Do you record your progress?

No.

No.

It's not "winging it" just because you're not wasting your time taking unnecessary notes.

This has always done the job for me. I'm not "average" by any means.

I figured out "what works" a long time ago. If I were to keep track of how much I've worked over the course of my career, I would say, "Too much." Not from lack of focus or disorganization. Building online is a lot of fun and I think I might be addicted. But, I don't need any help keeping things straight.

I'm working on many new projects this year, and although I'm not taking technical notes per se, I am writing weekly updates on how the projects are developing. When a project is complete, I will decide if I will publish the journal in the form of a blog, or maybe even a course.

I enjoy reading other people's stories on their successes or tough lessons learned. I'm hoping my notes, the do's and do not's, the steps I took to get success (or not) will be able to help others some day.

Taking notes is not always about helping yourself.

The only form of record keeping that i do is with my calendar. I wake up and look at my calendar on the wall to see what's on my agenda today. I find this to be very helpful instead of procrastinating and slacking around all day.

Just sit down for one whole day and plan out your entire month's advertising schedule. This alone will save you time and help you to be more productive in your business.

Testing and tracking of traffic campaigns are important so that our time and money can be spent at the right place for conversion.

This depends a lot on what kind of work you are doing and what you might accomplish by keeping records.

If you are selling your time as a service provider, and you are trying to determine how long certain tasks are taking, then good records could help you to determine how much you need to charge per hour.

Just be careful not to get caught in the "record keeping trap" where you are wasting a lot of valuable time keeping records when you could be out earning more money.

No doubt the Abraham quote is on point, but make sure you are asking yourself if you are measuring the right things.

I'm using lots of documents.we are not doing any kind of tasks without documentation.Such as i'm using dairy for note ,use planner for reminder ,mange CRM for followup task , use project management tools for followup milestone.

No, I really don't. The only thing I do is plan my schedule for next 1 week using a calendar to see what I will be doing today and for next 1 week,

Maybe "winging it" wasn't the best term. If you've got a plan, and you're sticking to that plan, then maybe who cares what you did and how long it took.

But I don't agree that taking notes and tracking how long things actually take is an unnecessary waste of time. Not for me at least.

I'll give you some examples.

A while back I reached a stage in my project where I was ready to hire a developer. But before I could begin my search, I wanted to get an idea of how long it might take an experienced developer to build my app, or at the very least, turn out an MVP that provided the barest of functions.

So I posted in reddit, in the /androiddev sub, "How long will it take?", asking how long to create one small, specific feature. A simple timer with a pause button and a second timer that records how long the timer remains paused.

The replies I received on how long to code this ranged from 8-24 hours or more (one guy said, "3 weeks, at 10-15 hrs per. week").

Then a guy pm'd me with this.

He created exactly what I described in about 3 hours. He did it because he was curious himself how long it would take him.

This was information I could use.

This timer was one of about 28 features I wanted created. And this wasn't one of the more complex features.

At the guesstimate of around 16 hours for this one feature, I could further project it would take around 6-8 months to build what I wanted. Not something I'd have the ability to outsource.

But with proof that this basic feature could be done in half a day, that gave me the courage, and my investor the confidence, to proceed with hiring a developer. And my app was developed on target with what estimates based on real data suggested - 2 1/2 months.

Without the documented proof of what was achievable, I would have likely proceeded with my Plan B, which was to learn to code and build the app myself. This too I guesstimated would take around 6-9 months for me to complete. But it wouldn't cost me thousands of dollars, and I'd also get a new skill under my belt.

But thankfully, I went the 2 month route and today I'm talking about marketing and getting users instead of struggling to learn a new computer language.

And now that I have much of the process I went through recorded, should I go through this process again and develop another app (which I hope to do), I can look back at other decisions I've made and see if it makes sense to try something different next time around.

For example, I now know that having the developer on-board and available to communicate with BEFORE hiring a designer, can save about 8 hours of re-design time required to have the assets converted to the developer's required specs.

Or that making the early decision to have the user data stored on the device instead of cloud-based (on the developer's recommendation), will ultimately cost an additional 22 hours (on top of the original estimated time) to convert the db to cloud so I wouldn't have to delete the data my first users have already entered.

Adjusting just these two decisions next time around can potentially save me 30 hours of outsourced time (which most definitely equals money).

Another example of how this info is useful to me...

On Feb. 21st., I uploaded the final update for my app, where users, including myself, could now safely save their data.

