I recently had a meeting with my CrankyAds team and a friend named Andy who I had not seen in many years.
Andy left a software company he founded over ten years ago. He’s one of those guys who can do everything. He wore many hats over the years at his company, including programmer, head of hiring and firing, and working directly with clients.
After almost five years not seeing Andy, I bumped into him at a networking event. For some reason I felt compelled to set up a meeting with him and my team. We had some particular challenges and I felt his consultation could be valuable.
The meeting turned out to be a critical one, triggering a shift in how we were working on our software. Although I had sought advice from countless other people, it was Andy who had the biggest impact on how we were going about building our software business.
Team CrankyAds Sprinting On Group Meeting Wednesday
As a result of his feedback, we immediately changed our plans. We began to implement a technique called a “sprint”, which immediately had a positive impact on our productivity.
I’ll explain what a sprint is and how we did them later in this article. First let me explain where we were before we began the sprinting process…
Our Problem
Developing software is a whole different ballgame to writing a blog or creating an information product.
With content based products you have a fairly simple checklist, at least in concept, to complete in order to have something ready for sale.
You need to write the words or create the video or audio that makes up your product. You need landing pages and sales pages and emails and product pages where you give people what they paid for. All of these things are easy enough to create using the fantastic content management tools we have today like WordPress and add-ons like Optimize Press that can turn WordPress into an information marketing platform, and Wishlist that can make WordPress a membership site platform, not to mention Paypal to accept payments.
I like this process because it’s all based on content, which is something I understand how to create.
Software on the other hand is different. I don’t know how to program but I do know how to come up with ideas and how I want software to work. Unfortunately, writing software code is not as straight forward as writing paragraphs for a blog post.
As a result of this, I’ve experienced a whole new collection of frustrations while working on CrankyAds, an advertising management platform currently available to WordPress bloggers.
We have a good team, and Walter our lead programmer is fantastic, but the process of feature development and bug fixing is challenging and often frustrating because of how slow it is. My goal was to figure out a way to speed up our development, which unfortunately as you will see, had the reverse effect.
A Mistake With Good Intentions
The first few months of this year were reasonably good in terms of development of CrankyAds. Although things were slower than I liked, we were pushing out new features on a regular enough basis to feel like we were moving forward.
To speed things up we decided to look for another programmer to work with our team. I immediately began to tap into various recruitment resources and candidates started to surface.
The process of assessing and testing candidates is not something I can do because I don’t have the skills to know if they are good or not. I can only find potential candidates and then let Walter assess them. To do this, Walter had to set up a testing environment, instruct candidates how to do the test and then review their results.
We had a few good candidates pop up, who were not ideal in terms of location (one in the USA and one in India), but as their test results were satisfactory and they were willing to work under affordable conditions to match our very frugal start-up budget, we started working with them.
Unfortunately because Walter had to spend so much time working with our new helpers, giving them tasks, assessing their work, and the process of setting up a development environment for multiple to people to work with, his own productivity dropped significantly.
We ended up losing two months of Walter’s output to the hiring process, with very few new features developed for CrankyAds because he spent most of his working hours managing the people we brought on board to help speed things up.
This was yet another example of a catch-22 situation. We have many of these kinds of problems, common to startups, where resources are lacking because resources are lacking. That reads confusing I realize, but that’s the best way I can describe this kind of problem.
The development issue is the best example of this problem. We need to speed up development in order to increase cash flow so we can hire more developers, but the process of hiring and training actually slows down development and thus reduces cash flow.
You need to bridge the gap somehow so you can sustain the status quo while still having resources to work on growth activities (this is often where investment capital comes in).
What Is A Sprint?
A Sprint is a term common in the development world were you focus on one core task or objective which you can complete in a short period of time. You essentially “sprint” to the outcome, disregarding everything else.
There is another term that goes hand-in-hand with the Sprint concept known as an “Epic“. An Epic is also an objective, but it’s too big to be done in a sprint time frame. It requires more time and resources to get it done, hence it is a more “epic” undertaking.
After losing two months of development due to focusing on what we thought would speed us up, we realized we needed a shift in strategy.
