The Marketing Nomad Show

5 Steps to Set Priorities in Your Business

January 25, 2022 The Marketing Nomad Season 1 Episode 76
The Marketing Nomad Show
5 Steps to Set Priorities in Your Business
Show Notes Transcript

In this episode, I talk about:
✨  Why it is important to set priorities for your business
✨ How to implement my 5 Step Process to set priorities for your business
✨ the Eisenhower Matrix to help with being more efficient and productive in your business

If you're reading this and you'd like the most efficient way to set priorities for your business, then this episode is for you!

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What's up everyone? Welcome back to the marketing Nomad show. It's your favourite marketer, and podcast host. My name is Prit. Welcome to episode number 76, where we are going to be talking about five steps to set priorities for your business. Now before I get into the steps, of course, I'm going to explain what is the significance of this episode. Now personally, when I first started, I had difficulty setting priorities in my business, full disclosure. The thing is that every time I thought that something was important, I would maybe see another YouTuber doing something or another podcaster or another entrepreneur hopping on some new thing. And I would feel like I had to abandon what I was currently doing, and run after what they were doing. This is also known as shiny object syndrome, okay, it's an actual thing. And I realised very quickly that I was abandoning my priorities, and I was just chasing after what the other person was doing. So over time, I meticulously started reading up on how to set priorities for my business, I started looking into habits that, you know, entrepreneurs and successful people should have and must have. And that's where this podcast episode was born. So basically, this is about two years of me trying to figure out how to set priorities for my business. And as an extension for that how to set priorities in my life as well. I really hope that this podcast episode is going to help you to set priorities for your business in the most easiest way possible. Okay, and not just the most easiest way, but also the most actionable way as well. So after trying many, many, many, many, many methods, I finally settled on a process that works for me, and I hope that it will be a good starting point for you to set priorities in your business. All right. Okay, now, let's get into the podcast episode. Now, the first step, okay, in my five step process, is just actually set time aside to set priorities. Now, this, to be honest, is one of the most difficult things to do. Because when you start thinking of setting priorities, you're probably going to overlook the fact that you need to actually set time aside for it, and not just maybe one hour on a Saturday or, you know, a couple of hours on the day. No, it's an ongoing process. One to eight needs a lot more time than that. Okay. So I think sometime around October each year, I always try to set priorities for the upcoming year ahead. And yes, of course, you're going to complete setting your priorities maybe in the first one week or two weeks, but it just helps to give yourself the entire month, because there might be some things that you have to go back and edit it. Or there might be things that you have to ponder about wonder and then slot it in or remove it. Okay. So I highly recommend doing that. I mean, October is the month for me to actually evaluate my priorities for the next year for you. It can be any other month, but I highly recommend keeping a significant amount of time to set your priorities, okay. Don't just try to kind of fit everything into one hour on one random Saturday of the year. It doesn't work like that. I have tried that, unfortunately. So basically, I feel like every single mistake that I do talk about is probably something that I have seen people doing or I have done it myself. Okay. And this is definitely one mistake that I did for myself, and it did not work. It actually blew up in my face. We shall not go there. But yeah, the end story, I guess the moral of the story is set aside significant amount of time, that's the first step to setting priorities in your business. Alright. And, yes, the next step that I do have for you is to list down What do you want to achieve? Okay, and I know that this can get a little bit tricky over here. Because when you are setting priorities, ideally, you want to categorise it, right? You want to either do it for the day, or the week or the month or the year. What works for me personally, is I try to see where do I see myself in five years? Or where do I see myself in a year? Where do I see myself in two years? If that's a little hard for me, okay, then here's my trick. I kind of take a look at myself at the longest time that I can see in the future. For me, that's five years down the line. Okay. Where do I hope to be five years down the line? To get there? Okay, what do I have to do or achieve by year one? What do I have to achieve by year two? What do I have to achieve by year three, year four, and then I get to year five. So that helps me set what goals I need to achieve for the year. Okay, because sometimes it can get hard. I mean, I'm not going to kid. It's a little vague. If you say, Oh, where do you want to be in a year, and you're like, I am not entirely sure how realistic my plans can get at this point. So for me, the