Creating is not difficult, necessarily. It’s not even time-consuming. When you’re really going, when you’re in the midst of creating, producing, you’re hardly slow. You’re moving at the right pace. You’re in the flow.

No, the difficult, time-consuming thing is to get past all the sludge, the details, the urgent, the unimportant, the obligations, the demands, the interruptions and Do The Work.

For writers, this means butt-to-chair.
For sales people, this means phone-to-ear or feet-to-door to make those calls, make those connections, and make the sale. Doing the work means doing the Most Important Work. Julie Morgenstern, in her book Never Check E-mail in the Morning, calls it “dancing close to the revenue line.” Here’s her take on it:

…everything you spend your time on should be assessed in terms of its proximity to the revenue line. What is the revenue line? It’s the point at which your company is actually making or saving money. …Each company is built around either producing a product or delivering a service. …Which of the tasks on your to-do list are closest to your company’s revenue line? …The largest portion of your time should be spent on tasks that are, at most, only one or two steps from the revenue line.

I’ll give you a break down for setting your day’s priorities as Morgenstern advises on a typical list (in no particular order) for my freelance workday:
1. Research blog posts for Client 1.
2. Update AM blog.
3. Check/answer emails.
4. Answer blogging queries (product reviews, pr, etc).
5. Outline next two articles for Client 2.
6. Work on ebook.
7. Check job boards.
8. Research upcoming article series on creativity/work.
9. Return phone calls.
10. Send out invoices/payment reminders.
11. Write article for Client 3.
12. Write 2 posts for Client 4.

Which activities, for me, are directly related to the revenue line?
Short answer: anything to do with actual writing, content production. So #1, 2, 5, 6, 11, 12. An even half of the list. But what’s the easiest thing to do?
Put off the actual creating – the work I do which makes the money – and piddle around with the other items: the email answering and job checking and article researching and invoice sending.

Those other items are important but they are not the most important.

The most important things to do is the actual production of work. Do the work, and that’s how you make the money, get the customers, and grow the business.

How can you do the work? What do you need to stop doing so you have more time for the real, money-making work?