I want to do something different today as a preface to some other articles I want to write about traffic this week.
Today, I want to talk about the one factor that creates success, whether it is in increasing sales, increasing traffic, increasing conversions from existing traffic, and ultimately, any activity that’s going to make more money for you.
It’s such a simple thing that it seems self evident, and quite frankly, stupid, to name it.
But time and again, if I had to name the one trait that all my most successful peers have in common, it’s this. If I had to show how the best traffic students of mine have that their lesser peers don’t, it’s this.
It’s the one thing that has either brought me thousands of dollars this past year or lost it for me.
That one element is Focus, or more precisely, Singular Focus. It seems like such a simple thing. I’m sure, instinctively, you want to say “If there’s one thing I am, it’s Focused.”
Maybe you are focused.
Maybe you have spent this past year dedicated to your business like no other year before.
You had to sweat but you made the deadline.
You were so tired every day from sleeping five hours a night that sometimes, it made you cry. You missed your family, but you knew that in a year, it would be worth it.
I’m not going to debate you on that point. We’ve worked hard this year – if you’re an American, maybe harder this year for less valuable money with the earlier decline of the dollar (temporary I hope).
The issue is really this: did we work hard at the right thing?
And did we work hard at the right part of the right thing?
I saw the most failure in my own life when I tried to do five things well all at once. I wanted to promote an affiliate program, serve this client, create a product, market myself, and do a daily newsletter, all at once.
Guess how many of those things I did well?
One, serve my client.
And how did I do that?
The answer is still Singular Focus.
Now, this doesn’t mean that you have to drop all the other things you’re interested in.
But you DO have to
- pick one thing, for right now,
- do that thing to the best of your ability,
- get it on auto-pilot if it needs to continue getting done going forward
- THEN pick up the next thing and do it in a similiar fashion.
That is, if you want to be successful.
Our attention, this past year, more than any other in my memory, has been scattered and fractured, as the availablity of things to pay attention to has accelerated at an exponetially faster rate. Instead of source for news, it seems even the most tecnically unsavvy surfer suddenly had dozens.
And there are more ways to do things suddenly to. Just last year, there were really only 3 ways for a regular person to see a TV show. You could watch it on TV, record it to watch later, or order the DVD and watch it over and over again.
Now you can watch it on Amazon’s Unbox, download it from iTunes, find a bootleg copy on line (shaking disapproving finger), sometimes watch it online at an official site, watch it online at a DVD rental site like Netflix – the list goes on from there.
That’s just one example of how our attention is split – Rich Schefren even coined a phrase about it.
This is even more true in technology. So if your business is at all online, the issue of Focus is that much more important.
Focusing on your business is great. Focusing on One Thing in your business for One Day and getting that thing done, and then, and only then, doing something else is better.
It sounds… elementary… doesn’t it?
But how many times have you tried to increase your traffic, and not gotten very far?
You started out trying to get better results with Google. Then someone told you to do article marketing. So you stopped the first project and went to that one.
Then you realized that the links you’d get for the kinds of articles you write expire, so you’d have to keep writing articles to keep getting linked. And so you abandoned that project and thought, I’ll do social media. I’ll get on the first page of Digg.
And you find out, hey, I can’t just submit to Digg and hope for the best. It might take weeks or months to build relationships with people. If I want immediate traffic, I should buy it.
You find out it’s too expensive to keep up. And on it goes.
If you’re constantly jumping to the next thing, the first thing won’t have time to work.
This last month, three things have worked to help me get back to Singular Focus, and increase the earnings of our company. They were:
- Delegating and outsourcing,
- Blacking out days and tying them to Focus On One Task, and,
- Taking enough time off in-between to be able to work effectively.
You can do this too. I like to take one day each week and have it be my Project Day. Whatever project I picked for that week, I do all day, as much as I can. If I finish it, I go to the next project on my list. If not, it carries into the next project day.
On that day, I’m completely incommunicado. No email, no phone calls, no voicemail, no news, no internet outside of my project needs, no regular TV (commercials distract me. I will watch movies or listen to music if the task doesn’t require complete attention, like submitting links/articles).
If you’re not at the point in your career when you can do it for a full day, try certain hours of the day. Get up early or stay up late, change your off time, shift your time, eliminate time wasters, or move your schedule around.
You’ll find that there is plenty of time. Time doesn’t really exist anyway, it’s simply our measure of how we move through the field of space. Bend it to your will – it’s not a constant.
Try it on Monday. Work from 7 to 5 instead of 9 to 7, for example, and during the hours of 7 to 9, when no one is around to distract you, work on one thing and see how far you get.
Do all your blog posts for the week.
Do one part of a product you want to create.
Make a list of possible joint venture partners.
Figure out how many links you have to your site and how to get more.
Find one thing, do it well. You’ll be surprised how much Singular Focus will help you finish projects, and even open up more time in the rest of your life.
