How to Beat Procrastination at Work

Everyone procrastinates sometimes, but creative people seem more prone to it than others. especially writers. Not just novelists and poets, but also copywriters and journalists.

It’s a universal flaw in human psychology, though. Graphic designers, musicians, and even plumbers sometimes succumb to it.

The good news is that it’s surprisingly easy to beat.

Just do it. The muse is a myth. If you sit around and wait for inspiration to strike, you’ll hardly ever get anything done.

Motivation comes after you start. As psychologist David Burns wrote in his landmark book, Feeling Good, “You have to prime the pump. Then you will begin to get motivated, and the fluids will flow spontaneously.”

First comes action. Then comes motivation, followed by more action.

All working professionals know this, but many of us are prone to forgetting and have to be reminded over and over again. Consider this your weekly reminder.

If all you need to do is work for five minutes, just sit down and work for five minutes.

Science-fiction writer Kevin J. Anderson forces himself to write 50 words a day and no more. Hardly a tall order. This paragraph alone includes more than 50 words, so you can see at a glace how little that actually is. If he’d rather do something else for the rest of the day when he reaches the minimum, he gives himself permission to call it a day without guilt.

If he wrote only 50 words a day, he wouldn’t get very much done. But he rarely writes only 50. Once he gets started, he’s almost always motivated to keep going.

It sounds like a lazy person’s work ethic, but paradoxically his method has made him one of the most prolific writers in the world with more than 120 published books. Because unlike most writers, he produces something every day without exception.

Don’t eat the elephant. Imagine if someone delivered an elephant to your house and ordered you to eat the whole thing. You might feel disgusted. You’d certainly feel overwhelmed. Never mind taking out a knife and a fork, you’d probably rather do anything but even think about eating that elephant.

If someone were to cut that elephant into half-pound steaks, however, and order you to eat just one per day, it wouldn’t be so bad. You might even feel terrific. Hey, a freezer full of steaks!

So when you’re facing a large project that will last days, weeks, or even months, thinking of it as an elephant you have to eat is a guaranteed motivation killer. You can’t eat an elephant. A single steak, though, that’s easy. Possibly even delicious.

Limit yourself. Don’t just cut that elephant into steaks to make it feel less overwhelming. Actually limit yourself to eating just one per day and no more. Then cut it into pieces and limit yourself again to small chunks throughout the day.

Here’s how it works. Force yourself to take a break after an hour. If you’re feeling particularly overwhelmed, force yourself to take a break after just thirty minutes or even twenty. If you’re sick, require yourself to take a break after ten. Get up and go for a walk, make a cup of coffee, do a crossword puzzle, or anything else you enjoy after your time is up even if you aren’t finished working yet.

If you force yourself to take breaks, your productivity will actually go up, partly because your mind has a chance to rest, but also because it’s easier to get started when you know the break is coming ahead of time.

Avoid should statements. If you’re procrastinating and beating up on yourself, don’t tell yourself you should get to work. That word implies consequences from your boss, your clients, your editors, or whoever else.

Use carrots rather than sticks. Do it for yourself. Tell yourself that you’ll feel better after you start. All those feelings of frustration and angst will vanish just minutes after you start. On some level you know this is true no matter how much you’d rather go to the mall or watch Leave it to Beaver. Wouldn’t you rather feel good about yourself sooner rather than later?

For Tech Marketing, the West is Best

Forbes recently conducted a survey of the top US cities for marketing jobs. As expected, New York and San Francisco topped the list, but the two cities are a continent apart in more ways than one.

New York City is America’s media and publishing capital, as well as its largest city, so it makes sense that many of the biggest advertising and marketing agencies locate their headquarters there. The high tech sector, however, is based overwhelmingly on the West Coast, and most tech firms don’t bother with the big Madison Avenue agencies.

The San Francisco Bay Area is the tech marketing capital of America, but Seattle comes in a close second, and there almost as many high tech and marketing jobs available per capita in Portland.

Until late in the 20th century, Portland and Seattle were both gritty resource towns. With the relative decline of industries like logging and mining, the two cities had little choice but to reinvent themselves if they wanted to prosper. With the rise of Silicon Valley a few hundred miles to the south, becoming the industry’s adjust cities made perfect sense.

Both high technology and marketing suit us out here. The West is still the “America” of America, and the tech industry has been on the bleeding edge of innovation and economic dynamism since its inception. It naturally attracts the descendents of the risk-taking pioneers who settled the West following Lewis and Clark’s expedition.

Advertising and marketing, meanwhile, have always attracted creative people, and the West Coast—like New York City—pulls them in like a gravity well.

We at reddbug are based almost entirely in the West—in Las Vegas, Utah, Texas, and in all three states on the West Coast. Most of us wouldn’t dream of living or working anywhere else.

Black Hat Tactics Are Guaranteed to Backfire

Like most dishonest business practices, black hat marketing tactics may yield returns in the short term, but they’re guaranteed to blow up in your face.

Your customers are people, even if your customers are businesses. (Businesses are made up of people, after all.) And people always have their guard up when they’re being marketed to by companies they have not learned to trust yet.

Some black hat marketing techniques—bait and switch, for example—have been around for ages, but we have brand-new categories now with the rise of the Internet.

Social media manipulation. If you install a program on your web site that forces your readers to automatically “like” your company page, they’ll find out when they peruse their list of “likes,” and they will feel had. They will feel had by you.

Their fake “like” will turn into genuine dislike. Many will tell their friends, and Facebook may eventually close your account, dropping your number of genuine likes and fake likes alike down to zero.

