When you run a business, it’s necessary to pay close attention to the day-to-day details. Any other approach can quickly lead to to be without a business at all. But by keeping your eye on the ball, it’s harder to manage long-term projects. Something like planning a major marketing campaign or the purchase of a new location can be time intensive and tough to manage — especially if you’re only in the planning stage and you won’t start acting on the project until something happens, like an increase in revenues. But it is possible when you have practical strategies to handle the matter.
Make a Map
As you being planning your long-term project, it’s important to map out the steps that will get you all the way through the project. It’s also important, as you go along, to mark off what you’ve finished: One of the difficulties with most long-term projects is not just making sure that you know what needs to happen next, but also being aware of what’s already been completed. Especially if there’s significant time passing between different steps of your plan, keeping good notes on what you’ve already done can make the difference between moving forward and redoing work that is already complete.
The mechanics of managing such a plan and tracking your progress can be made simpler by using software, particularly when using an option that offers the ability to go back and look at tasks you’ve already completed. If you find yourself able to delegate some portion of the project, it’s also important to be able to show what has been completed and what is yet to be down.
Maintain Motivation
Beyond simply managing your long-term project, it’s not uncommon for motivation to be a problem. Especially with a project that may not pay off for months, convincing yourself to do a little every day or week — recommended by many managers as the easiest way to get big projects done — can be an uphill battle. It’s so easy to fall in the habit of thinking that you have all the time in the world to complete a project and push back even little steps.
Whenever possible, it’s important to build in motivation and milestones in a long-term project, especially if you want to add some components to your daily responsibilities. The motivation can depend on your approaches and your business. It can be as simple as creating a regular reminder of the value of completing your business or it can be as complex as creating a disincentive for not completing your work. By creating some sort of penalty, such as paying into an office kitty on those weeks when you don’t complete your work load, you may be able to focus on the tasks that build up to a long-term project, even when knowledge of the benefits aren’t enough to keep you moving. It’s simply a matter of considering what motivates you as an individual as well as a business owner.
Image by Flickr user Joe Lanman
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So you’ve decided to start a new business? Congratulations! Let’s be sure you start on the right track in your endeavor.
Richard Greenberg is a startup advisor in San Francisco CA, founder of SeedPort and 
