As a home – based professional, you may have precious few hours within which to complete your work, let alone run your business. Today as I started to think about an interesting topic to write about, I began to think about that. The phrase “do just one thing” popped into my head and I realized what an important principle that is for home – based professionals to understand and appreciate.
Interestingly enough, the phrase “do just one thing” does not come from any book about business. It may be mentioned somewhere in one or more business books, but the way that I first encountered it was while reading about environmental issues. Danny Seo has a nationally syndicated green living column called “Do Just One Thing”, and it is wonderful. Each day, Danny offers up one simple idea that anyone can do that will help them to live just a little bit greener.
Of course, the principle is not unique to green living. It can be applied to any area of a person’s life, including their home – based business. It is not very difficult to take care of just one task related to the operation of your business before shifting over to production mode for the rest of your work session. It is even easier if you plan these tasks out in advance so that you know exactly what you are going to do each day.
The thing that I find the most useful and appealing about the “do just one thing” approach is that it can be tailored to any person and any business. By assigning yourself tasks that make sense for your business, you get the things done that are important for you. For example, if you have a regular assignment where you do x units or hours of work per month, your “one thing” for the first day of each month could be to write on your calendar when exactly those hours or units of work will get done. If you have new projects or jobs flowing in throughout the month as well, you can assign yourself to take a day each week to place new items on your schedule.
Things like doing invoices, making phone calls, bidding on projects, and many other administrative tasks lend themselves well to being delegated to a specific day and then dealt with on that day without further ado. If the simplicity of the “do just one thing” approach seems appealing for you and makes sense for your business, why not start today. Assign yourself the task of deciding what your “one thing” will be for each work session that you have scheduled for the coming week.
Photo by earl53 on morguefile.com.