Yesterday we discussed why getting your wedding published is important.  Today I want to discuss a problem that I know a lot of us have.

You wake up ready to get to work on some important aspect of your business.  For this example, let’s say that important task is that you are going to be submitting weddings for publication.

You gather your information and sit down at your desk to get started, but then you see the notification light blinking on your smart phone.  You reach for it and flip on over to your emails.  You have an email from a client with an issue that needs to be addressed.  Alarm bells start going off in your head because they are upset about something.  You frantically start researching the issue so that you can email them back with a solution ASAP.

After you email them back, you are still a bit upset so you cruise on over to your facebook page for some positive reinforcement.  You reply back to some comments from fans.

The phone rings and you answer.  It is a potential client who wants to learn more about booking you for a session.  Sweet!  You go over your process and policies with the potential client and answer their questions.  They aren’t ready to commit right now, so you set a date for follow up.

Next thing you know it’s 4:30pm and your day is wrapping up.

You did not make any progress on your important task for the day.  The problem is not that the tasks that you were working on were not worthwhile, dealing with customer service and inquiries is how you grow and maintain your business.  The problem comes in when you realize that little urgencies or “interruptions” are pretty much guarenteed to crop up everyday for the rest of your life.  If you do not take steps to manage the urgencies in your everyday activities they can easily derail your long term goals.

It starts out with a day like I described above and you tell yourself that you will just push your important task to tomorrow.  Then tomorrow something else “urgent” comes up, and the next day….Next thing you know a month has passed and you still have not had time to work on submitting your weddings for publication.

This is exactly why having a system to incorporate submission prep into your everyday workflow is so important.  Having a system in place gives you structure and makes it harder to put off submissions until tomorrow when something urgent pops up in your day because you are tackling little chunks each day as opposed to trying to accomplish the project all at once.

Want to learn more about urgent vs important tasks?  Check out this article on Mind Tools.

Want to learn a system to help incorporate submission prep into your workflow?  Enter your email here.

Questions?  Suggestions?  Shoot me an email at molliet@gmail.com.