You might be wondering what are the best tactics in making your work faster and easier when it comes to publishing your books. Find out if this Get Thing Done Method in self-publishing is the right system to follow.
Today's article has three points and you're going to want to stick around for the third point. Because it is a secret as to the absolute most important point when using the Get Things Done Method for self-publishers.
So, let's get into it. The topic we're going to be looking at today is the Get Thing Done Method in self-publishing. Now, this is something that comes up from time to time.
Because as a self-publisher, there are about a thousand different things and strategies you can do to produce your books and to get your books to sell. As you're building an audience, getting those books onto the market, and ensuring that you're getting the royalties that you should be getting.
Check out this related article: How Authors Get Paid
But what happens is that as you start to hear the strategies that I'm teaching here, you can quickly become overwhelmed. Because you realize suddenly all of the things you aren't doing. There are so many activities, you get started doing a little bit of this then a little bit of that.
And before you know it, you have very little time left. No new books on the market and you're not making any new sales. So you're investing a lot of time being busy but not getting any compensation.
Your audience isn't really any bigger. You're not making any more money and you're left feeling a bit hopeless. This is exactly this hopeless sensation that the Get Things Done Method is about, fixing.
Before we get into the answers, grab a copy of my free Self-Publishing Checklist. To make sure that you are not skipping any of the important steps when it comes to self-publishing your book and getting it to sell.
In my own story, when I first got started, I was working on multiple books at the same time. They were all in various stages of formatting and production of getting the books done. In addition, I was running ads on the books that I already had on the market.
Managing several virtual assistants who are helping me in the process of getting all of this together. As a result, as you might imagine the amount of work that I was looking at was completely off the charts. Many things to do, so many tasks to keep track of, it became a little bit of a nightmare.
The problem is just too many things and so that was where this method came in. I discovered David Allen's method the Get Things Done Method also called the GTD. He came up with a method that enabled it to change everything for me.
By implementing the very incredibly simple steps inside of his method has made the difference. Because suddenly, all of the overwhelm that I was feeling just completely went away. From time to time, I can still get it as though am I using my time on the best things?
I should be using them on or maybe I should use my time on something a little bit different. But for the most part, the overwhelm from too many tasks completely went away. That's the reason why you as a self-publisher, you're not going to want to ignore the very method that David Allen introduced.
Now you have to keep in mind when he first introduced it, we didn't have all these computer tools and such available to us. But we have that now, so it makes it even easier to implement the method that he originally introduced. I think that was 20 or 30 years ago when he first did it.
So, Get Things Done Method in self-publishing? The first thing you're going to want to do is to define your end goal. What exactly it is you're trying to accomplish?
Let's say we're trying to build a business out of it. You're trying to get a book onto the market and get it selling. There's a whole series of steps to self-publishing the book and marketing the book.
Create A Plan System
These work hand in hand to make sure that we don't just produce a book that nobody wants. And we don't market a book in the same thing. The other is that we never get the book produced in the first place.
But we're trying to market a book that we're never able to get to the market. So the first thing we're going to do is we're going to define exactly what the end goal looks like very clearly. So we know what we're going for the second thing is.
We're going to break it down into the subtasks needed to accomplish it. This is the reason I like checklists, like the one I mentioned above. The ones I also use are incredibly detailed checklists.
My virtual assistants are using them and I give them away as part of the different courses that I have. As well as my students but in terms of just the basic starts, checklists are a very powerful tool. Because we can break the tasks down into the order that we're going to need to do to get our books published and selling on the market.
So this is a very important one that I have found. The second point to remember is the key with the Get Things Done Method. We've defined what exactly the goal is and the basic steps that are going to be necessary.
We're simply going to ask one simple question which is what is the next step it will take to get this task going? In other words, we obviously could do thousands of different steps but what is the next step? The very next step is who will do it, when will they do that step, and when will I follow up on that?
Ultimately, it's going to be getting agreements with your team. If you're the only person on the team, well then it's with yourself. You're going to be the person who's going to do the next step.
When are you going to do the next step? You can see it's a planning system here. I use Todoist to do it, this is the most powerful tool when it comes to staying in control of the system. Using the Get Things Done Method with regards to this exact issue here, you would break it up.
And with Todoist for example, you could make a list that you have in a notepad file or Excel and you can paste that whole list right into a project. Just hit paste and it will just pull it straight down. Use it as a template so that when you're doing each of your projects, you can just click them off as you go through the project.
In addition, you can schedule them out. But we always write down everything that we have to do, who is going to do it, when are they going to do it, and then the follow-up to make sure that it happens. This is one of the big issues here which is you should start at the end of each day to look at how did it go.
With regards to what I plan on doing at the beginning of each day, what do I plan on accomplishing today and then a weekend review? You're keeping track of how far you've come during the day. But keep in mind, so far we've only discussed two issues here.
It's just what is the end goal and what is the next step? This method is so powerful, it works in every aspect of your life. When I implemented it across the board, I found that it drastically changed the overall environment and the experience of every little task.
Go For Todoist
There's a couple of secrets here, that's what comes in our third point of the day and our secret point. It's that you have limited resources, so make sure you capture everything. So you have a capture system like Todoist.
You could use paper if you have to but it's harder to schedule stuff. I would suggest using Todoist or some free, maybe you have reminders on your phone or something that you would like to use or a free task program. But you can even use Todoist for free as well.
The thing is that you capture everything then you're scheduling it out. We don't look at everything at the same time. And when we execute, we're going to have a limited number of tasks that were executed at a given time.
We are not multitasking, we're going to finish off the first task then that triggers a new next task. Then we're going to focus on it, we don't judge our success by getting so much stuff done. We judge our success by actually doing tasks that are the most important in the order that is the most strategic for our projects, in this case, self-publishing.
This is even though I'm kind of giving away the secrets of my entire brand here with Self-Publishing Made Easy Now. It is the way you make self-publishing easy by not doing everything at the same time. And then go ahead and do that next step.
That's a very important point that we are following through from capturing. This is the thing, if you don't capture what it is you need to do, you will have open loops. Your brain will continue going around on those open loops trying to remember them.
Wasting energy that you could use instead on something more important like actually executing those tasks. Thinking strategically about what is the next step for you to do. I can tell you, I take out my phone regularly to write down these things that come to my mind.
Whether it's strategies or things I need to do for whatever reason. So that you aren't having to use your mental resources on something as silly as trying to remember all of these things you're supposed to be doing. As opposed to having them written down, prioritizing them and figuring out the next step is the key to David Allen's Get Things Done Method.
Now, of course, he has a book you can check out on Amazon and it will give you a lot more details. But in reality, what I just said is enough even if you don't even read his book. Just this alone is enough if you implement it.
I know most people can't follow through on the implementation phase. But you can always contact me and I can help you with that as well. The "following through" and the "accountability" that's the reason I offer Coaching, exactly to hit this issue.
Because I know you'll sit there and think "Oh, I really should be doing this". Well if you have somebody you don't personally know, like, and trust but you don't know as a family member or a friend who's going to hold you accountable, it's always best to have somebody outside yourself.
And account for the coach to make sure that you're staying on track and that we are setting timelines. We're holding you to those timelines to execute what you said you would do. Have you tried the Get Thing Done Method in self-publishing your book?
If you have, write "Yes" below in the comments. If you've never tried, write "No" below in the comments. Because I need to know where you're coming from. Check out my other articles and videos for more answers to your self-publishing questions.