Cloaking. Google explicitly says, “don’t deceive your users or present different content to search engines than you display to users, a practice commonly referred to as ‘cloaking.’”

If you run a cheat eats diner, but deliberately attract web site visitors with an invisible five-star restaurant page set up solely for search engines, you’re cloaking.

Used car salesmen have a bad rep. Some of them surely don’t deserve it, but think about the stereotype. He’s dishonest. He’s pushy. And he charges too much.

Imagine how much more annoying he’d be if, according to his storefront, he sold Mercedes and Jaguars but in reality he only sold Chevys and Fords.

You don’t even want to be in the same time zone as that guy. Your would-be customers won’t appreciate it, and it wouldn’t matter much if they did. Your site will get blacklisted from search engines.

One of the most famous cases involved BMW in Germany. They wanted hits from readers who searched for “used cars.” (Some people actually want to find a used car salesman.) So they created a cloaked “doorway page” that redirected readers to the regular BMW web site.

Google found out and reduced BMW’s search rank to zero.

Hidden Text. You won’t annoy your web site visitors if you can create hidden text crammed with keywords that will only be seen by search engine spiders, but at the end of the day this is just a less annoying version of cloaking.

Search engines may not be sentient, but they are designed by people on the lookout for this sort of behavior, and you’ll pay for it when they catch you.

Cybersquatting. If you register a domain name that’s similar to the name of a well-known company and hoping to pick up their customers, you’ll only hurt yourself as soon as customers get wise. And they will get wise.

Domain name shenanigans aren’t the only form of cybersquatting. A self-published writer decided to put the name “Stephen King” on his books in order to fool the real Stephen King’s fans. The reader reviews on Amazon.com are scathing. Amazon will catch on soon enough and blacklist this author, and his career—such as it is—will implode.

Don the black hat if you want, and it might even work for a while, but your market share will crash after your customers and the gatekeepers at search engines figure out what you’re up to. You’ll be the used car salesman, and unlike some perfectly ethical people who happen to sell used cars for a living, you will have earned that reputation.

What’s the ethical way to sell things?

Marketing-schools.org says that question has never had a satisfactory answer, but we all know the answer.

It’s simple: be honest.

What To Do When You’re Out of Ideas

According to Axonn Research, nine out of ten businesses use some form of content marketing to build trust and connections with customers. And the demand for content never ends.

Company web sites and business blogs can be ruthless taskmasters, treadmills with no off switch that run to infinity. It’s enough to make even the best content marketers feel like Sisyphus, the king in Greek mythology whom the gods punished for chronic deceitfulness by making him push a boulder up a hill over and over again—forever.

No wonder a content marketer’s often idea well often runs dry.

There’s a tried-and-true method, however, to refilling the well.

Carry a notebook with you. Better yet, use the notes app on your smartphone so you’ll always have it wherever you go. Whenever you get an idea, write it down in your notebook or tap it into your phone. If you need to write a blog post each week, you should be able think of something over the next week. Don’t promise yourself you’ll remember the idea, though. Pin in down on paper—or in pixels.

Talk to your co-workers. Other people will always think of things you’d never think of yourself, and if they aren’t on your content marketing team, their idea wells should be full. Most of them will be flattered that you asked them to help you.

Talk to your customers. Ask them what they love about your products and how you help make their lives better. They might surprise you. And don’t forget: your customers have stories of their own. Why not publish some?

Read. Read about your industry. Read what your competitors are publishing. Follow copywriting blogs like Copyblogger and consume everything published by the indispensable Content Marketing Institute. When you get out of your mental rut and into somebody else’s, ideas will naturally come to you.

Brainstorm. It’s intimidating when you’re mental gas tank is empty—what if I can’t come up with anything?—but your subconscious is full of ideas even when your conscious mind is running on fumes. All you have to do it engage it.

If you come up with idea that seem dumb, write them down anyway. If you combine two “dumb” ideas, you might come up with a smart one.

If you need to write a blog post per week and can manage to come up with twelve ideas during a brainstorming session, that will be keep you busy for three months. You’re bound to think of something else to write during that three month period if you follow the advice above, and if you add those ideas to your note file as you go, you should be in good shape indefinitely.

Talk to a 6 yr old–K.I.S.S

No matter your industry, you’ve heard the phrase, “Keep it simple, stupid.” It’s the transparent motto written within every office building. But have we truly internalized this message? Does it resonate with our current work?

Albert Einstein believed, “If you can’t explain it to a six-year-old, you don’t understand it yourself.”

Einstein may have been a bit playful when he said that, but in all his brilliance, he recognized the importance of simplicity.

So here are five ways to keep things simple before you share your next greatest idea:

1. Define one purpose. Your purpose is the overarching vision that encompasses your specified goals. When you identify a purpose, you’ll more easily follow the rules of K.I.S.S.

2. Understand your audience. You may not be speaking to six year olds, but your desired audience may be unfamiliar with certain expressions you use to explain your idea/product/message. Once you’ve defined and observed your audience, choose the correct language and format your presentation to meet their needs.

3. Spout out your pitch in front of a mirror. Trust us, this works. This rehearsal will help you refine and rework your words and expressions more concisely.

4. Practice your message using words and pictures. Explain your idea with the help of 10 visual aids. Then try to condense your pitch into 10 key points or less.

5. Finally, find someone who isn’t aware of your new idea, and share the concept with him/her in five minutes or less. Then ask questions about his/her understanding.