Life In The Grind
ByLife in the Grind was the subject of last week’s webinar. Apparently, there are a few mentoring students moaning about the boring work they’re doing. And, I have to admit, I’m one of them. Dull, dull. Endlessly dull.
The good news is I’m keeping at it. I’m plodding on and, for the most part, not being diverted. So that’s a success. Hoorah!
Before my 1:1 call with Ed Dale last week, I made a hasty dash to complete my CFT file. I’d been slacking a bit. Not wishing to gloss over the truth my last entry recorded:
21.4.10
45 mins 3 by hand comments
45 mins Faffed around
45 mins Faffed around
Fundamentally, I was struggling from a lack of variety. And, a lack of not noticing exactly what I’d achieved. Oh yeah, and from impatience.
Ed wrote a great blog post about this topic earlier in the week – How Farmville holds the secret to online success or something. In it, he explains that in the computer game World of Warcraft, apparently paid for and played by 11.5 million people per month, players (Oops, sorry, gamers) talk about “grinding”, i.e. getting to the next level. How soon they do that is a function of time spent playing the game, i.e. DOING stuff.
The equivalent in internet marketing is what you do in your Critical Focus Time which, as we know, consists of stuff like creating content and building back links.
So, considering the fact that most people who have a go at the internet marketing game don’t get very far, and faced with a bunch of moaning mentees, Ed poses an interesting question – given that millions are willing to grind away at games such as World of Warcraft everyday where there’s no monetary reward, where as in internet marketing being willing to work means you end up with actual cash -
“What’s different, what makes one form of grinding a game loved by millions and one seem like dreary work?”
Two things jump out at me in answer to that:
1. Implicit in the build up to the question is the assumption that people are “doing” internet marketing purely for financial gain. Now, admittedly that’s what most people would say they are doing but, in my experience as a coach, it’s never about the money. It’s what you think the money will buy you that’s what you’re really after. And if you don’t know what that is it’s hard to keep going when the going gets tough. If you can connect your end goal to your daily grind then you will find it easier to stay motivated. But just saying you want to make money isn’t sufficient.
2. The words “seem like dreary work” are an interesting choice. The fact is, no work is, in and of itself, dreary. Only your thinking makes it so. So, as I mentioned in ‘How To Manage Boring and Repetitive Tasks‘ if you keep telling yourself what you’re doing is boring then you’ll be right. Your work will be boring. (Note to self – please remember this and adjust voices in head accordingly!)
By making the daily grind into a bit of a game you can begin to play with ways of making it more interesting. For ideas on how to do this read the “boring and repetitive tasks” post. I would add to that the strategy of mixing things up. So far my focus has been on this website and building traffic to this website. Now that is ticking over I am ready to add a bit of variety and will be revisiting my old websites to see what might be done with them. Do I work on them and sell them? Do I just sell them? Do I work on them and keep them? Not sure.
The key thing is to accept is that the daily grind is a part of setting up an internet marketing business, that cannot be avoided. (At least in the beginning). So you might as well accept it. Then you can free up the energy, currently used in complaining, and use it on experimenting to find the ways that will make this process less painful for you. And, who knows? You might even find yourself enjoying it!
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