 So you have limited time to work on your business and that time should be spent, wow, should be spent carefully. The problem is that when you start to do things like tweak your website or do some more research on that blog post, there's a lot of actions that feel like you're getting somewhere but isn't really building your business and you spend another month not really growing your business and the time slips by and it's really important because you need to develop some sustainable income to be able to sustain your business. So I recommend that not only do you have a productive to-do list but you might also want to have a to-drop list of things that when you see yourself doing them you are going to question whether you're going to continue doing them. So I'm going to share with you my list of 21 productive actions and also some to-drop items as well. So I'm going to go ahead and share my screen and then show you what these lists are. Here we go. So first of all, let's define what true productivity is. I call it being in meaningful contact with the people your business can best serve and actually here I define it as valuable interaction with the people your business can best serve. So who are those people? Is it just your friends and family and anybody who could possibly like and engage with your posts? No. Primarily your ideal people are your clients, your current clients, perspective, former clients and also your referral sources, people who could refer business to, people who are colleagues and friends who have a network of people that could become your clients and then also true fans, people who are basically one of these two types of people who regularly engage or share your content. But basically we're looking at clients and referral sources. Those are the people you should keep in mind as you do your work every day. Am I being in interaction with them or am I doing busy work that doesn't really directly and let me explain what is valuable interaction? What does this mean? It means interaction that gets reciprocity of some kind, okay? Likes, comments, shares, inquiries, purchases. In the short term, you might say, well, I'm doing this research in my blog post because then it'll make it a blog post and then hopefully in the future someone will know. That's too long down the road. You don't have enough time if you're still trying to build up a sustainable income particularly. And if you've already built up a sustainable income, you probably already know this whole lesson. So you probably are already doing this naturally anyway. But those of you who are not yet at a sustainable income or not an income that you'd like, maybe you'd like to have a more thriving business, you need to be really paying attention to this every single day. So what is a list? Let me give you my suggested list. And this is not necessarily everything and you don't necessarily have to be doing everything on this list, but this gives you an idea. I'll compare or contrast between this list and later my recommended two-drop list. So things like creating a publishing content, not spending too much time perfecting it. So for example, you really should be spending no more than two hours a week writing and publishing your blog post. Maybe one hour drafting it and then one more hour to edit and publish it in the various places, LinkedIn, Medium, your website, et cetera. So no more than two hours. No more than two hours to do a blog post. And a blog post, if you're doing two hours, you really should be more like 700 plus, 700 to 1500 words. If you're only doing something that's like a few hundred words, two or 300 words, something you type quickly, that really could be done in an hour, an hour or less. Paid advertising is also truly productive because you're getting, especially if you're increasing the reach of your content. I use Facebook ads, Instagram ads, Google ads to get my content out there and that's productive to do. If you have meaningful comments, you engage with them, contacting your fans or colleagues about market research conversations, especially if you're not getting enough clients and not getting enough sales of your products, you need to be doing more market research. You need to find out from your audience, from your fans and your colleagues what you should be selling or what they are buying related to what you could sell so that you could make your product and services more similar to what they are buying because what they spend their money on is really where your income comes from. Your fans, your clients, your colleagues, what they spend their money on is where your money comes from. So you need to match yourself, match your product and services to where they're spending their money, right? Getting feedback about your offering, okay? Announcing your next offering, paid advertising to make sure people see your offering a few times. I'm not gonna read every single line to you but you get the gist that the actions are about being in touch with other people, okay? Versus, and let me now scroll down to the questionable to drop list, all right? And see, take notice whether or not you are doing these kinds of things, okay? Doing small tweaks to try to perfect your website even more, okay? I see so many people doing this. I talk to people, oh, I'm relaunching my website. Oh, really? Why are you relaunching your website? Oh, because I just don't feel great about it. Whether or not you feel great about your website, okay? Yes, I agree that that could definitely, you know, affect your energy about your business, but my suggestion is that you might be putting too much of your self-worth on how your website looks and reads and how it represents. Long ago, I detached my sense of worth in my business to my website. Because if you ask me, what do I think of my website? I think it's kind of crappy. Yes, I, George Cow, marketing expert and consultant, have a crappy and poorly built website. Poorly branded, I have no brand. So I have long made peace with the fact that my website sucks, and yet I have a six-figure business year after year after year, and it just has been growing every single year. And I haven't made update, let me say this again. I haven't updated my website. Not any, I mean, of course I update certain links and I blog on my website, but I have not updated the look and feel of my website and many of the main pages since 2014. So it's been about seven years. And by the time you watch this, I may have a new website. I'm actually in process this year of going to another platform, which is making me do some more major updates to my website. It's been seven years. And as you probably know, my message has evolved a lot since then, my business has evolved so much since then. So you're probably working too much on your website and you probably care too much about it because somehow you have forgotten that you're attaching your self-worth and your sense of, oh, I'm so proud