The Art of Elimination: Why Doing Less is More When It Comes To Your Business

Have you ever felt like this: that no matter how much you get done, no matter how many things you tick off your list, you still feel like you haven’t accomplished much because there are still so much more left to do?

Do you spend a lot of your time running around like a headless chicken, trying to “put out fires”?

Well, I have.

And I admit, I still do… sometimes.

Which then led me to ponder, “How do the super successful people always seem to get so much done?” It can’t be that they have more time – everyone has 24 hours in a day.

So how do they do it?

Ironically, the most successful people are successful not because they do more things but because they do less things.

Elimination, as I’ve learned, was the secret.

I first experienced the power of elimination a few years ago when I read The 4 Hour Work Week by Tim Ferriss. From that book I learned about focusing our resources (time, energy, money) on things that truly made a difference, and how to eliminate the rest.

At first we only implemented two things on our business:

• Made a rule to check our emails only 2x a day, 3x at the most (before that we were checking our inbox about 10 times – per hour )
• Outsourced or automated routine/repetitive/admin tasks, technical tasks, and low skill jobs, so we can focus on our most important tasks.

These two things alone increased our effectiveness and productivity massively.

It forced us to deal only with things that really made a direct impact on the bottomline.

Elimination minimised distractions. We were getting the most important things ticked off our list (rather than getting lots of trivial, unimportant ones done), we had more time to spend with those we care about and although our overheads increased, so did our profits.

And you know what? It’s so simple that you can produce the same results in your business.

So how do you carry out this elimination process?

Step One: Identify Where Your Time Is Actually Going

The first step, as always, is awareness.

Ask yourself this question:

“I currently spend most of my working time on ________.”

The answer to this will help show where you are putting your time that you can delegate, and can therefore eliminate from your to do list (or at least, do less of).

These could be admin tasks like proofreading and editing blog posts you’ve already written, or checking your friends’ Facebook pages or Twitter updates (don’t pass it off as a marketing activity, if it’s your social friends you’re chin wagging with). They could also be tasks that are not your core competency, so you’re better off outsourcing them like website design/maintenance, technical tasks, managing pay per click campaigns, editing and uploading videos, etc.

(by the way, if you’re struggling to answer where your time goes, you might want to use www.RescueTime.com – it’s a tool that records what sites you visit and what applications you use, and sends you a nifty report! Kinda like an invisible supervisor that keeps your productivity in check!)

Step Two: Identify Your Profit Bottlenecks

Next, ask yourself where you have profitability blocks in your business. Not sure what those are? Then answer this question:

“My business would make more money if I focus on doing more of _______.”

I trust that you know what the answer is, but if you’re struggling for ideas…

Think of High-ROI tasks. These are high-value tasks, or tasks that, if they get done, will directly affect your cashflow.

For example, you can spend more time marketing or strategizing.

You can spend more time developing products and programs to establish more sources of income.

You can spend more time raising your website’s conversion or writing customer-pulling content or more compelling sales copy.

You can spend more time nurturing relationships with key players in your industry or niche.

As a business owner, your main function really is Marketing. So I recommend you spend most of your time doing marketing tasks. Here are top marketing tasks I can think of that applies to any business attempting to market online:

• Attend educational live events about Digital Marketing strategies, for example.
• Meet with your business coach or mastermind marketing group.
• Build your list and write your email marketing follow ups / broadcasts.
• Observe the marketing strategies of the market leaders in your niche.
• Network with other businesses that target your same market (They are your best potential Joint Venture partners).
• Test your campaigns to improve your conversion rates.
• Create traffic-pulling content.
• Write sales copy
• Monitor/measure your marketing campaigns results.
• Train your employees so they can take more and more responsibilities.

Get the drift?

The key is to ensure you are spending your time working on things that are generating the most income. The more time you spend doing things that are of very little consequence to your business, the less effective you are going to be!

We encourage you to answer these questions NOW to really identify what bottlenecks exist in your business, what distractions you’re allowing to affect your productivity and what high-ROI tasks you can do more of.

If you want to step it up a bit, once you’re already good at focusing on the most important tasks in your business, you can then turn your attention to looking for ways to streamline the process of how you are doing these tasks so that you can do them in less time and with less resources.

Don’t be surprised if you get plenty of A-HA moments.

OK now go turn those To Do’s into Tada’s today.  ;)

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