Productivity
How to Write One Article Every Day for The Rest of Your Life
You need to write one article every single day. This might be an article you post on your blog, submit to article sites, post on a forum, mail to your list, or add to a book. If you write just one article per day, you will be able to express yourself with crystal clarity and never run out of ideas or content.
If you have any piece of information that you can share, even if it's something off the wall like a new way to build a birdhouse or a type of bread you discovered at the grocery store, you should write an article about it. This trains your brain to shape your thoughts as articles, and if you adopt this practice, you can easily share information on these subjects in the future. Even if you forget and need to re-acquaint yourself with information or a specific procedure, you only need to read one of your own articles on the subject.
Many courses about creating products will give you their "systems" and their "secrets" for writing articles but the only thing you need to do is: sit down and start writing. If you stick to this daily writing schedule every single day, you'll have to STOP yourself from writing.
Just open up a web browser and type your article in the submission box. If you're submitting an article to Ezine Articles, type the article directly in the article submission form. If you're adding to a blog, type the article in the blog post box... the same for forums and so on.
I am very much against writing articles in a form that allows you to save and put up later, such as Notepad or Microsoft Word. When you put yourself on the spot, and force yourself to finish that article before you close the web browser, click on other links or even get up from the computer, you'll finish ALL the articles you start and clear those ideas out of your head... so you'll have room for new articles!
Challenges
A big part of why I can get so much accomplished is from challenges. I consider a challenge to be something somebody dares you to do that is totally ridiculous.
Remember the Daily Video Challenge? I dared you guys to record one video a day for 30 days to get the hang of it. Most people didn't get through all 30 days but they still recorded a handful of videos they otherwise wouldn't have made.
I attempted a challenge this last weekend. The challenge was to record 100 videos in one work day. I "failed" and only made it to 50. Now I have a handful of videos I can market on YouTube as video responses, I can insert a few in my sales letter and I have a ton of very easy to implement pre-sale and post-sale follow-ups for a couple of my products.
Most of the stuff I did this month was the result of a challenge... the 30K Month challenge... and I'm close to $20,000 for the month so far... I might even break over it today when our PHP Copywriting class fills up -- there are still a couple of slots for people eager to learn how to write sales copy the easy way, and add a few conversion-boosting PHP scripts without any real work.
Heck, on the phone last night, I challenged my business partner Jason to speak at an internet marketing event within 30 days. He kept talking all kinds of NLP tricks he could use onstage, so I finally said, "Just DO it!" I don't care if he presents at a super crazy big Armand Morin style seminar if a speaker backs out or if it's at a tiny little Terry Crim event where no one attends. If he has to give 100% of the commission to the seminar host, or donate whatever percentage of his backend sales to a charity, even PAY to speak there... it's got to be possible.
Even if he doesn't do it, even if it takes 60 days to speak at an event, that's still an accomplishment!
You have to have unrealistic goals to get a lot of stuff accomplished... you just have to.
Okay, your turn. Can you try something for me... choose one of the 7 choices below, and DO that thing by this time tomorrow. Knock TRY to knock out just one of the tasks below... it doesn't matter if you can't go all the way. If you choose to write 10 articles, and only write 3, that's probably 3 more than you would have made... if you didn't have that pressure.
- Write 10 articles and have them published by this time tomorrow.
- Write a quick report (and launch it) by this time tomorrow.
- Write and schedule the next 5 e-mails you're going to send to your list.
- Record 10 quick videos by this time tomorrow and upload them all to YouTube.
- Host a webinar or teleseminar by this time tomorrow, even if it's a freebie call-in gift to your list.
- Interview someone (or be interviewed) for 20 minutes before this time tomorrow.
- Take a product that's been lying around on your hard drive collecting dust... and freaking launch it!
Are you going to try out my challenge? Which item did you pick?
Learn Some Self Control!
Keep reading for a 10 second exercise that will boost your productivity...
