The Goal Achievement Podcast, hosted by Matt East, is all about helping you find clarity, design a plan, and most importantly achieve your goals.

Learn more about Matt’s productivity coaching at www.Matt-East.com/pricing

Subscribe on Apple Podcast & STITCHER.

Productivity Tips: How To Decide What Project To Work On Next

Podcast transcription

Hey guys, what's up, hope you're all doing really well. 

On today's episode, I'm going to share with you four questions you can ask yourself at any time to help guide you towards what you should focus on next with your business or your work, let's dig in. 

The big question we all face every morning is this: How can we focus more time on the projects, activities, and relationships that are most important and meaningful to us and less time on the stuff that doesn't matter so we can actually move closer to our goals and dreams? 

That is the question, and this podcast is the answer. My name is Matt East and welcome to the Goal Achievement podcast. I'm so glad you're here, now let's dig in. 

Hey guys, what's up? Thank you so much for tuning in. Got a really, really good listener question today. So the question is this: 

Hey, Matt, I've got a question about how to decide on what to work on next? As you know, I'm a freelancer slash entrepreneur, and I've just finished a big client project. And the rest of the stuff I'd like to get done doesn't really have a deadline. How should I decide what to work on next? 

So, again, great question. Thanks a ton for sharing that and sending that in OK, here we go. 

So I'm going to give you 4 questions you can use. And just like, just like the questions that I've given on this podcast over and over to help establish your top priorities for the day, the 11 questions I've shared, if you need those, just you can go on my website and they're all over. But these are more meant to get your, get your blood in, your brain flow on, and it's more of a brainstorm than me just giving you the answer, you know, you still have to think through it. 

So these 4 questions aren't going to give you the single thing that you need to work on next, but they're going to help you act as a guide and get your thinking, and hopefully, after you consider these and you take some time with them, it becomes much more apparent and much more clear as to what to focus on next. 

So I've personally used these four questions, not only since I started my business, but even when I was working for a startup or for a company and I was just an employee, and I still use these questions to help drive my activity each day, so here we go. 

The first question is just... I would ask yourself is as far as what to work on next, I would ask yourself this:

What is the low-hanging fruit that has financial upside that would help you drive your business forward quickly and with minimum effort? 

So is there you know, is there something that you could focus on where you would quickly recoup any financial or time investment that you put in on the project, something like that. So you might be thinking like, hey, man, what's an example of that? 

An example of that for me and my current business is creating new ads, so if I create a new ad, if I create like a new Google ad to drive traffic to my website, that's something that takes not too much time, and there's pretty good financial upside on it for me. If that ad is functional and it works really well, if it resonates with my target market, I can benefit very quickly financially by creating a new ad that is that's a solid add. 

Another example of that would be like revamping a sales landing page or something like that, so that's something that doesn't take a lot of time, but it can have a big financial upside for me, so I would say that. 

So the first question is just, I'll repeat it. What is the low-hanging fruit with financial upside that would help drive your business forward quickly with minimum effort? 

That's a great starting point if you're not sure about what to work on next because if you get that going and you recoup some money quickly and you can, it helps drive additional business. It's just a great place to start for an entrepreneur or for a freelancer, so that's the first question. 

The second one is: 

What tasks have time parameters with people waiting on you? 

So or, is there stuff that you're working on where someone's waiting on you to complete something or someone's waiting on you for the green light or someone's waiting on you in any way? 

So is there a task that you need to do where people are waiting on you? 

If someone's waiting on you, it's a great thing to, to focus on, so maybe this an example of this would be like if you're collaborating on something with someone else or, and they need something from you before they can move on or, you know, something like this for me would be, you know, clients might be waiting on a response for me, and it's not urgent, it's just they're waiting to hear back from me, and that's a good, that's a good starting point for knowing that, hey, I need to do this today and get this knocked out. 

The third question is: 

What are long-term projects that are important to complete but not urgent? However, they still need your focus. 

So something like this for me would be, you know, rebranding my website, no one out there is waiting on me to rebrand my website, they don't know it's coming or they don't know that I'm planning to do that. But it's important to me because, for some reason, I think it's going to do something positive, so that's a good example that. 

Again that question is what are long-term projects that are important to complete for you, but not urgent? You know, and they still need your focus, so the rebranding of a website would fall into that, there's a million things that could fall into that, but it's still important, it's just something that nobody out there is waiting on you to complete. 

The fourth question is: 

What could you do that would make everything else significantly easier for you, and you would benefit from it in like all aspects of your business and life?. 

