Do It! Marketing Blog: Marketing for Smart People™

Nope, this is NOT a post about that kind of soft, squishy "mission-vision" thing...

This post is about what's on your plate right now - today - right this minute. 

My friend, Jose Palomino, sent me an email this morning about some website tweaking that he's doing. He wrote, "Getting the timing right and the sliders to stop rotating after the final reveal is today's mission."

Bam - that was his ONE thing for today. Was he doing other tasks? You bet. Was he developing business, calling clients, following up on sales leads, and doing paperwork? Sure... but he also had his "mission" for the day. 

When it comes to being a small business owner, independent professional or speaker/consultant, you have a million things to do and a hundred priorities. 

Wouldn't having a SINGLE mission for the day be great? 

Well - you can. Many important tasks can be done in as little as 15 minutes -- and tackling ONE head-on might be exactly what you need to regain that most precious entrepreneurial asset - MOMENTUM.

Some examples to get you started: 

• Revise your home page copy
• Write an important email to a client or prospect
• Send an invoice you've been proscrastinating on
• Post a blog
• Submit an article to a trade journal or industry publication
• Respond to a media request
• Send out your email newsletter
• Circle back with a prospect who's on the fence
• Clean up your LinkedIn profile
• Post a long-overdue recommendation on LinkedIn
• Send a thank-you note
• Mail a book to a prospect, influencer or decision-maker
• Pick up the phone and apologize to someone important
• Ask for that referral you've been shy about pursuing
• Contact that virtual assistant you've been thinking of hiring 
• Post your internship job description with your local university
• Begin a research file or a Google Doc for your next book
• Make a list of 20 companies you'd like to do business with
• Clear off your desk (you can do this in 5 min. if you create a file folder called "Crap from Desk" and today's date!)
• Do a competitive sweep and see who's doing what in your industry so you can refresh your offerings
• Shoot a 2-minute video and post it to YouTube
• Buy my book and get $747 in bonuses right now (Shhh...)
• Erase the whiteboard in your office and create a "fresh start"
• Take yourself out to a coffee shop for a 2-hour strategic meeting with yourself, a legal pad, and a pack of Sharpies
• Take a nature walk and bring your pocket audio recorder or smart phone to capture ideas
• Reconnect with an old client, friend, or colleague
• Write an amazon book review for a book you admire in your field
• Call your tech wizard to fix a nagging technology problem you've been tolerating for way too long
• Leave a 45-second voicemail for a client just to say how much you value your relationship with them
• Visit your favorite bookstore or newsstand and buy a magazine to flip through for new business ideas

Guest post by David Pierce

One of the keys to any productivity system is to actually put things into the system. Who knew?

Obvious though it may seem, many of us have trouble taking the time to enter our thoughts into our task-manager, to-do list, or organizational system.

This can happen for any number of reasons – no paper nearby, no easy way to record your ideas – but our productivity can be hurt by not inputting everything into our system so we can deal with it properly.

What should live on paper lives in our brain, and then proceeds to be forgotten and left alone. That’s a surefire road to getting yourself in trouble- or at least forgetting leaky faucets.

There’s a simple, quick solution to this problem, though – it’s called a mind dump.

A mind dump is simply a way for you to get everything out of your head and onto paper. Our brains aren’t made to remember things forever, but paper is; with an empty brain, we’re able to either focus on new things or deal with the task at hand, instead of constantly dwelling on past things taking up valuable bandwidth.

Executing a mind dump is simple: take out a pen and a paper, or fire up a new document on your computer. Then, write down everything that comes to your mind. There is no step three.

Anything and everything is fair game: what you have to do, what you’re thinking about, hopes, dreams, goals, and whatever else comes into your mind. Set a time limit – say, 20 minutes – and everything that enters your brain immediately must exit your brain and go onto your paper.

Once you’re done, you can begin to take action on the items you’ve written. On what do you need to take action? What do you need to deal with, follow up about, or file somewhere?

Things that don’t need to be further dealt with? Just get rid of them. Make sure you don’t need to think about them ever again, and be done with them.

There’s no set way for doing the best mind dump possible. The point is to reset your brain, update your productivity system, and put onto paper all the things that have been taking up the valuable (and limited) space in your brain.

Many people use “triggers” to make their mind dumps easier – a set of key words or phrases that set your mind on a particular aspect of your life, in order to let you focus on items related to it. 43 Folders has a long list of these triggers, everything from “Phone calls,” to “Furniture”, to “Weddings.”

Some people, GTD followers in particular, do a mind dump before their Weekly Review, as part of figuring out what the week ahead has in store. Others, like myself, do it once a week or so – whenever I have 20 minutes to spare. I recommend doing it at least once a week – it has a tendency to get long and unweildly otherwise.

A mind dump can also be done anywhere – another great thing about it. Open up a note on a cell phone, or write on the back of a newspaper; wherever you are, if you’ve got a free moment, clear your head.

You’ll be amazed how many things come out of your brain and into your organizational system, when you devote time and space to emptying it.

Tags: Marketing coach, marketing speaker, mind dump, productivity tips, success tips. Originally published on Lifehack.org

Please use the COMMENTS area below to share how and when YOU get things out of your head and into your system...