Andy offered the exact kick in the pants we needed. In a nutshell, here is what he suggested…
- Walter, our lead developer should not be doing anything other than what he is good at – coding. He’s a programmer, he loves it and if he could, writing code all day is what makes him happy. It’s also what moves us forward the most, so we need to stop having him do other tasks.
- Mick, our designer, should be focused only on tasks that augment what Walter is doing. These two guys alone are enough to get a lot of work done using a sprint methodology, IF they have the focus and lack of distractions to get the work done.
- My job, since I don’t code, is to protect these guys from distractions. I need to handle everything else, from legals, accounting, customer support, networking events – everything I can do so the other guys are free to focus.
Prior to this we were sharing tasks. We all participated in meetings, attended networking events and did customer support. We talked on skype a lot and all had input in things like accounting and legal decisions. This is okay of course, we should make decisions together, but at the right time – not to the detriment of development output.
Andy suggested we lock Walter and Mick in a room for a short period of time and have them code and design focusing on the core tasks we need to get done. I would “defend” them from anything except the most critical of problems. Everything else we could deal with on our once a week in-person meetings. He suggested we do this for a month at least – a month long “sprint”.
Perhaps it was good timing or perhaps it was the way Andy said it, but for some reason his advice really hit home. We left the meeting feeling excited because we had a plan, and a plan that didn’t require we hire any new people or get investment. We had a plan to get focused and start sprinting.
Our First Month Sprint
This is how we worked during our first month of sprints:
- We completed week long sprints, starting on our team meeting on Wednesdays, with the goal to have one or two core objectives complete by the following Wednesday.
- We use development task management software Jira to time out objectives and keep things focused.
- Through a combination of user survey feedback and the need to find things we can do within a week or two-week time frame (two sprints), we would pick the best objectives and avoid “epic” tasks.
…and importantly, ignore everything else.
Our team often goes into idea-generation tangents at our meetings and many of the ideas are “epics”, things we can’t get done quickly. It’s a heck of a lot of fun, thinking about what our software could do in the future and all the cool features we could add, but realistically, there is only so much that can be done.
The sprinting mentality forced us to be frugal and simple, pick a couple of things – often just one core feature – and get it done within a week.
My task during the first sprint was to survey our users so we could figure out what the rest of our sprints would be about. We didn’t want to guess, we wanted to fix problems and meet the needs of our users by creating things they want.
As a result of the survey, and as I wrote about in my previous article, the first fruits of our sprints was the addition of Google AdSense/custom code and alternative Advertise Here ad options to CrankyAds remnant inventory options.
Get It Out There
One other major milestone that came about as a result of our very first sprint was the release of our marketplace, currently called the CrankyMart.com.
We had the marketplace almost ready to go for months, but for all kinds of silly reasons, like not having certain features we wanted, we never released it. We made it our objective to just get something out there, even a very very basic version of the marketplace, as our first sprint.
Although it’s missing plenty of the features we want it to have, we met our sprint objective and made public a very basic marketplace. The CrankyMart currently lists all the websites that have used CrankyAds for at least a week and have at least 500 ad impressions. Any advertiser can buy ads from the marketplace directly, and we have already had one ad buy – proving that the business mode works.
In our third week sprint we added a search function and a category drop-down to the CrankyMart. Again, simple features and a long way from what we want our marketplace to become, but a step forward.
Taking steps forward every week feels good. Our motivation is much higher when we have a meeting and show case new features that were released. We don’t always meet our sprint objective timing, but we get it done. The sense of moving forward is powerful – an important process that keeps us engaged in our startup because we see tangible improvements consistently.
What Can You Achieve If You Sprint?
I encourage you to take a look at how you go about development for anything in your business and see if a sprinting method can help you focus and get things done.
It doesn’t have to be about software development.
I did a month long sprint when I wrote the Blog Profits Blueprint years ago. I put together 25,000 words in less than four weeks by committing to writing at least 1,000 words a day. I did this as my main task every day, only doing other tasks if my daily writing quota was met.