So that's, that's my favorite one here, so is there something you could do that wouldn't make everything else significantly easier for you and you'd benefit, you know, and you'd benefit, all aspects, you'd benefit in all aspects of your life and business. 

So an example not for me is, you know, my client acquisition became so much easier when I started a podcast and when I wrote a book, so by writing that book it became so much easier to sell my coaching and to acquire new clients. 

So is there something out there that you could do that would make everything else much easier in your life? 

And if there, if there is, that's something that you could focus on right now since, since there is nothing urgent or anything with a deadline, as you put it, that you'd want to focus on. 

So the 4 questions I'm repeating one time:

• Is there any low-hanging fruit with financial upside that would help drive your business forward quickly and with minimum effort? That's something you could focus on. 

• Number 2, are there any tasks that have time parameters with people waiting on you or just some urgent tasks that you need to complete? If so, that's a good place you might want to start. 

• Question number 3 is what are long-term projects that are important to complete but not urgent? however, you still want to focus on them. 

• And number 4 is what could you do today that would make everything else significantly easier, easier for you down the road? 

So those are four questions just to get your thinking, get you thinking about what you might want to focus on, and it's probably a combination of... of... of multiple things. So those are the questions that I would, I would suggest you use and then, you know, as far as how to actually prioritize stuff, you can access my book for free and that will guide you through exactly how to plan out your time and how to block time on your schedule to actually complete the task that you come up with that you want to focus on next. 

So that's it, guys, that's the answer to my question, keep sending in questions this, I was pumped to see this come in and I answered it right away. So hopefully this helps, and if you have any specific questions that you want answered, feel free to send those in, I'd love to, I'll answer them right away. 

And that's it guys, make it a great week. Are you doing your top three? Are you focused or are you heading into each day with clarity and with focus and executing at your highest level possible? I hope so. 

That's it, let me know if you guys need anything, would love to hear from you bye-bye. 

Hey, everyone, it's Matt again and I have two special offers for you:

First, did you know you can actually download my best-selling book, The Purposeful Planning Method: How to Plan Your Day, Beat Procrastination and Regain Control of Your Time for free from my website right now? That's at Matt-East.com, you just Google Matt East Productivity and it will pull right up, and you can download the digital book or the audiobook, either one for free right now. 

I can't promise this offer will last forever, so snag a copy if you want it. This is the exact same book that costs I don't know what it is like 18 bucks on Amazon and Audible so go get it while you can, don't come whining to me if you miss this deal and you didn't download it. 

So I'm telling you, if you want it for free, go get it. 

Don't wait and take action, knock it out. It's again, it's Matt-East.com, is my website. So, or just Google Matt East, Google productivity coach, I think I come right up first. 

So second thing, I want to invite you to work with me, I'm offering my digital productivity coaching right now for 29 dollars and 99 cents a month. That's 70 percent off the regular price, so it's usually 25 bucks a week or 100 bucks a month, so jump on this opportunity. 

It's the only coaching that I have available right now, my... I have two VIP level coaching where I actually meet with people over the phone either once a week, or once every other week, and those are sold out. So this is the only way you can work one on one with me right now, and I've decided to price it so that anyone that basically wants this could do it. 

It's 29.99 a month, and it's it's perfect if you're looking to transform your productivity and if you're listening to this podcast, you're probably trying to do that. So this coaching works, it's awesome, and man, for 29 bucks like the ROI on this is incredible, or if you're a solopreneur like a lot of my clients, if you're an entrepreneur or if you're just a professional looking for an edge, I mean the ROI on this is incredible because you're not investing much. 

Some of these coaches cost a couple grand. I mean, I have a package that costs 500 dollars a month, so this is 29 dollars a month. It's, you can't beat it, it's less than a dollar a day, it's literally less than a buck a day. 

So, and we will communicate every single day in an app, it's awesome, it works. I've been doing this for a few years now, I know what I'm doing, and I can help you, so it's, it's amazing, you would love it if you try it, you will love it. 

And it's 100 percent confidential, I always like to mention that. 

So there is no downside to giving it a shot, so try it, I bet you'll love it, and if you don't just cancel no big deal relax, it's no... there's like literally no downside to this, so give it a shot, you deserve it. 

You owe it to yourself to have some accountability, have somebody that cares. 

That's why I use a writing coach, I like having somebody that I pay to care about when I'm working on, so it's great, I highly recommend it and I think you guys would love it, and that's it. 

I hope you guys loved this episode and we'll chat again soon bye-bye.