of being in business to your website when it really should not matter. What matters most is have you done, what would be a productive time use of your website development time is to do user research, user studies, meaning you get a potential client on a Zoom call, you ask them to share their screen, give them your website link and have them give you real-time reactions about what they like and don't like and what's confusing about your site, really more what's confusing about your site because then you need to make things clear rather than, oh, it's not as good looking as other way, I don't care. I mean, yes, you can maybe tweak it over time but honestly, here's the secret. People are not going to decide whether to work with you because you have a great website. I know so many people truly that have amazing looking websites that have almost no clients. Oh wow, how is that true? And I also know people with crappy websites with a waiting list of clients. They're so busy they can't bother to update their website. Okay, why is that? Your website doesn't bring you clients. Your website is confirmation to people who are already interested in working with you. They're like, let me get the information that I need and it's not too distracting. It's not super ugly, right? I mean, that's obviously there are certain, keep it simple. But anyway, I'm going on a bit longer. I wanted to show you more of the two-drop list, okay? Stop doing tweaks or even relaunches of your website. You probably don't need to do it. Stop working on a future event, program, service, course, or book if it isn't already announced. If it isn't already announced. So I always announce everything first into the future. Hey, I'm going to launch my program. I'm going to launch my course in the next three weeks. I look forward on blah, blah, blah date and then I get working on it. Because if I don't announce it and I start working on it, it'll be working on forever. Research is endless. Improving and working on a product is endless. So it's better to get the audience, the public to expect something from you. You give yourself that kind of deadline, due date. Of course, you don't want to stress yourself out too much. Oh, I'm going to launch it tomorrow, but give yourself three weeks. Three weeks is enough time to create a course. Not to write a book. A book you can say three months, okay? That's enough time to write a book. Especially if you've been writing blog posts regularly, you just put together a book. Three months is definitely enough time. But yeah, so try to announce something before you work on it. Otherwise you'll be spending way too much. Work always fills the time given, allowed for it. So be really, really careful about this. Next thing, I don't read articles, books. I don't read anything unless I'm implementing as I read. Or I'm doing it in my free time, like when I'm having breakfast or lunch or whatever, I'm just kind of relaxing and reading. That's fine, that's called exploratory research. And that's just for my interest and maybe exploring some things in my business, but just nothing serious. But some of you, I think spent too much so-called working time reading articles, books, consuming my courses, including my courses and books. You shouldn't be watching my courses or reading my stuff unless you're implementing or unless it's truly your time off and you're not, but if you're either during your working hours, please don't be reading, please don't be reading or watching anything unless you are at the same time, you watch my course, you pause it, you implement, and then you continue watching, that makes more sense. Or reading an article, you implement right away, that makes more sense, right? Like I said, doing research for a blog post video or even a paid course, and unless there is a type of here, clear time limit and the audience is expecting it, right? Expecting your blog post or video, et cetera. So just be really careful about that kind of stuff, research, consuming information, reading unless there's a clear, clear due date and it's in the short term, right? Getting another, here's another one, getting another certification or training because it might help your marketing or might help you feel more credible. I see so many people like life coaches, for example, getting certified by this, certified by that, so many certifications and it hasn't helped their marketing because their clients don't care about their certifications, their clients care about word of mouth, about experiencing your presence, videos will probably be more helpful than another certification because they don't know what the value is of that certification, they've never heard of it, right? They never heard of it, they've never heard of your school. So now there are certain industries where certification is obviously needed, but in a lot of the coaching, mentoring, healing professions, obviously doctors, medical doctors, et cetera, and other kinds of doctors and healers might need some sort of, because the clients expect it. If the clients are expecting it, it makes a lot of sense. If the clients are not expecting it, be really careful about it. How about updating your social media? I see people updating their social media profiles and things, I'm like, why are you doing that? Why are you spending so much time with that? Nobody cares, really. I have not updated my social media profile about pages for at least five years. Nobody goes there. I don't know if any, have any of you gone to my social media about section? It's probably okay. It's probably very basic, but it's probably not updated. It hasn't been updated for five plus years, right? Reading or commenting in groups, online groups, unless I'm actively getting help. Now what I do is if I'm posting in a group, I try to be a good citizen. I comment on two other posts, two other people's posts after I make a post myself, but I don't just hang out in a group, it's kind of a, it's not a great use of time. So any kind of planning or plotting and preparing, unless it's really directly related to one of my truly productive actions, I do not do because there's always the danger of eternal preparation. So basically the bottom line is to minimize the work that you do, period, but especially the work that you do in isolation. If you're doing work in isolation, you should probably, that is not in contact with people within a day or a week or two. You might want to question it. So I hope this is helpful and I hope this helps you to make better use of your time and therefore grow your business sooner. And I truly wish for you a joyfully, not only a joyfully productive use of your day, but a truly productive use of your day as well. I'm George Cao, authentic business coach, love to discuss how do we spend our life wisely in a way that is matching our purpose and of true service to others. So I hope you found this helpful and I will see you in a future video. Take care.