I’ve done sprints many times, although not exactly labeling them as such, to create course materials, launch videos, reports, testimonial interviews, blog posts and much more. With a combination of knowing my most pressing needs and the pressure of a deadline looming, I can get more done in a week than I usually do in a month.
It all comes down to knowing what is important (try the “Theory of Constraints” if you need help figuring this out), making the decision to ignore everything but that task and giving yourself a deadline.
The ignoring part is actually the hardest part in my experience, because things will fly at you, people will want your attention, you will have ideas and your non-business life will intervene as well. The deadline gives you pressure, the focus makes you productive, and assuming you have a good method for choosing what tasks to do, the regular results will boost your motivation.
Do sprints often enough and you may enjoy a snow-ball effect. It’s amazing what consistent output can do, especially after a year or two. I believe all good bloggers are actually good sprinters because every week they give themselves the task of creating blog content and get it done.
Blogging is the one sprint task I complete before every other task every week – and I’ve been doing it for almost eight years. I can tell you thanks to the power of hindsight and the countless examples available (every successful blog is an example), that the sprint methodology is very effective, even more so if you make it a habit.
What Is Your Next Sprint Task?
I’d love for you to take this sprinting concept and actually apply it.
Given these conditions –
- It’s one of the most important tasks for your business, but…
- It’s not so big that you can’t finish it in a week to a maximum of a month, and…
- You know if you focus on it you can get it done…
What is your first sprint task?
Please reply as a comment to this article and we can all see what you are going to focus on next. You can also use this public forum as a place to make yourself accountable to actually getting it done.
Tell us what you are going to do, what timeframe you are going to do it in and why it is important.
Over to you!
Yaro
Sprinting
Thanks for sharing your observations Yaro, it seems sprinting technique has been very productive for the team at CrankyAds.
I’ve slowed my progress at time by not having a process that points out the highest objective and then keeps the actions accountable to those objectives. Thanks for those insights Yaro- good stuff man.
Glad you liked it Nathaneal.
What sprint task are you working on this week?
I have a few different springs that are relative to client work this week. A bunch of smaller projects that primarily focus on driving traffic, writing copy, testing different elements in sales funnels…and stuff like that. I have specific results/goals for each step in those processes. But some of them I can only work on for an hour..until I need to let It do its thing, or pass it to someone on my team…or something – So what I just started to doing is writing my 10 most important results/goals I want first thing in the morning before I get started. Along with the three most important steps I can take to get each one of those goals to the next step. (got the idea from Brian Tracy) When I do that, it re-focuses me and keeps me from following my entrepreneurial ADD. Then after writing my 10 most important goals/objectives, I ask myself if I could only get one thing done what would move me closer to BIG goal…than anything else. Then I usually make that my sprint…if it takes me an hour fine, I move to the next, if it takes me three days or three weeks. Then it does.
Thank again Yaro, your ideas are always awesomely insightful.
Nice springs Nathaneal 😉
Can you give us an example of one of the things you are going to do on Monday?
Monday — Sure thing, I have a relatively new team that I built for a client. Their workflow includes, content, link building and getting local citations & finding local publishing opportunities. I have to build out their workflow for the week, then I will be working on the discover part…of a google display campaign. I will set this up with the intentions of learning about a specific part of personal development niche..so I can find different ad opportunities…to set up an effective enhanced campaign… then I will be looking at lead flow for a real estate company I work with, I will check with their staff to see if they are following the steps I outlined for them to make sure they are getting the 20 times turnaround they should be on their ppc
hope you have a great week!
Yaro, that’s a terrific and extremely useful article! Really great advice, and a great case study!
I would add that while one is “sprinting,” new ideas, resources, etc do come in. – And I find it very important to have a simple and quick system in place where I “park” those ideas, resources, etc to be used later. For me, Scrivener and Evernote work great! I write a lot, and find Scrivener worth gold. I have several Scrivener files for several projects, some of which are future projects on which I plan to work in the future. Whenever new ideas etc come up, I “park” them right away into a proper place in the appropriate Scrivener file for later use, while I am focusing on completing something else. You can also file pdf files, pictures etc there. It serves as a writing and research system. Later, when I look through those “parked” ideas and things – it is like a treasure trove, many of those I would’ve forgotten about had I not “parked” them. Evernote is great, too, for filing various useful materials.
