So... I'm coming up with lots of ideas and insights for this blog and some parallel projects (like a website I'm developing). Every single minute a new idea pops up. And the bad thing is... they don't come sorted by topics: now I'm thinking about this post, but after two minutes I'll be thinking about my website, and after two other minutes I'll be thinking about the online course of creativity I'm taking. Not to mention all the YouTube channels and twitter follows I want to be updated about. It's too much, after all. But this shows a nice principle: I will never be with nothing to do. Only if I decide to (which is good sometimes).
It's like a cloud, you know... You look at all the ideas at the first moment and... well... which one should I do first? I want to do all of them now, for example. But I can't, and I shouldn't. So, how to choose? Let's share some ideas that might help you with this decision making.
Looking at the time horizon of the task
You've just started a website. You go there, set up the website, think it's perfect, and... Promote it. Lots of users come to your website, because you are paying to be promoted. So you get traffic, which is perfectly normal. Your users are not coming because your website is good, they are coming because your website is showing up to them.
Then you start checking the conversions. No conversions! Actually, your bounce rate is very high. Your users are leaving the page right after they come to it. What's wrong? The thing is: of course you want your users to come to your page, but you must be ready for them. If you launch a blog and start promoting it with only few articles and content, you might lose your customers and never get them back again.
My advice is: start whatever you are planning to start and stay some time unnoticed. Go back regularly to your project and revise it, searching for improvements. Meanwhile, build some content. If you own a blog, for example, post several articles, finish the major configuration of the design, create your social media, etc. These things can be done while you are unknown. After that, you can start promoting your page and people will actually like it.
Looking at the hierarchy of the task
What needs to be done first? You cannot build the rooftop if you don't have walls. And you cannot build a house without foundations. You can think of your project timeline as a diagram: each task has a defined position in time. Some come first, others come later. Understanding this hierarchy is required in order to build a solid organization.
Looking at the importance of the task
Is this the task that needs to be done now? To look at the importance of the task, I suggest we look at something called Pareto distribution. It says, basically, that around 20% of the tasks and activities are responsible for around 80% of the results. Although it seems obvious you should focus on this activities, lots of companies just ignore this. Let's have a close look to a personal example.
There was this online company I worked for. It's an international organization that has a website in my country, Brazil. To manage the website, they hire a few people that speak Portuguese. So far so good, managing the website involves a few activities, e.g.:
- Dealing with Adwords;
- Updating content;
- Doing social media;
- Running a blog.
The big majority of traffic is from Adwords: if they stop Adwords, the traffic stops. So we can assume this is our main activity. Updating the content is also important, but is far less important than Adwords, since we won't need to update the content if we don't have anyone visiting the website. So let's be fair: each task represents 25% of the total (we have four tasks). Applying Pareto, we find out that only one task is responsible for around 80% of our result. And this is true: remove Adwords and the profit disappear.
Our main activity should be, then, dealing with Adwords. But... No! What do they do? They ask us to spend all our days updating content. And they manage Adwords. But they...
- Don't speak Portuguese;
- Don't understand anything about Brazilian market;
- Don't know how to manage Adwords properly.
So... the results are not good, of course!
Guys, keep these three things in mind: evaluate the time horizon, analyze the hierarchy and consider the importance of the tasks. Cool?
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