The same night I set out for my next goal, "Get 10 Reviews in the Play Store."

I decided I would do this by posting in WF, reddit and a couple other forms I participate in. I gave myself an estimate of 2 weeks to complete this task of getting 100 people to download and check out my app, which I expected could give me the reviews I need (How hard can it be? It's a free and very useful app.)

Its now two weeks later and I have 18 users signed up, 8 of which have actually entered any data.

Apparently it's a lot harder than I thought. I chalked this up to me being a terrible copywriter.

At 2 weeks, I haven't met 20% of my expectations, and I'm sitting at zero reviews. Clearly this forum-posting thing isn't working and maybe it's time to switch gears. Perhaps I come up with some more money and hire a copywriter to help me do some paid advertising.

This is what I was seriously considering yesterday.

Then I opened my app, where I've been recording my efforts since I've uploaded the latest revision two weeks ago...




The stats don't lie.

4 1/2 hours I've worked.

If I didn't have this number written down, and you asked me to guess how much time I've spent over the last couple weeks - I would have easily said twice that number. Maybe 3x. It certainly feels like I've put it a lot more time. I'm thinking about this project constantly. Always.

I spend lots and lots and lots of time at my computer or on my phone reading posts, looking for places I can add to the conversation, thinking about threads I can start and try to gain some traction, looking for new places or ways to promote my app. Thinking... learning... collecting new ideas.

But I only press start on my timer when I'm actually writing. Not reading, not thinking. I only record working.

Do you think I'm working enough to see results?

F*** No. I shouldn't be thinking about changing strategies. I need to get my ass into gear and put in some real effort. Only then I should decide if it makes sense to keep trying or try something new.

Now, from where would I get this much-needed kick in the ass, if not from the information I've recorded?

I don't have a coach or a mentor, and I have a very difficult time kicking myself in the ass. My ass likes to stuff itself into the couch in front of the TV.

I need help fighting procrastination - and this data helps. A lot.

So, no, I don't agree recording my progress is an unnecessary waste of time.

In fact, considering the time it takes me to record this data each time I work is less than a minute, it would seem to me to be a terrible waste to not collect this information.

Effort can be measured. And it can be improved. If recording that effort is effortless, then why wouldn't I?

Personally, I don't record my progress, but i genuinely thinking that I should record as it would improve my progress and work quality. You see, to record the progress is another task to do with other tasks, this is why many of us don't record.

It's just my thoughts.

I use a script that shows me the success of my email campaigns like sign-up ratio and other cool nitty gritty things.

Download momentum extension for chrome and down you can record your task properly when ever you launch chrome for work

as much as the number of "No's" surprise me.. it kinda really doesn't surprise me at all.

I think for every marketer starting out.. the plan is to stick out the process and grow your business. with that idea in mind... as you get into this you learn there is kinda an order to things in how they are done and when they are done in relation to other activities.

As you start the path of "creating" you should really be taking some type of notes, what you did and when you did it. and then later note that next time you should do this then that. And the reason being.. I think everyone has the intentions of scaling their efforts.

Its hard to scale if there is not a bare minimum of a documented path. Its hard to tell someone what to do and how to do it, if you are trying to remember what it was that worked and what didn't. its hard to develop a working timeline of progress if you keep making the same minor mistakes over and over.

take 10 minutes a week once a week and write out what needs to be done for the week. take an additional 2 minutes a day to write down what it is you did each day, and how doing this or that would have made the process easier. - then at the end of the month look for when maybe you did things twice three times four times to try and understand where that actually needs to fit in.

At the end of your first project you can then create some amount of a timeline and order of the tasks needed to create what ever it is you are doing.

Knowledge is a wonderful thing. Knowledge is earned by doing. Its in the writing, that you can pass YOUR knowledge to others.. and often times yourself. The simple act of writing down your steps can have benefits far beyond that first project - it can last a life time.

Writing process steps down is the #1 thing businesses of any size do not do.

I have an entire business centered around process documentation. It uncovers the most interesting things. Not just wasted time: theft...that things are not done the way someone says they are...quality problems...interpersonal relationship issues (Mary won't go into Fred's office because she's scared of him--so she hands Mark the report, and Mark gets it to Fred three days later. Problem is, Fred needs that info to make supply chain decisions, and so the production throughput for the factory is held up by those three days. But Mary, she'll tell ya she hands Fred the report, and she means it. This stuff is happening everywhere, all the time.)