Thanks again for your great “sprinting” advice!
Great point Olga – it’s not like ideas stop coming when you focus on a sprint, if anything more ideas can flow, so having a place where you can dump them in a matter of seconds so your sprint is not interrupted is a good idea.
Thanks for sharing the tools you use to do this too.
Yaro
Apparently, “sprint” is part of a broader “Scrum” productivity framework. Really great stuff, I can see how this can be applied not just in software development:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scrum_(development)
Yep – there is a whole methodolgy behind it, working in pairs, etc. Worth looking into if you are in a productivity mindset.
Come on people, make yourself accountable, what are you working on this week?
I can tell you that my main sprint task for the coming week is preparation work for a sales page for my next product, The 2 Hour Work Day.
What are you working on?
Going to complete all partially started projects that I have had open for the last six (6) months. They should have been done by now. Just been getting distracted by *BSOs (Bright Shiny Objects).
If you ever need help with testing applicants in the future http://www.OneTest.com could be a good resource for you 🙂
That sounds like an awful lot for just a week long sprint Katey.
Get specific, tell me one task or objective with a specific outcome you can complete in one week.
Haha I did complete the 6 projects.
Most of it was mentally, as well as officially, closing files.
As an entrepreneur, you partially start a lot of ‘cool ideas’ to never really complete them or “will get back to them later when you have more … (fill in the excuse here money/technical support/time)…”
Just by officially closing these partially started ideas and/or projects with other people, it gave my brain room to think about the things I want to work towards now.
Somewhere in the back of my mind, I was working off 3 year-old blueprints. But I’ve changed and experienced a lot since then.
By using “The Sprint” it helped narrow my focus and do what needs to get done and move on to the next thing. It made me realise how much time I wasted in fiddling around, when most of my ‘should-get-on-top-list’ was completed within 4 hours. Yet somewhere in my brain, I was thinking it would take a whole day.
Thanks for the tip 🙂
Yaro, that’s quite a teaser! 🙂 You’ve got to tell us more about this The 2 Hour Work Day project! 🙂
I recently finished a novel I have been working on off and on for several years. Having already decided to go the indie way, as soon as I had the editing finished the way I wanted it, I just recently added the book to Smashwords and Amazon Kindle (I still need to add it to CreateSpace). Since I have already decided not to pay for advertising, I am going to use this week to work on one of my greatest strengths (article writing) and write and distribute as many articles that touch on my novel as I possibly can, and get them ready to distribute all over the Internet, including to EzineArticles, StumbeUpon, Squidoo, etc. I will also send out newspaper articles and free press releases using content about some of the non-fiction things (such as hydrogen-fuel-cell-cars, Seattle tidbits, etc.) that are contained within my novel. I will concentrate exclusively on those tasks alone for several hours each day this week. I know there are many other tasks needed to make a new book successful, but that is my goal for now. Thank you, Yaro, for helping me to become more focused. I do appreciate it!
Sounds like a plan Chris. That’s the sort of sprint that you really feel you accomplished something by the end of it but it’s not complicated, you just get busy and do what you are good at. Good luck meeting the deadlines!
I really like the idea and actually put it into practice to some degree already. Back when I was working for my dad’s software company, they seemed to go through a similar period with a sprint-like attitude being the outcome. Making a list on a large(very visible)white-board is often what I do in sprint situations. It helps organize my thoughts and allows me to get the larger task on hand finished.
Here is a project management technique I learned from one of the free videos by Rich Schefren. The technique is very much related to what Yaro just shared with us.
Rich Schefren explained it using the following example. Suppose you have 3 projects, and each will take 3 weeks to complete. I.e., it will take 9 weeks to complete all 3 projects. You will start making money (or derive whatever benefit you have in mind) once you complete a project.
Scenario A: You work on the 3 projects concurrently. This means that you will complete all 3 projects by the end of 9 weeks. This means you will make $0 money by the end of 9 weeks, and will start making money after the 9 weeks when you complete the projects.
