Entrepreneurs: organize your to-do lists to boost revenue!
One of the most interesting things I have learned from leading both the boot camps and the one-on-one organizational coaching is that we have an awful lot of entrepreneurs following buttoned up – from Lia Sophia sellers to gift shop owners, financial planners, and everything in-between. It makes sense – you’ve got a lot on your plate…so the more organized you are, the more likely you are to succeed.
That’s why when I came across the headline: How Your To-Do List Can Boost Your Bottom Line in Entrepreneur magazine, I felt compelled to share it here.
The post had me at hello with the statement that successful entrepreneurs tend work smarter, not harder. As many of you know, I’m a firm believer in the power of focus and the importance of lists (ahem, cultivated during a weekly strategy session) to get there. And then they went on to give six great ways to tweak your to-do list so that you actually do that. Here’s their first tip:
Monetize your to-do list. Determine the financial value of completing every task on your list, then write those dollar amounts next to the corresponding items.
For example, if the task is to prepare a proposal to land a $150,000 contract, write “Finish Proposal ($150,000).” If the task is to return a phone call from your number-one customer, who generates $1 million in annual sales, write: “Return Mary’s phone call ($1 million).”
Genius, right? Nothing like assigning monetary value to your efforts. Once you’ve given your task a meaningful value, the author advises that you sort them from highest to lowest, divide the list in half and focus 80% of your time (4 days) on the top half, and the remainder of the time on the bottom half.
Read the article here to get five more great ideas.
As the author eloquently noted,
To get extreme results from less work, you need to be willing to sacrifice good opportunities to focus intensely on great ones.
Using financial value as an organizing principle is a fresh and compelling way to ensure you do just that.
