Do you ever find yourself in the position where you’ve got loads of things on the go but struggle to finish any of them?

I know I do!

What with all the distractions around us – yes I’m talking mobile phone in particular – it’s easy to start a project, get distracted, go on to something else, get distracted again and then start yet another project, only to find you never get round to completing any of them!

This kind of productivity breakdown seems to be endemic in our modern lives but over the years I’ve noticed it’s especially significant for budding entrepreneurs starting out in the online world of internet marketing!

But I’ve got a fix… a new way of looking at it!

Although this story is quite old (so apologies if you’ve heard it before), it’s worth revisiting from time to time because it brings home how one little change in your behaviour can enable you to improve your productivity massively, so not only can you achieve much more in your every day life, but also on your internet marketing journey.

A tale of ‘getting it done’!

Imagine there are two ships docked at a quay and there are 20 dockers ready to unload them. It takes 10 men, 10 days to unload each ship before it can get underway again.

Should the dock manager split the 20 men and use 10 on each boat?

Actually no!

If he did, neither ship would be ready to set sail for 10 days.

However, if he was to use all 20 men on the first ship, it should be unloaded and ready to sail in 5 days because of double the manpower.

He could then use all 20 men on the second ship and that should then be ready to set sail in a further 5 days. This would be equivalent to no worse than this second ship being at the docks for the original 10 days!

You can see that the productivity is much improved. The first ship at least, would be sailing again after 5 days and the second would be no worse off anyway.

Now, let’s put this in the context of creating information products for your business

Imagine you have an idea for creating two eBooks that could be sold for say $49 each.

You think about it and decide it’ll take you two weeks to finish them both and settle down to start writing.

Halfway through the first week, you find you’ve got the first half of the first eBook done and because you’re making good progress, you decide to start on the second one with the intention of hopefully getting the first half of that one finished as well by the end of the first week.

It’s all looking good so the following week you crack on and about 3 or 4 days later you’ve written the second half of the first eBook, which is now for all intents and purposes complete.

In theory, you could launch it now and start earning the first profits from it while you’re finishing the second half of the second eBook in the second half of the second week (a bit of a mouthful I know – sorry about that)!!

At this point you could argue this is great, you’ve managed to finish the first eBook ahead of time and the second one is on schedule.

But is this the best use of your time?

Well, no because if you’d used the whole of the first week to finish both the first and second half of the first eBook, you could have put that one out at the end of the first week (not halfway through the second week) and then got the whole of the second one done in the second week.

This way, you could have been profiting from the first one even earlier and the second one would still be finished in the allotted time. In other words, no worse off for eBook number 2!

Of course, this analogy is extremely simplified but the takeout from it is the importance of finishing one project before going on to the next.

Seriously, by flitting between jobs before they’re finished, you’re in very real danger of not getting anything done… and that’s when you could end up like so many others who lose confidence and just give up!

In summary

If you start something, always carry it through until completion before you take on anything else.

Sometimes that’s easier said than done especially if boredom creeps in, but if you practise doing this, you’ll be surprised at how much more you can achieve.

Think about it like this, from now on, if you carry on with your usual habits of starting something else when you’re half way through a project, that first project could very well end up sat at the quay for an awfully long time… trust me, I’ve learned this from experience!