In Learning, No Time Is Wasted (Tip #3)

Last Update: Oct 10, 2013

bynathaniell

100.1K followers

11 years ago

Tip #3 No Time Is Wasted

Sometimes you run into new concepts or tasks that are tough to figure out. Internet marketing has a steep learning curve, and even after you've done it for a couple of years, there are still plenty of things to learn. Once you get the basic idea of marketing down, you can still look into details like designing your own logos, Wordpress design & CSS, other site platforms like Joomla, and what not.

But, it's easy to get caught up with the idea of 'Time Management', or think about how much you're actually paying yourself (spending 3 hours doing something that doesn't work means you just worked for yourself for free).

The important thing to remember is that as long as you're doing something on your campaign, technically, no time is ever wasted.


Let me give you an example.

A few weeks ago I spent 3 hours designing a banner for one of my sites using Gimp (which, BTW is a great tool). At first, I felt like those three hours could have been better spent doing something more products, an I could just pay someone $5 on Fiverr to do it for me.

But yesterday I designed another banner for a different site, and this time it took me 20 minutes.

Next time, I may be able to do it less time.

So although I 'wasted' 3 hours learning how to design a logo, I've saved myself $10 or more by designing my own logos, and will continue to save that bit of money in the future. Not to mention, I've also saved myself the time of explaining to some guy how I want the logo, and correcting mistakes, checking for updates on the project, etc.


Here's another example.

I have spent a huge number of hours looking to the style sheets of a few of my WP sites trying to change colors of links, font size, and moving bits and pieces around. Sometimes, at the end of a 2 hour code searching session, I'd have changed absolutely nothing.

But by trying and failing many times, I was actually able to go in and customize one of my new blogs in less than an hour to fit exactly how I wanted.


So what's this all mean?

Decreasing T/P Value

Hopefully, from these examples, you can see that although the initial time invested produces little results, but eventually, you can reduce the amount of time to produce more (and better) results.

T/P Value = Time Invested ÷ Product Value

So if I invest a lot of time to produce something small in value, that is a large number, ie 5/1 = 5.

As I reduce the amount of time invested in a task, and am able to produce better results with that time, the ratio is reduced.

4/1...4/2...2/2... and eventually you can use very little time to produce something of high value to your campaign or business.


I hope you enjoyed this tip. Let me know if you found this helpful, or share your time management strategies in the comments below!