easiest way for me to go about this is I usually take the furthest timeline that I can see into the future. And I break it down to small pieces. And the same goes, once I get my year. Once I get my goal for the year, I break it down into quarters. Once I get my goals for the quarters, I break it down to months. And then once I get the months, I break it down to week. And yes, if you are a little bit more on the anxious side, like me, you're probably going to break down your goals for the day as well. Yep, I do that, I definitely do that. It just makes me a lot less anxious. And it makes me feel more secure. Because I know absolutely what I need to achieve on that day, by the end of that day to progress to the next day. And I know that small bits of success, small bits of me achieving success each day is going to add up to the week. And I actually see that happening. So yes, you can completely stop at weekly priorities. But for me, I definitely narrow it down further to my day priorities. Okay. So at this point, yes, we are going to figure out just the goals, okay, we're not going to settle down on the priorities just yet. That's what we're going to do. What the third step. Now, the third step is, what is absolutely necessary for you to do in order to achieve that goal that you have set for your day, month, week, what else quarter year and probably two years as well. Okay, what is I'm gonna repeat again, what is the absolutely necessary thing for you to do to achieve that goal, okay, just write it down. Those would ideally be your set of priorities. Now, at this point, you probably have a good chunk of, you know, priorities for your day priorities for the weak priorities for the month and the quarter and the year as well. Okay. Now, in this list of priorities, now, we're going to actually kind of segregate it a little bit, categorise it a little bit more so that your entire list of priorities becomes that much more efficient. Okay. Now, this was actually the fourth step. That is, it was a concept introduced by Eisenhower, he was the 34th, President of the United States. And basically his entire government was focused on high output and organisation. So this is called the Eisenhower matrix. And it wasn't really popular. Okay, until Stephen R. Covey mentioned it in his book called The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People. And it went kind of viral right after that. Okay, so Eisenhower matrix is aimed to actually categorise your priorities. And let me kind of delve a little bit deeper. So what this is, is basically a way for you to understand which of your priorities you need to look at first, which ones you need to do first, okay, now, what the matrix is about is basically categorising your entire list of priorities into four different buckets. Okay, so at this point, I actually want to you to pause this podcast episode and then take a piece of paper and take a pen. All right, and I will actually teach you how to do the Eisenhower matrix. Now what you're gonna do, okay, after you've paused this video, I'm assuming you've paused this video and you've come back with a pen and paper, what you're going to do is you're going to draw a lot a line from the top of the page to the bottom of the page in the middle of the page. Okay, so just draw a line in the middle of the page. Wow, it's just complicated that sentence 3x times sorry about that. Now flip your page by 90 degrees and then draw a line from one end to the other end of the page. So basically, for your landscape mode, you have your page cut into half for your portrait mode, you have your page cut into half. Okay, now base Basically you've drawn a graph, okay, it's like an x axis and a Y axis, a negative y axis and then a negative x axis as well. So for the positive y axis on the left most part of your page, you're gonna write urgent, okay, for your negative x axis, on the top left part of your page, you're gonna write important. Similarly, for the positive x axis on the top right of your page, you're gonna write not important. And then for the negative y axis of your page, on the bottom left most part you are going to write not urgent, okay, your first quadrant that is your positive x and your positive y is going to be not important, but urgent. Okay, do you see that happening on your page, then your second quadrant, which is your negative x, but your positive Y, it's going to give you urgent and important and then your third quadrant, which is your negative Y and your negative x, you are going to get not urgent but important. And then your fourth quadrant, which is your negative y, but your positive X axis, you are going to get not important, not urgent, okay? So I really, here's how I personally do it. If it is not urgent and not important, I probably won't even look at it, it's probably not going to be on the list of my priorities. It's something that I need to cancel up. Okay, that's the easiest first step that I do. So I fill in basically all have these quadrants, okay, I figure out which task is urgent and important. I figure out which task is urgent, but it's not so important. I figure out which task is not urgent, but it is important for me to do. Okay. Now, ideally, when you are starting out with your Eisenhower matrix, like when you are starting to implement the priorities from your Eisenhower matrix, obviously, you want to pick the ones that are urgent and important first, okay, now simultaneously, and