I bought a laptop before the Hawaii trip, because I've been on planes before to go to seminars and hate the waiting on the plane, where you're not able to move around much. I'd have so many ideas for articles, but all I could do was write down the chapter titles on a piece of paper. I definitely wasn't going to write out articles by hand and retype them... total waste of time and easy way to get bored.
So, I bought a laptop for the flight.
If you've met me at seminars you've probably never seen me with a laptop. That's because for me, seminars were my only downtime from computer. I don't take nights and weekends off, I sure as heck wasn't going to do MORE marketing during my only vacation. I'd queue up lots autoresponders and e-mails before the trip so my business wouldn't take a hit.
I like to sit down at my computer, get my marketing work done, then get off the computer.
So why did I buy a laptop? Wouldn't that wreck that system?
Nope... because I'm making an effort to exert some self control. I set a simple rule in my head that I'm only going to use the laptop in 14 minute spurts, to either write articles or whip up PowerPoint presentations for videos. No browsing forums or checking e-mails.
How do YOU get self control?
It's simple. Pick a task that takes up most of your time and kills your productivity:
- Checking e-mails, MySpace, Facebook, Twitter, etc.
- Reading forums.
- Watching TV or playing computer games.
- Leaving the computer too much.
- Incoming phone calls.
Then choose one thing you wish you did more every day:
- Write one blog post or article.
- Write one chapter of an e-book.
- Write one sales letter.
- Write autoresponder e-mails.
- Send a joint venture proposal.
Now you're not allowed to do that one habitual productivity-killing task at ALL (the number you chose), until you do the thing on your wishlist (the letter you chose).
If you chose "1" and "A" then your 1A productivity task is to write one blog post before you even check e-mails. You turn your compulsion into an advantage... uh oh, someone might have e-mailed me something important. There might be a pressing customer service issue waiting... better write up a blog post and PUBLISH or SCHEDULE IT (important... finish what you start) before you can check that e-mail.
Sure, you tell yourself you're only going to check for new e-mails, but you'll start deleting and archiving some, replying to others, and the next thing you know it, 30 minutes have been wasted and you still don't have that article.
Or if your big habit is checking the forums, and you have a sales letter to write, then you need to be on a 2C schedule today. Finish that sales letter and have it live on the page with the order button, or submitted to your client (whichever applies) before you check the forums.
Multi-tasking is a productivity killer. Switching gears is a productivity killer. Be aware of this, like I was when I bought my first ever laptop.
Google Alerts
Do you happen to use Google Alerts to track what people are saying about you and your products?
I have been using it for several months. I wish I'd used it sooner. In the past I have used a combination of Awstats (to see what other sites link to me, including search engines) and WordPress Psychic Search to see what search phrases bring people to my sites -- and what they search for when they get there.
(I once joined a $60/month membership site just because their private message board was sending traffic to one of my products and I wanted to see what people were saying.)
It's saved me a ton of time. I don't need to hop on Google to check and see if any new affiliates have popped up or if anyone has reviewed my products, I just get an "as-it-happens" e-mail... usually within the first few hours.
Just today I got an e-mail alert when someone mentioned my new Action Optin script, and I was the first person to leave a comment on his blog post.
Now that the Warrior Forum is search engine friendly I know right away if someone mentions me.
(This is BIG as it keeps me out of forums... which are huge timewasters for me.)
What's even more powerful: entering the names of all your products as Google Alerts... and your competitors' products... and the names of your competitors!
I have also found discussions about my products and new affiliate sites when my name was not even mentioned.
I got that idea when some people were badmouthing an internet marketer on a message board, and they were very careful about misspelling his name and product names on purpose... just in case he had a Google alert set.
As luck would have it, one of the forum commenters spelled his product name correctly just ONCE, and the product creator found his way onto that board.
Google Alerts have been around for 4 years, but almost no one uses them... do you? Do you use it to spy on your competitors, track your products, stop plagiarism, jump on blog conversations, or something I haven't thought of?