Scenario B: You work on the 3 projects sequentially. This means that you will complete the 1st project by the end of 3 weeks; then the 2nd project by the end of 6 weeks; and then the 3rd project by the end of 9 weeks. This means you will start making money after 3 weeks once you are done with the 1st project. So you will be making money from the 1st completed project for 6 weeks (weeks 4 through 9). Then you will start making money from the 2nd completed project when you complete it by the end of 6 weeks and will be making money from it for 3 weeks.
The beauty of this is that you will spend EXACTLY THE SAME amount of TIME, in this case 9 weeks, to complete the projects whether you are doing this using Scenario A or B. Yet, you will be making more money if you work using Scenario B!
The technique is very much what Yaro just shared with us.
As simple as it is, I was, frankly, very much stunned by this when I heard this! And this certainly is affecting how I do my projects now! So it’s really not just what you do but also how you do it!
Oh you bring back the memories Olga. I remember when I first heard that story from Rich…and I think Mike Filsaime borrowed it, or maybe vice versa, to explain how working on projects concurrently is not a good idea.
I still make this mistake on a macro level, having several projects going at once, but with the sprint mentality I can get things done on a micro level, where one aspect of one project just gets done, nothing else matters.
I figured you’d remember 🙂 Rich has your picture and name again and again and again there 🙂 He apparently likes to use you as a case study 🙂
Re concurrent: it seems to me though that projects often have to mature, or “age” as they say about blogs. So it may be not such a bad idea after all to have some concurrent projects once the initial groundwork is done. I am thinking of it as a garden: I can plant tomatoes, cucumbers, apple tree, gooseberry, etc. There is a lot of work to set it up, plant etc, then after that maintain but not every day work. But they will need to grow etc, i.e., there is some waiting involved, for some projects, or alternatively, one needs to wait till somebody else completes some task. And then one can work on other things in the meantime.
First time I am really hearing of this Sprint Technique. Will have to do more indepth study into it but I can see you get a lot of work done using this technique. It kind of reminds me of the Pomodoro Technique which is also good. Thanks for sharing
I had a chance meeting on Friday during a home inspection.
The service person I spoke with was in several networking groups and spoke of only using the people in his groups that he personally knew did great work at affordable prices.
Now as a Realtor that is something I can use.
So what am I sprinting??? I am starting a brochure simple 3 fold and will print myself and update myself of these great service people, also with my information on it, and I have already started a webpage on my own site as well and the pamplet is just waiting for the names to be sent to me.
Why? low inventory and thousands of Realtors in my town scratching for listings. So I am also providing these pamplets to the service people to give out and hopefully the clients will keep them and we all win.
He’s already very happy about this and I hope to have a referral network that works.
Thanks for the tip Yaro, what a great idea! I am going to try this out but applied to my dressmaking and other creative projects 😉
I think this is a very nice application. I vaguely recall ‘Sprint’ is a unit of work in the SCRUM methodology in software development, isn’t it? Thanks for sharing this creative application.
Ref: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scrum_(development)
My sprint this week will be redesigning my new landing page and getting a couple new features on it.
Hi Yaro,
Thank you for sharing your insight. I always enjoy reading your insights.
The difficulty in staying focused does not apply only to blogging, programming but to almost anything you want to accomplish. Having struggled to finish extensive writing tasks, I also have come to realize that tasks that require your mental focus are harder than physical ones. Just imagine how much easier it could have been to have a team to work on a gardening project instead of a software project. But the greatest challenge I have encountered so far is to work up my motivation for something that bored me to my core. Have you had such an experience and how did you handle it?
Hey Yaro,
Good post… it’s giving me a kick in the pants 🙂 My main sprint task this week is to have The Consulting Engineers Guide to Success Ebook completed in draft form. 1,000 words per day should just about do it….
Cheers to sprinting,
My sprint this week (even though I didn’t know I was putting this sprinting idea into practice until I read your post) is completing the first draft of my new e-book, hopefully completing it altogether.
It’s got to be a year, probably more come to think of it, that I’ve been thinking ‘I really need to finish my website…’ – then I get caught up in client work – and it stays embarrassingly uncompleted.