this is something that I personally like to do as well do usually the ones that are urgent, but not so important, are the ones that I can do bit by bit. Okay. So while I'm doing my urgent and important tasks, I'm also taking on bit by bit of the urgent, but not so important task. Now, your third quadrant is where things get a little bit tricky. Your tasks in the third quadrant are usually not urgent, but they are important. Now, I'll give you an example for my business. That is, that actually comes under the third quadrant, and that is writing blog posts for my business. It's not urgent, I have to push out two per month. And but it is super, super important for SEO purposes for my business. Now in those type of situations where it's not urgent, but at the same time, the task is important, you can delegate that work, okay. And this is something that is a nice rule that I have applied for my business as well. If it is not urgent, but at the same time, it is important for my business, there's more likely a chance that I am able to delegate that work, someone else can handle it, okay. And that is when either I hire a freelancer to handle writing my blogs, and then I uploaded when they're done. There's so many different ways that I can do it. Okay, so let me rehydrate the fourth quadrant, the tasks which are not urgent, not important, they're probably not going to be on your priority list, strike them off. That's the easiest first step that you can do. Okay, now, the first quarter, which is stuff that is urgent, but not so important, I do them bit by bit because they are urgent, but at the same time, they are not so important for my business. So I take them maybe one at a time or bit by bit, maybe I spend 15 to 20 minutes a day. It's sort of like that, okay? However, the tasks in the second quadrant that are super urgent, super important, I make sure I do them. Okay, those come at the top of my priority list. Okay, and then we have things in my third quadrant. If I cannot delegate that work, the work that comes under not urgent but important. I also make sure to simultaneously do it, or I make sure that I dedicate some time in the week to focus just on that, okay, but ideally, according to you know, the route rules and regulations of the matrix, I guess I would say, ideally, the third matrix would be I mean, the third quadrant would be for you to delegate that work. That's a really nice and easy way for you to prioritise your tasks. And it's a nice way to figure out which tasks in your business you should be doing on your own, and which you should be delegating to other people in your business or other independent contractors that you may want to hire in the future. Okay, so that was number four for you. And no, it doesn't end there. According to my experience, of course, the Eisenhower matrix says that, you know, this is enough. And to be honest, you can use the Eisenhower matrix however you want, you can use it for daily tasks, you can do it for weekly tasks, you can do it for monthly, quarterly, whatever you feel comfortable with. For me, personally, I have an Eisenhower matrix for my week, I also have one that I do just roughly in the morning when I wake up for the day's priority as well, okay, it's not something that is too complicated. It just, you just have to draw a line down and then a line across, and then you just write down briefly, as time goes, you're going to get super, super fast, and your brain starts sorting these priorities right in your mind itself. Okay. It's amazing how that happens. But of course, me being somebody who needs to pin down my thoughts, I always just right at the corner of my rough notebook. And, you know, it's just there for me to figure out which priorities I need to focus on and stuff like that. So I just wanted to say that there is no rule that you have to apply it only for monthly tasks or only for your business, even you can even use the Eisenhower matrix for your household chores for your personal life as well. It's that effective. Of course, I personally have not used it on my personal life. I just, I don't know why I haven't. But I have heard success stories of using the Eisenhower matrix for people's personal lives. And a lot of the moms who have like a tonne of things to do, as well as managing a business have actually, you know, told me that this works really well for them, you know, they're able to prioritise their household chores, they're also able to prioritise their business, I guess the priorities in their business as well. So that might be something that you might be interested to try out. I personally haven't. I don't know why and what I'm waiting for. But maybe in the future, I'll try it out. And then I'll let you know how that goes. Okay. Now, of course, at this point, you're going to think, oh, it's done. It's over? No, I am sorry to say this is a five step process, remember. So the fifth step is something that I added on my own because I realised that it's not enough to just create the matrix. Okay. It's also important to refresh and repeat the process. I'm not kidding, it is important to set time aside to refresh your list of priorities, you need to keep revisiting them. Now, at this point, when you are refreshing your Eisenhower matrix, I do not actually recommend removing any of the tasks in the sense that if it is urgent and important, keep it there until it is done, and then strike it off. But don't strike it off