The Art of Getting Over “I’m Stuck” and Getting Things Done

by Brendan Wenzel

in Entreprenuer Mindset,Time Management Tips

Give me a minute…… Trying to think about all the times that I have told myself “I’m stuck” and never finished a project. What I want to write a little about today is ways that I have learned to not say “I’m stuck“, but “I’M FINISHED!“.

Note: Some of this I am still learning and writing it down helps me retain the information. If you have more to add about anything, please do! I will take good and valid additions to this article and amend the article, as needed, with full credit given to the author with a do-follow link to your site.

Only 1 Person

You are only one person no matter how hard you try. Realizing and accepting that I couldn’t do everything was such a pivotal point in my life. Before realizing this, I would attempt to do every facet of the business and inevitably each business would fail. Why?

Simple! It is impossible for one person to run a business by themselves. If it is just you running everything, you don’t have a business. You have self employment.

You must be able to delegate tasks and make your system scalable. What I mean by this is that you need to be able outsource menial tasks that do nothing, but waste your time while making it possible to work less and getting more done. This is the path towards having a sustainable business that can grow without overwhelming you.

Project Management Software – Must Have

I would highly recommend is begin to use project management software to organize yourself and your team. There are distractions flying at us from everywhere at all times. Seems that we are always out of time. Projects just get “lost” in the confusion. Why is this happening?

Now with DeskAway.com, I can list all my projects with the ability to assign tasks to team members that I have designated on my account. It’s awesome software that you can try for no cost here.

Cutting Out Distractions

Special thanks to Mike Stenger for adding how important this it to getting things done.

Distractions are everywhere! Especially for someone like me that does the majority of my work online. Every link can lead to an hour long distraction if it’s clicked. And this is every second of my day.

Mike brought a great point on the importance of turning things off or on Busy. In the book ‘The 4 Hour Work Week’, Tim Ferriss points out that every time you are distracted it takes an average of 20 minutes to get back in the groove that you were in.

Most things that get sent to you or demanded of you throughout the day are NOT emergencies and need to be as such. Focus your most concentration on the highest income activity and cut out all the secondary distractions. That means turning Skype to Busy, closing Outlook (should only check twice a day anyway), closing social media tabs and applications and turning the phone on silent.

Conclusion

The main thing that has helped me the most is being organized. Organization has always been tough for me, but I have experienced that the more I put into being organized the results come back 10 fold.

Like I said before, I’m still learning to become unstuck and would love to hear other ideas on this subject. Let’s start a conversation. If you’re response is going to be long, write a blog post about it and link to this article. Then let us know about it below in the comment section.

{ 9 comments… read them below or add one }

1 Chris Hughes January 31, 2010 at 3:40 pm

great resource here Brendan. I too find that organizing projects is a difficult task for me and I'll be giving this a try to see how it helps out with my business. I've found that writing a “to-do list” every night before going to bed planning my next day has helped me with accomplishing goals… I can carry it around in my pocket to constantly remind me of what I need to do. That might be of help?

Thanks again

Reply

2 Mike Stenger January 31, 2010 at 3:41 pm

Great post Brendan! What I find to help when you REALLY need to get something done and/or are in the middle of a project, is cut out all other distractions. Your Twitter will be fine, your Skype or AIM contacts can live without you for a little bit, just shut them down for a little while.

Watch your productivity go up because 1) You have no excuse to keep you from getting things done and 2) When you cut out all other possible areas of getting sidetracked with something else, your brain has no choice but to come up with something. After a while of putting yourself in that situation, it will then become a habit to create from that place of no or very little distraction.

Reply

3 Brendan Wenzel January 31, 2010 at 6:51 pm

Thanks for adding so much value to my post with this great comment. Have added Cutting Distractions as another thing to do and credited you for it. Thanks man!

Reply

4 Mike Stenger January 31, 2010 at 8:00 pm

Wow, thanks dude! Take it easy :-)

Reply

5 Chris Hughes January 31, 2010 at 8:39 pm

I've always had problems with closing skype/twitter/facebook to actually do work and i'd struggle with getting things done because of always responding/talking with people…I guess I should have realized how I was wasting my work time haha. I'll definitely need to cut my distractions more, thanks dude.

Reply

6 Mike Stenger January 31, 2010 at 8:41 pm

RT @BrendanWenzel Getting Over "I'm Stuck" http://is.gd/7qP4q

Reply

7 DeskAway February 1, 2010 at 3:09 am

Great to see how DeskAway has been helping you out :) Appreciate your mention!

Reply

8 Brendan Wenzel February 1, 2010 at 3:24 am

It's funny that as I read this, I'm setting up projects in DeskAway.com for my new assistants. You guys deserve the mention! Fantastic software.

Reply

9 T_R_A_V_I_S February 2, 2010 at 5:38 pm

RT @BrendanWenzel: The Art of Getting Over “I’m Stuck” and Getting Things Done http://ow.ly/1341L – thanks for posting Brendan!!

Reply

Leave a Comment

{ 1 trackback }