the business, and when things settled down, I found myself struggling to overcome the inertia of recent weeks.

For the week and a half I’d been back at work, I kept saying:

• “I need to catch up on my blog.”
• “I need to find some new customers.”
• “I need to write those articles.”

In the week and a half I’d been back, I hadn’t written a single blog post, I hadn’t found a single new customer, and I’d barely written two articles.

Yesterday started much the same, except for one seemingly minor difference. When I said to myself, “I need to catch up on my blog,” I followed it with, “Let me find someone to interview.”

I set out to find someone to interview, really someone to replace a person I was supposed to interview the day before, so this wasn’t a real stretch — yet.

In the process of finding a replacement expert, an idea hit me for a series of interviews I could do for the blog, and that was it. Within a few hours, I had ten (yes, ten!) interviews lined up for the coming week. That means, I have ten articles that are practically in the bag, ten new-to-me audiences who will now hear about my business as a result of the interviews, and ten people who are excited about collaborating with me on these articles. I’ll call that a good day’s work, in fact, better than the past week and a half combined, and all that was different was action.

Action is the thing that will help you overcome inertia; it’s the thing that will help you gain momentum in your business, so do something.

Don’t just talk about the blog entries you need to write and contemplate what topics to discuss. Take action! Find ten people to interview.

Don’t just talk about the networking you need to do. Take action! Get out today and meet ten new people. Just stop in and say, “Hello! I wanted to meet you and find out about your business.”

Do something, and then, tomorrow, do something more. Create some buzz around you and your business. Show genuine interest in someone else and be amazed at how they’ll reciprocate.

Stop talking. Stop the busy-ness. I promise you, if you’ll take real steps to move your business forward, you can actually end up working shorter days. Yesterday, I had nine of the ten interviews lined up by 3 PM (and I sent out the first email at 11 AM). You know what I did then? I took the rest of the day off.

What action can you take today to propel your business forward? How can you make real progress toward your goals? Stop talking. Start doing.

Photo from Flickr by MissTurner

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Sometimes, however, we don’t meet all of the goals we set. I’m guilty of this. Every month there’s at least one goal I don’t accomplish. In fact, if I miss just one goal, I count myself lucky. These mistakes were the hard way for me to learn about goal-setting. But is there any other way to learn?

I believe there is. You can learn from how I’ve handled my own mistakes. Perhaps you can learn something that will keep you working on those New Year’s resolutions and goals you’ve set, and deal with the ones you were unable to meet.

Focus on your success. It’s easy to sink into disappointment, or even depression, if you don’t accomplish your goals. The more important your goal was, the more disappointed you’ll feel.  But sometimes, if you look at the list of things you’ve accomplished, you’ll discover that you’ve achieved some things that weren’t in your list of daily, weekly, or monthly goals.

For example, you might not have met the deadline of the application for the freelance gig of your dreams, but you did finish an outline for a book idea you suddenly had. You might have been slow in one of your big projects, but you were able to finish ten minor projects earlier than expected. Don’t let your mistakes occupy your mind so much that you prevent yourself from finding long-term solutions for them.

Find out what went wrong. The inability to accomplish a goal means that something went wrong. The mistake might be found in the process you set, the time available to you, or the other people you’re working with.  Here are some of the common mistakes I’ve made when setting goals:

• Vague phrasing. “Become a better writer” or “Learn more about social media” is not a goal.  Your goals must be concrete and specific enough that it’ll be easy for you to identify whether you’ve accomplished it or not.  Instead, set something like “Write at least three blog posts that don’t get modified by the editor” or “Finish reading the free social media ebook I downloaded”.
• Lack of time. It’s also possible that you underestimated the time it would take to accomplish your goal.  I’ve learned to double or triple my expected time of completion for some projects, because I know that I’ll be underestimating it if I don’t.
• Lack of communication. If you’re working with a team on a specific goal, examine why you weren’t able to deliver the results you wanted. Was the schedule of deliverables clear from the beginning? Is there a proper venue for group discussions?
• Too ambitious. The problem with ambitious goals is that they tend to be large in scope.  Break down the project into smaller milestones and next actions. Schedule these appropriately. You might take 30 minutes or more to do this for large projects, but you’ll be saving time in the long run.
• Too simple. The opposite of ambitious goals are the ones that seem too simple – they’ll take only two to five minutes of your time. Sounds easy, right? But sometimes, the fact that they’re too simple makes them easy to avoid. “Oh that’s easy, I can do that later.” Until later becomes tomorrow, then next week, then next month. David Allen has a solution for this known as “the two-minute rule”. If there’s an item on your to-do list that takes less than two minutes to do, then just do it the second you think of it.

Know why you want to set this goal in the first place. Did you just set this goal because it’s on a list you made six months ago and it’s embarrassing to erase it? Or did you set it because you think it’s a goal you should have, but not necessarily a goal you want? By knowing why you set certain goals, especially personal ones, you can find the initial motivation you had and use it as your continuing inspiration.

Let’s face it – even if I wrote all of this down and you spent fifteen precious minutes reading it, goal setting will still be a trial-and-error experience for everyone.  But with a little warning and by learning through another person’s mistakes, we’ll be more aware of what we’re doing the next time we sit down and write our goals.

Do you always accomplish the goals on your list?  If not, how do you deal with missed goals?  If you always manage to accomplish your goals, what contributes to your success?

Image by ilker from sxc.hu

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