before it is done. Now, this is one way that has helped me curb shiny object syndrome, at least well, for the most part, until I finish a task in urgent and important the quadrant, I'm not going to hop on to another task, this is a small rule that I have for myself personally. And the same goes for each quadrant. At any given point, I am doing only one task in that quadrant. Okay. So it's just helped me because when you shuffle your tasks around, like then you move it from urgent, important to urgent but not important. Again, you are letting the shiny object syndrome kind of get to you. And you will probably be missing your list of priority. So when I say Refresh, it's more so editing the list as and removing the items that you have done, and adding new priorities that may have come in, in the week in the month. So I highly recommend keeping one day a month. Okay, this is something that I do for my business, find a frequency that works for you. Of course, for me, the frequency that works is once a month I go in and I just take a brief look at the Eisenhower matrix. And then I cancel out all the tasks that you know have already been done. I add in new tasks, all of those things. But of course, like I told you on a day to day I do use like a very rough version of the Eisenhower matrix to figure out what I'm doing for the day and of course I also do a Tiny Eisenhower matrix for the weeks priorities as well. Okay, so it's just basically against the I do a refresh of the overall picture. But I do dedicate time for the Eisenhower matrix every single day, it hardly takes five minutes, guys, not even that. I think it takes two minutes or two to three minutes. It's just putting them into buckets for different buckets. And my days tasks is not usually a lot, even though the volume of the work is a lot. But it's just like podcast recording for hours or, you know, YouTube video shoot two hours or something like that. So yeah, I don't know. I'm just kind of going off track over there. But yes, you get the point. Right. What I was trying to say is, yes, as I do dedicate a little bit of time per week, and each day, but the month is meant for a huge refresh. And just making sure my Eisenhower matrix is on point, my list of priorities are on point as well. Okay. And of course, this needs to be repeated, you need to make sure that you are consistently doing this for you and for your business. Because when you stop, ideally, your list of priorities goes up in flames as well. Okay. So I just want to rehydrate when you are refreshing your Eisenhower matrix, as much as possible, don't eliminate the task before you have completed it. Okay. And that also, just having that rule for me, makes sure that I actually see through the entire task before I take on another one. And that doesn't distract me, like I'm not midway through an important and urgent task. And I'm like, oh, okay, let's figure out some other tasks. Let's go on there. I'm getting more anxious about that task, and then I hop over No. So that's just a tiny rule, like a tiny tip that I do personally for myself. I hope that helps you. But it has helped me a lot, a lot, especially when it comes to being hyper focused to the tasks that I have on hand. So it's a mini rule that I don't skip to another task until I have finished that task in the portrait. Okay, so that's just a small extra thing that I do and it really works it it also keeps me calm and gives me time to evaluate exactly if I'm being anxious for no reason about another task and it gives me time to evaluate where exactly that priority stands in my Eisenhower matrix, the one that's coming in new alrighty guys. That was a lot of information, I hope to you know, kind of give you I do have a productivity planner on Etsy. If you are interested, I have I think if I'm not wrong two or three different versions of the Eisenhower matrix on there. I also have like, different other ways to prioritise to set your priorities for your personal life or your business as well. So if you are interested, definitely take a look at my etsy store. I am going to put the link below but you can find me as the marketing Nomad see oh, that's company. Alright, so I've been marketing Nomad SEO on Etsy. And I have about 225 sales as of today as I'm recording this podcast episode. So if you find another D marketing Nomad with no sales, then that's not me. Okay. Yeah. So there are reviews and you know, it's, it's, yes, that productivity planner is going to help you with your productivity. And it's printable, as well as you can use it in a digital format on your iPad as well. It's super, super awesome. And it's really good with setting priorities for your business especially. Alrighty, guys, that brings me to the end of this podcast episode. If you do need more help more personalised help to set priorities in your business or create marketing priorities for your business? Definitely do check out my Power Hour strategy calls. They are basically, you know, within the timeframe of your choosing, I answer any questions that you may have. And it's instant relief from all the crazy crazy questions that you may have about your business at the moment. And you know, it's so that you can get started on implementing long term strategies immediately. Alrighty, guys, I hope you guys are staying safe, staying healthy. I'll catch you guys in my next podcast episode. Thank you so much for listening all the way up until here. Bye bye.