So my sprint this week is to get two pages of content written each day, select pics and get it up there. That way I can stop feeling mortified if I think someone is looking at my site and wondering why I should be trusted with their content!
Thanks for the kick in the pants Yaro, great post.
Sue 🙂
Nice Sue, that sounds like a realistic task for a sprint, assuming you writing isn’t painful for you.
What a fantastic discussion and exactly what i needed. I was sying to a friend that I have never been so ADD as when I started to work in the IM world. so busy being busy that I accomplish very little.
Then you confronted me with the CHOOSE 1 idea and accomplish that and it almost had me blow a gasket my mind was whirling so wit the “just choose one” So my Sprint is to achieve gold status in an online networking business, that offers world class nutraceuticals. That is the first step to my going Diamond and then completing my goal of earning $30k/month
To achieve that I need two more people to purchase the 1000 point business packs or more people that totals those points. I will set up muy lInkedIn profile and start networking in LinkedIn groups and I will get my blogs set up, with squeeze pages and categories so that I have somewhere to send people if they get interested.
I’m also going to come back here daily for more inspiration.
Thanks for a great blog Yaro. I love getting your emails.
Mary
Hi Mary, I’m glad I have helped you focus. So you have a specific goal, good. I like the LinkedIn task too, that sounds perfect for one week. Set it up and start building a profile there.
If you also have to set up your blog and squeeze pages, you might consider those tasks for a week two sprint, depending on how custom you want them to be and how many hours of work you have spare.
It’s important you are realistic with your sprint timing, because part of the reason you do this is to actually accomplish the goal in a week to get the sense of momentum. If you assign yourself too much and then you don’t meet the goal, you can fall back into old patterns of scattered task work and feel like you are getting no where.
Budget your time with your tasks so you get to enjoy the sense of moving forward each week.
Rats Yaro
You were so right. I had nice clear cut tasks but there were too many and I still got dragged into other tasks not on my list, so back to my ADD behavior. Horrible!
OK so this week I will focus on getting one blog up and working, plus at least create my plan for LinkedIn and I will find and recruit two new people into my network.
I have to scale this back so I know that I am accomplishing something that I plan on doing.
Mary
A great post as always, Yaro, thanks for sharing! You’ve described a good scheme and yes, it draws together ideas from Rich Schefren, Jack Canfield and the Scrum method, which strangely enough I first came across just a week ago. I think I am being given a few hints for some reason! I have been working on getting a Kindle book published, but seem to get sidetracked too easily. Just a thought on the idea of setting out your daily goals, even better than doing it first thing in the morning, try doing it last thing at night for the following day, the theory being that if you sleep on it, your sub-conscious works on it overnight and you focus more easily the next day. OK, so my sprint is get this darn book published by this time next week! It’s on Beginning in Public Speaking, and if anyone is interested, I’d be happy to send out a few PDF copies in return for some genuine feedback. (Hope that is allowed Yaro, please delete if innapropriate)
Hi Tony, thanks for offering your book – very generous! That sprint tasks sounds potentially huge though, depending on where you are at with the book. When you say get it published – I take it you have finished writing it already and you just need to submit it to Amazon?
Tony,
As I am taking a break from my Sprint, I read the comments and also looked at your website. Like how it’s set up! In case you run into a situation that you are short on topics for blog posts, here is something to consider. Why not post examples of videos of excellent speakers. For ex., most people would agree that Brendon Burchard is an exceptional speaker. And he has lots of free videos. There is so much that one can learn about public speaking just from watching his videos. Since you know a lot about public speaking, you probably know of lots of other speakers with free videos that you can point out to people interested in improving their public speaking as resources. I know, if I were to look into improving my public speaking, I would definitely want to watch videos of various examples. Also, public speaking can come in different styles. For ex., some people are good at making jokes, so it could benefit them to learn how they can incorporate that. But for others, making jokes just wouldn’t be their style. Watching videos with different speakers and speaker styles can help one find his/her own style. Also, I think, if you post a link to someone’s video as a learning example, it could help if you as an expert point out and list the specific techniques that your “students” can and should notice and learn from while watching the video. For ex., in Brendon Burchard’s case, one can point out his incredible enthusiasm, excellent eye contact, smile, positive way of presenting things etc. Also, use of white papers with hand-written bullet points that he uses. I’d think you could also post “negative” examples, i.e., videos where speakers can improve and point out what they can improve (I can think of lots of examples of such!).