Big companies are just as guilty. I had a guest on my podcast who worked for a major US railway. A guy in their accounting department was getting customers to make payments out to his own bank account instead of the railway's for sales of insurance claim goods (the train derailed; the railway pays the customer through self-insurance and now owns the goods; they need to sell those goods to recover some of the value; this guy took payments to his own account and suddenly had several new cars as he'd stolen several hundred thousand dollars over 2-3 years. Big company...they must have oversight processes, right? Wrong.)

For solopreneurs, they may think they don't need to ("Why bother? It's just me.") But the upside in doing so is, if you ever have to do the thing again, you don't have to start from scratch.

And it's much faster to go through something when you have the roadmap written down and can simply tick off task lists.

Plus you can identify trouble spots, and improve upon them: minimize time taken, overcome obstacles more easily, etc.

But don't take my word for it. I only work with companies at $500K+ ARR. Let's look at an example nowhere near the internet marketing world.

Let's look at this couple who have an RV channel:



Watch the whole thing. It'll be worth your while. If you have to cut it short, start around the 17:00 mark.


What do they say? I'm not meaning the tires or the technical things.

What are the things they're talking about when it comes to how they park the vehicle? What do they do after they've completed a trip (that's "completed a project," to you)?

Surprise!


If what you're doing is "relying on memory" to do your tasks, I guarantee:

- you could be doing them much faster and more effectively

- you're wasting a lot, and I mean A LOT, of time and resources on "figuring it out" every time

- your weekly schedule (ha! as if you have one of those) is so full of inefficiencies and dark alleys for you to get metaphorically mugged in...your pace of operations is probably really slow, despite what you may believe

- your vision of what is "normal" or "possible" is likely really off-kilter: really low level.

Frustrating to hear I know. But I spent the first 5 years of running my own business mostly this way--I did surrender my task order to my google calendar, that was the one good thing I did. And after I started looking at how I did what I did, I discovered so many blocks, delays, wastes of resources...

...and I'm TRAINED in process improvement as a profession!

So don't shrug this stuff off as "Oh, I don't need that." Your business would be very different, much more effective, if you did adopt it.

Yes for past projects that I upscale and No for what is ingrained in my memory.

Over the years the "basic process or basic roadmap" that I use is ingrained in my mind. I do keep and maintain the basics in the form of a flowchart that I open and glance at it to get started. Then as I am working on a new project I create a new flowchart that entails the specifics for the project. This way I do not miss any of the basics and the end product is complete and always available.

For example, what I call "creating the basic foundation and infrastructure for a beginner's online business" is a relatively short process that when followed step-by-step will provide an online platform to start and launch almost any type of online business model.

The "online business model" itself is often repetitive in nature. There are many times the model needs changed or upscaled. All easily done as long as "the basic foundation and infrastructure for a beginner's online business" is already in place.

Another example. I do "the basic foundation and infrastructure for a beginner's online business" as a paid service. I also, make it mandatory that my clients follow-me as I walk them through the process. The end result is a client that is efficient and understands what their business limitations are (if any) and how to manually upscale their business as well as deploy different business models when warranted.

Plus, by making sure my "flowchart" is available to my clients it does not mean a steep learning curve, FAQ, etc. is involved. Openly sharing the information also encourages others to share their information wherein we can help each other when necessary.

Its just good business in my book.

This is something I've been working on more and more over this year to begin implementing in my own business. Everyday I wake up and I never really have a plan and what tends to happen most of the time is I end the day never finishing anything.

I've found that the more I track things the more control I have over where I spend my time and what I spend my time doing. When you measure you get a better view of what you are doing and where you are going.

I'm not looking for an argument or a debate. As you uncovered, I'm here trying to sell something.

I thought this room might relate. Maybe even try to help me out.

After all, what I built, I built with the intention of helping out a lot of the people in this room.

As far as all the failings and stuff, like being too lazy to send some emails, or that I take too long on my invoicing...

I don't really give a shit about that stuff. It's my job, and I'm not looking to keep working that job. But I'll do it, and do it adequately, until I can do something else.

What I record, what I track and what I started this thread about, is the ONLY project currently in my life that I truly care about. The one with a goal at the end. The one I'm thinking about while I'm at that other job of mine. The one I hope will replace that job of mine. The one project that I care to record and review so I can get better.

It's working. I thought I'd share.