I would think that this title pretty much sums up one of the major dilemmas for someone trying to run a small business. Actually it’s not so easy even in the corporate world. It always seemed to me that busy times at work always coincided with busy times at home, and times when it was pretty laid back at work… no, wait, that never happened. At any rate, the problem facing many of us is balancing a pile of things that have to get done with a pile of things that you want to do.

Back in March, I wrote about To Do lists, and one item was “realise that you need different strategies to handle lists of mandatory tasks and lists of optional tasks”. I’d like to expand on that thought today.

For a long time, I thought that the thing to do was to have a single list with everything on it in priority order, and work my way through it. Fairly soon, I realised that priorities were not that easy to assign; they kept changing and different stakeholders had different opinions. For instance, my wife and my boss often had different opinions regarding what I should be doing. Just becoming your own boss doesn’t get rid of this problem, it just puts a different spin on it.

It doesn’t matter whether you assign priorities with a complicated algorithm which assigns weighted values captured from your goals and objectives, the political clout of the various sponsors, the ROI on the project and the phase of the moon, or if you just put things under “must do”, “want to do” and “nice to do” - in my experience, “Organise a ski trip with friends” and “Increase profits 10% by November” just can’t coexist on the same list.

My conclusion - or at least my conclusion for this month - is that if you want to be fairly sure you are making the “best” use of your time right now, and if you are the “list type” then you need different types of lists. Some of the lists that I like are:

• The Outlook “To Do’ Bar: great for dated lists - Back up the PC, water the lawn, buy a new transit pass, write a forum article…
• Checklists: for things which have many details and don’t get done that often, like packing for a vacation
• Goals, Objectives and related Tasks: sorting this out is a whole project unto itself, and probably something which each individual tackles differently, and
• “My Projects” which are the things that I want to do

Isn’t it funny that that “My Stuff” comes at the end of the list of lists? Pretty typical, too, I’d imagine. I’m still not the greatest at working this part, but some of the essential parts seem to be - have a list, written; find a way of organising it so that at any time you have some spare time, you can select a doable, relevant and important task, so that you’re not just frittering the moment away; and update it often, because just like your other lists, priorities change. A neat idea which encompasses some of these ideals, one I found at www.blackandwhiteparrot.com, is an iPhone applet called Spinning Plates. It doesn’t nag at you with deadlines; it just reminds you when you haven’t made any progress on a given item in the time frame you set, by changing its background colour on the list from a nice healthy green through a number of steps until its glowing fiery red. As long as you keep “feeding” your items with attention, two things happen: they stay green on the list and they get closer to becoming a reality. These days, maybe that’s the best we can hope for - making sure the good things don’t get lost in the chaos, and continued progress towards your goal of a balanced life. Don’t spin your wheels; just keep spinning those plates.

There’s an old story in the ad business about a man who ran a hot dog stand. He did really well selling his hot dogs. One day, a customer mentioned, while adding mustard to his hot dog, that he felt there was an economic downturn looming. The hot dog stand owner decided he’d better prepare for the worst so he immediately fired his helper, switched to lower quality wieners and stopped advertising. Sure enough, business dropped off and he finally had to close down. “It’s a good thing I was prepared.” said the hot dog stand owner, as he signed his bankruptcy documents.

The fact is, that when times become tough, the first thing many business owners do is stop marketing, and lay off staff. This most likely means there will be fewer customers coming in and fewer people to serve the ones that do show up-a good recipe for disaster.

This is what the Brick found out recently. We’ve always thought of The Brick (“Nobody beats The Brick”) as more of a finance company than a furniture company, but it’s certainly true that between it, Leons and Chinese imports, furniture retailing has fundamentally changed in this country.

The sector is worth $17 billion dollars a year, but profits are thin and the market is highly fragmented. The Brick has about an 8% share, and lost a ton of money in both 2008 and 2009.

But rival Leons, while facing slowing store sales and profit declines, were still making money. How come? Because The Brick made some decisions that seemed like a good idea at the time, and nearly drove their business into the ground.

Look at what they did and see if you would have done the same thing. We bet most of you would - and we bet you would face the same bad results.

The Brick “saved” money by chopping advertising and laying off hundreds of sales staff.

As a result, store traffic tanked. Fewer customers came into the store, and those who did come couldn’t find the help they needed, so they didn’t buy. Not enough commissioned professionals on the floor selling meant revenue dropped even lower.

Lax controls chewed up cash. Inventory did not match customer demand-too many items that didn’t move off the floor, too few of the high-demand items. The result: long delivery times that annoyed customers and kept them from coming back. And following that, problems with supplier credit, as inventory turns slowed and inventory costs rose.

New Brick CEO, Bill Gregson, figures that only ten percent of the company’s troubles were due to the recession. The real culprits were the wrong stock in the showroom, no expert sales staff on the floor, no advertising to get customers in the door and lax inventory and supply chain controls.

He’s figuring on a fast fix (their August long weekend sales were way up), by fixing inventory levels, hiring back the staff, running more ads and finding economies in some novel ways like holding inventory at the manufacturers rather than the Brick warehouses.

We are not saying you can’t find real economies by reviewing your staffing, inventory and advertising practices; in fact, much of what we do for our clients is to make these processes more efficient.

We are saying that it’s easy to “cut off your nose to spite your face” when you cut the very services that bring business in the door. Bottom line is: when the economy is bad is the time to increase your marketing and upgrade your service. Do so and you’ll be way ahead when the good times are back.

Later on in his years, Gallo was asked by a reporter if he was still enjoying life. “More than ever,” he said. “With great wines like these to drink every night, who wouldn’t?”

After his father had shot and killed his mother and then turned the gun on himself, Gallo was unsure of what the future held for him. All he knew was that he now had his father’s vineyard on his hands. How did this boy who never excelled in school turn a vineyard and a loan of $5,000 into a global empire and a personal net worth of $1.2 billion?

Branding: Not every product that Gallo ventured into worked. In 1974, he introduced high quality, cork-finished varietal wines, but they quickly failed. Many said he was better off sticking to what he knew: cheap, fortified wines with nothing fancy about them except their names. Still, Gallo remained determined that he could create high quality wines using the same brand name. By adapting his advertising strategy, Gallo slowly began to convince the world that the Gallo brand could meet any market need.

Persistence: Working 12 to 16-hour days was nothing out of the ordinary for Gallo. In the beginning, when E&J Gallo Winery was made up of only E&J, the two brothers made it their mission to work as hard as they possibly could to make up for what they lacked. In the end, it was their dogged hard work that helped set them apart from the rest.

Ruthlessness: Gallo made no bones about it: if something had to be done for the sake of his company’s success then so be it. From aggressively under-pricing his competition to demanding more from his workers, Gallo let his competitive spirit shine through whenever it was needed.

Connections: Gallo was not a political man by any stretch of the imagination. But, when the time came to think about his business, he was not above getting involved in politics to make his voice heard. He cultivated powerful connections and drew on those people when the time came. He understood the importance of relationships that worked for mutual benefit and prospered as a result.

Strategy: Gallo did not become an industry leader by accident. He worked hard to not only run his business, but to also structure the industry in a way that was beneficial to him. From tightly controlling distribution channels to funding in-house research and development, Gallo implemented a strategic plan to take him to the top.

“Whatever we do has always been for the future, this being a family-owned company,” Gallo once said. “We have another mountain to climb.” Gallo never got to climb that mountain, but today, his son leads the way. Gallo continues to be an industry leader and is slowly chipping away at its reputation for nothing more than cheap, strong wines. The company continues to win blind testings around the world, demonstrating that above and beyond anything else, all it really comes down to is the wine.