Ed Gandia shares a three-question filter for deciding which tasks to do. Ask yourself: Is this important? Is this a priority? Should I delegate it? A quick way to cut through what's actually worth your time.
Welcome to the High Income Business Writing Podcast, helping you propel your writing business to a whole new level. And now, here's your host, Ed Gandia. Hey there. Welcome to another episode of the High Income Business Writing Podcast, the number one podcast for business writers and copywriters who want to earn more and less time doing work they love for better clients. With over 1 million downloads from listeners just like you across 101 countries, this episode is much shorter than usual. Rather than my typical 45 minute format. Today I'm sharing a quick tip with you. This is part of the Audio Insights I publish for my private coaching clients every weekday and I thought you'd find it helpful. So here we go. Hope you enjoy it. One of the many benefits of taking time to reflect on the week, month or quarter that just ended is the clarity that comes from letting the dust settle and watching things, watching your life, watching your business from a different and calmer perspective while taking some of that thinking time Recently I realized that I'm typically very bad at just obeying my to do list. I'm so compliant. So here's what happens. I'll assign tasks to myself, or maybe my team assigns some of these tasks in a project management system and then I just work my way down the list without thinking much about the value of of having me do each of these tasks and do them that day or that week. So in other words, without thinking through, wait a minute, should I be doing this? Should I be doing it now? Through this process, when I'm in the middle of it, it seems like completing the list often becomes the goal, when in reality the goal should be ensuring that what I do complete is what really matters. And this has been a constant back and forth struggle in my life and in business. I'm so good at getting things done. I'm not saying I'm perfect, but I'm certainly better, I feel like, than the average person. And then because of that, I often take more pride in completing tasks than in being more selective and only completing what matters most. So I'm working on becoming more intentional about this and I'm applying a very simple filter that I've used on and off over the years, but often get away from as things get hectic. And this time I'm intent on using this approach more consistently because frankly, I have to. I can't continue to operate the way I've been operating over the past few months and I need to make some important changes. And the filter has three very simple set of questions. The first set of questions Is this, is it important? Again, when evaluating each task, is that task important? More specifically, is it tied to one of my key life or business goals for this quarter or this year? I like to look at goals on a quarterly basis, but. So that's why I say quarter. But in your case, if you want to do them annually, that's fine. Better yet, will it help me get closer to one of those goals? Because being tied to that goal, being related to it, doesn't mean that it would actually help you get closer to achieving that goal. Right? So is it important? Is it tied to one of my key life or business goals for this quarter and will it actually help me achieve them? The second set of questions is is it an A or B priority for this week? So I like to think of tasks as having being a, B or C priority tasks. I think it's self explanatory. It might be important, but is it something that has to be done this week or can it wait a bit? Or is this something that I've been punting and I feel like I'm going to continually punt to the following week if I don't do something about it? The final set of questions is, can I find another who to do this? So do I have to do it? Am I the only one who can do it and be honest with yourself, or can I delegate this to someone else? Another who, you know, who can do it right? Or maybe even part of that? Can I break it up into some tough subtasks and start assigning some of those subtasks to other people? So I'll give you a quick example. I'm in the process of writing another book and it's going to be a lead magnet on my website. And I was going to do a lot of the prep work, but I realized that my biggest value in terms of the book was really determining the central theme, coming up with a great title, the subcategories, and then what content to include. And I'm basically using the daily insights that I share with you guys like this one and just basically taking one side, made those decisions, just taking a highlighter to a printout and just highlighting the ones I want to include. And then I already have the categories grouped. That was my biggest value. Somebody else can do all the admin stuff. From there, somebody else can take a stab at the first draft and stitch it together and organize it the right way. Anyway, I wanted to share this with you in case you find yourself in a similar situation where you're constantly overbooked and feeling like you never complete your daily list of tasks. So rather than feeling like you failed yet again, I think, or I hope that this approach, if you give it a chance, will help you make better daily decisions and get you on a better track altogether. Well, that's it for today. I hope you enjoyed the episode. And just a quick reminder to grab your free copy of my latest book Earn more and less time the proven mindset, strategies and actions to prosper as a freelance writer. You can get your free copy@b2b launcher.com or you will also find the detailed show notes to this and all my other episodes. Enjoy and have a great day.