Well, back to my Sprint 🙂 Olga
My sprint this week is to wrap up my book and deliver it to the printer by Friday.
That sounds like a satisfying sprint Jan! Perhaps an easy one too..
Hi Yaro, what great encouragement. I actually wrote my first book by implementing a similar strategy. I committed to writing daily with a goal to complete 25,000 words in a month!
Staying on course required the discipline and drive to “ignore” all of the other fires coming at me until this was accomplished! I did accomplish that but found the editing, designing and proofing process to take a lot more time.
I’m now working on the second book and have hopes that the “post” writing process will be much quicker this time!
Thanks for the encouragement!
It is quite interesting that I received this blog in my email. I awaken this morning with the idea to focus on completing one project and not being distracting by anything else. You message is a universal confirmation . My sprint this week is to complete an employee health and wellness program proposal for an independent consultant contract request. Looking forward to sprinting all the way to a monthly cash flow 🙂
Nice Miss Young – May I ask what exactly goes into a proposal like the one you are making? Is it a long document?
Hi Yaro:
Since my blog is still young (born in June of this year), my main goal is more of an “epic” rather than a sprint. That is to keep writing valuable content.
However, I think I’ve been up and running long enough so that I can begin to do some “light marketing” That is, begin contacting forums and other blogs in my niche.
Therefore, my “sprint” assignment for this week is to find at least 4 blogs or forums that I can leave valuable comments on and maybe my link as well.
Thanks, Yaro for all the help and inspiration.
Reg
Great Reg, thanks for being specific, which is the point of a sprint. I think you might find that job takes less than a week though, so perhaps the target should be to pick one blog and submit one guest article and one forum to submit ten posts to. I’m sure you can manage that in a week 🙂
Just one quick question about this: Most of the forums that I’ve encountered are so sensitive about the possibility of being spammed that they don’t want you to leave a link in your signature. How do I overcome this?
Reg (Thanks, in advance)
Yaro,
I really enjoy your article and thought it had all sorts of great productivity and entrepreneur tips. I am always trying to figure out how to be more productive, efficient, and effective in my busy days. Putting the nose to the grindstone and focusing on what you are good at is what I got out of your article. I think it is a great tip and I need to improve upon focusing on what’s most important in my business. Thanks – Pete
Yaro,
You are truly THE BEST! Thanks for all your insight and inspiration to all of us!
I thought and thought over the weekend about what you wrote and what I can set my mind on as my Sprint. Upon thinking, I decided to pursue 3 one-day Sprints in a row and then a one-week Sprint.
What’s been holding and totally sabotaging me for a while is that I have these 3 main “projects,” that are not even “projects” at all but more important must-do things I have to do but having been dragging. The main reason for dragging is that these particular tasks are for me tedious, to put it mildly (but not something I can outsource). That is despite the fact that I can realistically have each of those done and out of the way and out of my mind in 1 day each – if I really kick myself and focus and force myself to get them done.
Hence, I set my mind to have 3 one-day Sprints, starting with today, to get those 3 tedious tasks done and out of my mind. Then I will have a one-week Sprint to get my blog started and going (something I am very eager, excited, and looking forward to do).
THANKS again, Yaro, for all your support to us!
I must say Sprint sounds like a very good idea, need to try it soon.
so basically SPRINT is focus on 1 task until its complete and move on to the next.
This is the way to go in handling today’s business. Sprint is just a different term that I used in the past.
What I like in your articles, is that you do not hesistate to illustrate concept with your own experience. I will apply this strategy by concentrating on producing content for my blog first, before to think about its promotion.
Thanx Yaro
You are right Yaro, having sprint for your every daily activity could be extremely help to achieve our goal. Your article is so amazing, I just can’t stop to read and ready to practice, as a wise man said that practice make perfects. 🙂
Thanks