Quotes From A Business Woman: Action

Active

[ak-tiv]  

adjective

1.

engaged in action; characterized by energetic work, participation, etc.; busy: an active life.

2.

being in a state of existence, progress, or motion: active hostilities.

3.

involving physical effort and action: active sports.

4.

having the power of quick motion; nimble: active as a gazelle.

5.

characterized by action, motion, volume, use, participation, etc.: an active market in wheat; an activelist of subscribers.

Action

[ak-shuhn] 

noun

1.

the process or state of acting or of being active: The machine is not in action now.

2.

something done or performed; act; deed.

3.

an act that one consciously wills and that may be characterized by physical or mental activity: acrisis that demands action instead of debate; hoping for constructive action by the landlord.

4.

actions, habitual or usual acts; conduct: He is responsible for his actions.

5.

energetic activity: a man of action.

I want to highlight IPA's (Income Producing Activites).  These little actions are things you do that are steps to completing a project that will produce some form of monetary gain.  Check out this article I read below:

What Counts As Income Producing Activities

(http://smallbizsurvival.com/2010/12/what-counts-as-income-producing.html)

Income Producing Activities are those actions that move you towards your business and income goals. So why don’t we spend our time working on exactly those things?

We Get Distracted

Well, there are as many reasons as there are minutes in the day to get distracted. And, well, we have so many options. What shall I work on this second? Shall I jump into a chat on Twitter? Should I write a blog post? Or should I finish that client item first? Or catch up on my accounting? Or ….

What we should do is focus: carve one stroke at a time.

Focus on your Income Producing Activities. Sounds easy. What are those IPA’s? Well, unfortunately, we each have our own, because we have our own goals.

Start With Your Goals

It starts with your goals. If you’re smart enough to figure out what you are trying to accomplish this year, this quarter or this month, you can figure out what you need to do regularly to get there.

IPA Examples: 

What might be an IPA for a freelancer?

• Working on a client project 

• Signing a new client

• Sending out a guest post to another site

• Blogging on your own site

• Answering Q&A on social networks like LinkedIn

Customize these for your own business. Use the self promotion actions that work for you. You can customize it further by assigning a high point value to billable work, and a low point value to stuff you like to do anyway. Client work = 10, Blogging on your own site = 5, for example. (Tweeting = 0 is probably a good rule for Twitter-addicts, like me.)

Apply Daily: 

Now that you a list of potential IPA’s, the key is to use them. Give yourself a daily goal:

• A certain number of activities per day, or 

• A total point value per day, if you’ve assigned points. 

Review and Adjust

It will take some time to make this fit your work style and your goals. Adjust the actions, the daily target, the points values. Find a level that challenges you to improve, but rewards you for doing what you know you should.

Celebrate your successes. Part of what makes this work is the reward you feel when you take action on your goals.