[GROW-4] My dirty little secret about this very email

I’ll begin with a little secret…

You’re getting this email on Friday, right?

Well, I wrote it on Monday.

In fact, every issue of The Daily you’ve gotten this week was written on Monday. Before lunch.

My Monday morning this week consisted of getting to inbox zero (which means handling every single email I got over the weekend, including everything in Gmail, the support desk, the Lab forum, everything). But, then I launched right into prepping up The Daily for the week and I went for lunch after this very email was written.

The secret here isn’t really a secret at all.

It is called BATCHING. Doing similar, related tasks together in one sitting.

See, what I get down to writing emails like this, I get into a “groove”. I get into the zone. The words begin to flow. I just write. I don’t even proofread it until the day I send it. I just go into production mode. During that time slot, I am a content CREATOR. Not a content editor. Just a creator.

And I bam out 5 emails for the week then…. DONE.

I do the same for blog posts. I blog much less often than I used to (once per week at most). Plus, I use the Redwood Strategy, so sometimes my posts are updates and not new ones. But, in addition to the Redwood Strategy being  freakin’ AWESOME (if I do say so myself), I also do all of my blogging on Monday.

Mondays is usually my “content day”. All the Daily emails, anything for the blog, even emails sent to the “general list” during the week…. are pretty much all prepped up on Monday. I batch my content together.

Does that mean I don’t create any content during the week? Of course not. 🙂 I mean, I also have marketing stuff I do, plus all the work I’m doing inside The Lab for my members. But, training content for the Lab is a different “hat”. Monday is my public content day.

During one of these batches, I stay on task. I don’t go off and do other things. I don’t mix up hats.

On Mondays, I am a content creator. That’s what I do. Facebook is turned off. I close my email inbox (after I do the inbox zero, of course). All the distractions are off. I do into “content creator mode” and I bang it out.

Contrast this to having to get myself into that mode again every single morning. The Daily would be much harder if I walked into each morning having no idea what the hell I was going to say to you. 🙂 Even running series like this gives me that predictability and allows me to be much more efficient (there’s a lesson there which we’ll get to later).

So, back to the main idea of this series…

Getting the most done to move the needle in your business in the least possible time…

Another way to make more time is to use BATCHING. Group like tasks together and bang it all out at the same time.

I do have the luxury of being full-time at this. I don’t have a “day job”. Blog Marketing Academy is my job. But, if I did have a day job and I still had content marketing to do to make my business grow, could I do it?

Well, I say yes.

On Monday, I had a daily email prepped for my email subscribers and had it done in about 3 hours. That’s 5 unique emails. If I wasn’t doing a daily email (and likely you are not), you could easily have less emails than that. But, do you see how you should be able to write all your emails for your list for the week in one night after work? Or before lunch on a weekend?

Sure, you can. 🙂

In fact, we’re about to head into a weekend here. Might be a good time to practice this. Make a list of the content you need to get done for next week. It should be short. 🙂 Then, bang it all out in one sitting over the weekend. And honestly, if you can’t do it, you might want to re-think how much content you’re prepping. Blogging and writing emails really shouldn’t be the bulk of your time. You’ve got a business to work on here. 🙂

…

I truly hope you’ve been enjoying this series so far. Enjoy your weekend and, on Monday, we’ll jump right into actual ACTIONS you can take on your business and blog which are higher leverage than others.

This’ll be fun. 🙂

– David