I had a friend once who swore by a checklist for his day. He kept a planner, and at the beginning of each day he would write down his goals for that day. He would write the top priority goals first followed by the ones he would do if he had time for them. For example, he might have the priority goal of starting work on some custom postcards and a secondary goal on looking into postcard printing, or maybe working on a different type of advertisement.



This sounds like a perfectly fine system, but what started to happen was he found himself unable to complete a primary goal one day, and then a secondary goal started to become more and more important. Suddenly it started to become a primary one, forcing him to split his attention between multiple things.

Just writing down his list at the beginning of the day started to take longer and longer because he kept track of every little thing he had to do, even going so far as to write down when he wanted to eat or go shopping for something.

He soon was so bogged down by just managing all of his goals he wasn't getting nearly as much done, and he had trouble figuring out what needed the most attention and what could wait.

Marketing naturally forces you to focus on multiple things at a time. Especially for a small business owner you might very well be designing those custom postcards while also maintaining your mailing list and setting up who is going to do your printing among other details.

Goals might very well be a needed way of handling things, but how many goals are you going to focus on at once? I find it much easier to set a single top priority goal and ignore all else if I can until I get it done. Once I'm done I move onto my next goal. I give each my undivided attention until I'm done, ensuring I get done faster and I do the best job possible.

I'm not saying my system is the best one, but I have seen many people who let too many goals drag them down and quite literally stop them from accomplishing what they were trying to.

If you let yourself get too caught up in too many things you won't even end up getting your marketing done on time, and you might reduce your presence in the marketplace because of it. That's the worst-case scenario. Find a way to ensure that never happens to you.